A Treatise on the Incarnation Against the Jews
Translated from the Latin of Patrologia Latina, vol. 156, cols. 489–528
Translator’s Note: This translation follows the text as printed in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, vol. 156 (Paris, 1880). The original is a product of OCR digitisation and carries some noise from the two-column layout; where letters or syllables are damaged beyond recovery the sense has been supplied from context and is indicated with bracketed conjecture. Biblical citations follow Guibert’s own Vulgate references; Psalm numbers therefore follow the Septuagint/Vulgate numbering throughout. Footnotes present in the printed edition are retained and translated here as endnotes marked (n.*). The treatise was composed c. 1111 by Guibert, abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy, at the request of Bernard, bishop of Soissons.
Author’s Dedicatory Letter
To the father and lord Bernard, the holy bishop of Soissons: I, an altogether unworthy person, [offer greetings].
For two years I delayed compliance with your holiness’s request, and I do not know even now whether I have obeyed you fittingly. I confess, my lord — whom I call our common witness — that I was greatly ashamed of what you asked, for I feel that your estimate of me surpasses what I have deserved. I was alarmed by my intellectual weakness, and while untested experience could still frighten me with Gregories and Jeromes as its threats, I feared a shameful fall under the burden I had assumed, and up to now I have been putting you off with delays as long as I was permitted to do so.
To refute unheard-of and wickedly subtle controversies that are brought forward against our faith demands a purity of mind that is altogether sound. The sincerity of the Lord’s Incarnation is to be tracked down by an eye more clear than certain imaginings; since I know myself to be most fiercely hindered in that regard, I was burning with anxiety when compelled to undertake it.
For I was thinking (reasoning like a mere man) that this could be to my reputation’s detriment, and — what is still more to be feared — that to treat such matters tepidly could harm the Church’s witness. Nevertheless, weighing the fact that you had entreated me so earnestly to preface the work with prayer, I turned my heart to Him who had assisted all my undertakings hitherto, and at length tried to work out, as best I could, what you required. If anything in it has turned out well, I attribute that to you, because I set out to obey your outstanding humility with humility on my part.
When I was a boy, still under a tutor, it happened that I was composing some rather secular little verses. When my teacher was displeased, he appeared to me as I slept — a figure with white hair on his head — and said: “I wish you to render me an account of your writing; yet the hand that wrote is not the hand of the person who wrote.” When this was reported back to me by him, I understood that God was granting me some inward light so that my hand might serve holy works.
Book One: On the Conception of the Son of God within the Virgin
Chapter I
The author explains why he has undertaken the treatise.
It is indeed tolerable — though only just — when controversies about our faith are attacked by those who have never at all received its teachings. But when those who appear to be reconciled to Christ by His grace nonetheless sharpen the teeth and tongues of those same controversies against it, the souls of all good people wither at hearing them. Even if Jewish indolence grumbles about God’s conception within the Virgin, the thing is nothing new to that people; indeed it counts it a shameful reproach to itself, since a God who had come as Saviour was handed over by its own forebears. But a Christian — a man who does not refuse to be known as one; who, however wretched and lukewarm, nevertheless sometimes enters churches and sometimes honours altars and holy things; who shares in the Eucharist of the faithful and in confession of sins; who adores the signs of the Lord’s passion and at times even seeks to distribute alms — why, I ask, does such a person incline his ear to Jewish speeches? Why does he take up and reinforce their contentions against us?
He sustains with his influence — which, God being judge, will soon wither — the whisperings of those who dare not grunt on their own; what they barely murmur in their throats, he proclaims, and — O wonder! — when accused of superstition in his words, he takes it ill, can scarcely bear it, and shouts that he is a Christian. And what madness is it that a man who refuses to be regarded or called a Jew or a pagan should protect their ceremonies and defend their institutions, exercise hatred against Christian laws, and indeed vilify the very thing he adores? When I was once conversing with a certain very sharp-tongued Jewess on this subject, she said: “It is the height of madness for a person to adore images which he calls images of the Saviour, and then, as soon as he has withdrawn, to mock the very thing he just adored.”
I would not improperly call such a man, with a new word, a “Neuter” — one who follows neither side — who neither pursues the laws he praises, nor praises those of the Christian effort he appears to pursue. This most wicked man draws out of Hebrew gossip impious words, words that are most grievous not only to utter but even to hear concerning our pure faith. Surely we had believed until now — because we had read it — that that unique Virgin, without example the God-bearer, had destroyed all heretical perversities throughout the whole world. For the Son born of her crushed the heads of His enemies (Ps. 67:22); these are the heads of the dragon given as food to the peoples of Ethiopia (Ps. 73:14). And from where would weakness approach this most mighty Lady? She will indeed crush the crown of hair on those who walk in their sins (Ps. 67:22). Whoever disputes against the birth from the Virgin blasphemes against the Holy Spirit. Now, no sane person doubts that the same blessed Virgin was made fruitful by the Holy Spirit; this blasphemy is therefore irremissible.
We had heard the beatitude of the pure in heart: they shall see God (Matt. 5:8). John, who is second to none of those born of women, professes himself unworthy to loosen the strap of Jesus’s sandal (Lk. 3:16). These people cook lamb’s flesh in water, and the sandal strap is most foully torn apart by those who do not estimate the birth of the Saviour as differing from others or as having mysteries. The intellectual purity of all the saints of every age — those who foresaw what was to come before grace, and those who treated of what had occurred under grace — faded with respect to the contemplation of this sacrament. Though each devout contemplator had had a momentary spark of attention towards it, yet he lacked prayer for what could not be comprehended. And rightly did men’s discernment fall silent on a subject for which there was no example in all their nature. No spiritual subtlety availed to grasp it: His generation, says the prophet, who shall declare? (Is. 53:8) Or will a man even say: A man was born in her, and the Most High Himself established her? (Ps. 86:5)
If, therefore, neither the pure in heart, nor John the Baptist, the intimate knower of the womb, nor prophet, nor apostle, presumed anything about so great a matter, what wisdom will an intellect steeped in enormous impurities possess — one in which base transactions have left nothing intact? If Paul did not dare, even when rapt to the third heaven, to say anything of the sort, is it fitting that the most foul of all men should dispute about it now? If he were to praise it out of affection, his praise would fail in himself; for in the mouth of a sinner praise is not seemly (Sir. 15:9) — still less should the most filthy of all reproach the beginnings of our salvation and defame a birth worthier than heaven and earth. I would speak of his lineage and character, were it not that a fuller opportunity to do so would arise later. But we know for certain that it was through the unceasing impulses of great crimes and lusts that he came to this supreme blasphemy. Let us now set out some of his curses, and since they were drawn from the most putrid fountain of the Jews, let us answer them in such a way that the whisperers of this foul teaching are silenced along with their original promulgator. But as for Mary — if her supplicants have good outcomes, hers will be the glory.
Chapter II: The Jew‘s Objection
“No one,” they say, “but a fool believes that God was willing to debase Himself to the vileness of a woman’s womb and to endure the delays of ordinary growth. What is especially horrifying is that He who was called God should be poured out through a woman’s birth canal. Born in the same way, possessing members no different from humanity’s, He was also subject to the use of genitals and to the necessity of eating and drinking, and was therefore also subjected to the miseries that follow from these. It is therefore utterly ridiculous that such a one should be regarded as God, when He is seen to differ in no way from the common miseries. Furthermore, if it be said that He was born of a virgin, that is completely false, because a man so weighed down by such infirmity could not be born contrary to the laws of nature. Finally, the greatest support for this view is that He died alongside criminals and with a criminal’s death. And how could He possibly have resurrected Himself, who had not the power to avoid the facts of so shameful an end?”
So much from them. We, however, reply:
The Answer to the Objection
God, incomprehensible, containing and filling all things, cannot be defiled by bodily things. — O God, to whom none is like, be not silent, be not still (Ps. 82:2), but fill the face of him who diminishes Your name with shame (Ps. 82:17). For I have no concern with judging those who are outside (1 Cor. 5:12). Let us ask, however, of both parties — whether they believe in a God uncircumscribed and governing all things, or not. If they say He is bounded by some body, however large — and as if they were fashioning a majestic aged man after the book of Daniel as they are wont to do, because they find eyes and ears, hands, womb, and feet of God throughout the Scriptures (Dan. 10:6) — then we too will call Him some sort of bird, since He is read to have wings and to fly: Protect me under the shadow of Your wings (Ps. 16:8), and The sons of men shall hope under the shelter of Your wings (Ps. 35:8), and He mounted upon the Cherubim and flew (Ps. 17:11). But if any of them is ashamed of this argument and concedes that God is incomprehensible as He truly is, let him answer me: can He who is wholly everywhere and universally fills what He has created be defiled by the bodily or even spiritual impurities that are in the world? He wholly contains and fills all things everywhere, as we said. But if he replies — as is true — that that impenetrable nature cannot be besmirched by the diversity of another nature, we consequently infer that God neither could, nor should, nor did suffer heaviness from His own or His mother’s humanity.
A Question
God created good creatures. — Then let the following question follow: did God make what He created good or evil? There is no doubt at all that He made it good, and indeed very good (Gen. 1:31). For although after the creation of man Moses was silent about the customary words “God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1:10) — and this happened not without mystery — it would nevertheless be full of absurdity if the humble creatures made for the support of man were called very good, while the man who was made in the image of God should fall short in goodness. On the contrary, man excels mightily; for what order would the Creator have established if He had preferred brutes to rational beings? If therefore human nature, which certainly exists, was created good by God, why do you scorn its pious author, who came as the conditionally good Creator of that creature?
On original sin. Circumcision and sacrifices were given to the Jews provisionally. — If you bring up original sin — about which there is, however, silence among the Jews — we shall say that whoever needed this remedy were cleansed by their own faith, or that of their parents, rather than by circumcision or ceremonies. For example: in ancient times among the Jews, newly born infants who were faithful, and even those who were not yet brought to the Temple with offerings — where did they perish? Certainly faith was not through sacrifices, but sacrifices availed through faith; and there was no room for circumcision there. For God had regard for Abel and for his offerings (Gen. 4:4). Therefore those who were being saved even in uncircumcision, or foreskin, at that time deserved it through their own faith and their parents’. Not without cause, therefore, is it said in the Acts of the Apostles: Purifying their hearts by faith (Acts 15:9); although this argument, being unacceptable to our opponents who are utterly unable to receive it, may not at all befit them. Even in baptism, sacraments are void without faith. The Virgin, therefore, who was to give birth, procured for herself by faith the purity in which she was to receive God. But let us now return to the course we had taken up.
Chapter III: Another Question
On account of what frailty do you say God Almighty is weak? Certainly He was not weak, if His piety was moved to redeem the man He had created well. To sin is weakness; to overcome by piety is strength. In that infirmity which you describe He showed forth strength, for He did what was incumbent upon Him. He is, in a special sense, a debtor of mercies. Why did He not owe you what He did — He who, though you were continually rebellious with your murmurings and obstinate resistance, carried you about like a young eagle in the wilderness, kept you in the land of promise despite manifold transgressions of idolatry, and showed you mercy not only through the law and your prophets — not only merciful (which is a natural attribute) or showing mercy (which is an action) — but is called essential mercy itself? Had He acted otherwise, He would surely have acted against Himself.
On the objection that the humility of the female womb is not fitting for the Divinity. — Why, you ask? Because especially in the female sex frailties abound such that nature is frequently rendered filthy. And since she depreciates herself on account of the frequent miseries with which she is beset, it is faint-hearted to believe that the Divinity would ever be implicated in such things.
The Answer to the Question
Why God assumed human nature rather than angelic. — Well observed. God, then, ought to have prepared angelic wombs for Himself in order to avoid the stenches of flesh. You may perhaps judge these more suitable for His conception. Not at all. Have you not read that the heavens are not clean in His sight (Job 15:15), and In His angels He found depravity? (Job 4:18) If we are speaking of dignity, nothing in creation is worthy of the Creator. And since the purity of the Creator is such that even the righteousness of all created beings gives Him cause for displeasure, He joined to Himself by a most fitting rationale that rational nature which appeared weaker — where, beyond any hope of merit, grace of condescension alone appeared. For had He taken hold of angels, a certain parity might have seemed to result from the proximate assumption, since they are incorporeal. This is also why in your books the divine is compared to most unworthy things, so that whatever is reckoned more honourable among men may be put down in comparison with God, and what is precious to men may be judged as nothing to be conferred on God. Hence: I will creak beneath you as a wagon loaded with hay (Amos 2:13), and The Lord was aroused as one sleeping, like a mighty man flushed with wine (Ps. 77:65).
Frailty is taken in two senses. — Why do you complain of frailty? It is customarily taken in two senses: both the necessity of food, drink, and sleep, and the liability to sin are called frailty. Now, in paradise, where the frailty of sin and death were still suspended, our first parents were frail by reason of the necessity of eating, drinking, and sleeping. Would their frailty have produced sin in them if they had not transgressed the commandment? From your own book: Of every tree of paradise you shall eat (Gen. 2:16), and The Lord brought a deep sleep upon Adam (Gen. 2:21) — these things were said to him, these happened in him while he was free from sin. What does God find offensive in a human being? Not his nature, which He Himself formed, but the evil that man added. Were He to find it offensive, He would most justly expose His own handiwork to reproach. For if He set aside what He Himself had ordained by debasing and despising it, He would make Himself a transgressor.
But far be such perversity from us. It is well known in your books that God quite frequently calls men sons and gods. Do not attend to the corruption of flesh and the stench of the womb. Do not think that anything except sins stinks to God. God does not have nostrils like yours. You have read that after the flood Noah built an altar and offered a holocaust of birds, and that God smelled a sweet savour (Gen. 8:21). And what pleasure is there in such a vapour? Perhaps you imagine God to be a glutton, to take delight in steaming dishes and happily consume the fragrance of roasted meat? Certainly even sober men find the smoke of kitchens offensive in the very thing prepared for use — still more should the stench of burnt birds displease God. Do you think that what is putrid to men smells sweet to God? Put away your swinish mind and reject carnal sense. Compare spiritual things with spiritual: God is spirit, and He inhales only the odour of virtue; only the vices of conduct are foul to Him. Where, then, God had gathered all good things in a pure soul, He was under no obligation to find offensive the frailty of a little body in the Virgin.
Chapter IV: A Question
No human being can render adequate thanks for the Incarnation of the Son of God. — Which of you can accuse that woman of sin? But since there is nothing on which to base an accusation, the sole indignity is that of nature and sex. If God had descended to men in His own person, or had supplied Himself with some divine person by whom He might somehow be born — while diminishing nothing of His majesty in regard to Himself — He would have deserved only moderate thanks from men. But because He committed Himself entirely for their salvation, to humility and grace, there is nothing man can offer that is adequate in return. There was nothing by which He could have better instructed man.
The Answer to the Question
God appeared in human form. From this he concludes it was not absurd for God to take on a human body. — Did not God in your ancient law appear to Abraham in human form in the valley of Mamre (Gen. 18:1)? And would He who was willing for one man’s sake to dress Himself in our image for a time, not have been obliged at some point to do so truly for the salvation of His own image? So much should the benefit to all have excelled the benefit to one. Is it not the case that unleavened bread, butter, and the flesh of a calf were brought to that God of yours, and He is read to have eaten, and to have stood before Abraham as he reclined at table (Gen. 18:6–8)? And do not say it was an angel: read that God, having spoken to Abraham, departed (Gen. 18:33), and that two angels specifically had gone to Sodom (Gen. 19:1). Consider therefore that God, not yet in bodily form, indulged in bodily food and drink. And if you believe He was God, I do not consider what He did to be in any way less — as regards humility — than what was afterwards seen: His taking on of humanity. For it is believed, in your view, that that God assumed a temporary body from the air. If you believe, then, that an incorporeal God ate bodily food for a time, why do you disbelieve that He was willing to take on a body for so great a business as the salvation of humanity? Did He owe more to that individual, though of the most outstanding faith, for the announcement of a son, than to the salvation of all the ages? Moreover, in his seed all the nations were to be blessed (Gen. 22:18) — which you do not understand, because you do not believe.
Chapter V
Why do you indignantly object to His being poured forth through the childbirth of a woman? I am compelled to say unusual things, and with the greatest shame — but to use the words of Blessed Gregory: “I myself condemn this scruple in me.” For he who does not bitterly resent such great injuries to the pious Redeemer, who does not refute with the sharpest indignation these unheard-of reproaches against the most pure Mother, who hears these things with equanimity — it is clear that he is said to be impious, if he wishes to be pious.
Why should I not be inflamed with vehement zeal when I see those who abandon most beautiful and honourable marriages and pursue old women already living under husbands and now most wrinkled, in whose abuse even the rivalry of their own brothers is not spared; those who respect no virgins consecrated to God; who are driven by no love of faith but by perjury and treason; whose fathers and those from whom such men descended busied themselves with the destruction of holy mother Church and loved the murder of holy orders — these men, I say, for the increase of their reprobate mind, dispute about the divine birth, and taking up the patronage of the Jews, since the Jews‘ tongue has gone out over the earth, they now set their mouths against heaven (Ps. 72:9), and measure divine mysteries by their customary filths; and when they have begun to be nauseated by the stenches of their practiced lust, when their own wickedness has overcome them, they spew the fullness of their sins against the purities of Christian — nay, celestial — things.
Nor is it surprising that they disparage God whom they do not see, when men of that kind are implacable enemies to one another. Yet there is One who sometimes says: You have thought that I would be such as yourself; I will reprove you and set it before your face (Ps. 49:21). I ask, therefore, those who, while attending to most foul practices, do not acknowledge virgins and the glory of impassible purity: why did Adam and Eve, after the transgression of the commandment, cover their privates with leaves? Before, they were naked and not ashamed. Whence the shame? It was just that so long as they obeyed God, their bodies should obey reason, and that concupiscence, which is sin, should not run ahead of rational impulse. But after the reason had conceded sovereignty to concupiscence — for he had listened to his wife (Gen. 3:17) — immediately the impulse of shame followed, that nature might testify to the transgressor from which state she had fallen and into which misery she had passed. Sin therefore is concupiscence. I wonder, but dare not define it, whether — if they had persevered and without concupiscence, as in all other things, had still kept their virginity intact — virginity would have remained unharmed. Virginity is a good; therefore the loss of virginity is an evil. Good Jesus! Although through You we have deserved greater things, what tranquillity of purity did we lose in our first parent!
Pleasures breed contempt for virginity. — Let the enemies of divine chastity vomit their stinking words from their foul lips. I will say, and I will certainly affirm, that those members which would have served that birth were purer then, than are the most filthy mouths which steep themselves in tricks against Christians and in lusts, and deride the life-giving sacraments. What, I ask, is objectionable in those members except the performance of base pleasure? Remove the suspicion of lust, and there will be nothing to horrify you, but something to venerate. You who love base deeds, you are justly condemned — you who detest those very members by which you are made base. Almighty God! What can be more pleasing, what sweeter to a good nature, than true virginity and a chaste mind? We had heard from Hosea that wine and drunkenness take away the heart (Hos. 4:11), and Joel speaks of yours — drunkenness leading to fornication: They have put a boy into a prostitute (Joel 4:3)…
Let us pass over these filths, however, and hasten to what is more fitting. It was fitting that one who was most far removed from all iniquity in this way, and indeed in whom nature was purified most by its mother, should take up its lodging. It is enough, I believe, to argue that God could not in any way be touched by human filths. Yet receive still more. The sun, I think, you believe to be cleanest in nature. Every day you see its rays proceeding through public heaps of dung, illuminating all sorts of putrid things unworthy of sight; do you think it contracts any stain from those through which it passes? That would be madness. Moreover: if you pour oil or balsam into water, neither is confounded by the water, but each nature subsists solid in itself. Take again this: my mind, recalling and pondering through frequent imagination things it has seen anywhere — when it remembers a leper swollen with bleeding ulcers, or swarms of worms teeming from a mangled corpse, or dung lying about everywhere — what stain, I ask, does the mind rolling through these things contract in itself, beyond what it would contract if it were running through the most beautiful faces of women and men in a simple turn, or revisiting splendid metalwork? Enclose gold in black rubble: though the rotten earth be filthy, gold’s nature will not decay. Learn, wretch, how to measure spiritual things by material ones, and, since you have examples in earthly things, consider what the Divinity is able to do in eternal ones.
Book Two: Whether God Assumed All of Man, or Not?
Chapter I
Members, when sin is absent, are holy. — Now, when the Son of God came in the flesh, if He had members proper to a body, the composition of members caused no harm. And it is without reason that one should be ashamed of what He was not ashamed of. And why should He be ashamed of anything where nothing was not holy? If whatever exists is good except where sin is, then members that are good in themselves are holy when there is no sin. Our members are servants to our weakness, and since ears, mouth, and nostrils serve to discharge the head’s superfluities, what evil do the others do, which discharge the weight of the lower intestines?
God assumed all of man. — Ask, most filthy and wicked one, about our Lord: whether He spat, whether He blew His nose, whether He wiped the secretions of His eyes and ears with His fingers — and understand that with whatever decency He did the higher things, He also performed the rest. Or tell me: that God of yours who appeared to Abraham — into what stomach did He deposit what He ate? How was it done, or, if it was done, what followed? I shudder while disputing about these things; but you, sons of the devil, compel me. Let God, who knows, exact of you the spirit in which I do this. Briefly: understand that God humbly assumed all of man, and feared nothing of man except sins. If you wish to perceive it by reason, the arguments given above may, I think, suffice for you — if what was sufficient for your fathers is sufficient for you; if you, I say, do not believe, you will not understand.
Chapter II
Arguments how a Virgin gave birth. — But now to treat the remaining chapter — on the blessed Mary’s virginity — the chapter which says that a virgin could not have given birth contrary to nature, I shall justly be judged insane for seeming to reason thus with the insane. Nevertheless my reason is this: that even if I am laughed at by madmen, I may be found to have some understanding of faith at least among those who know less than I do and are glad to learn. She herself, who is truly God’s Mother, can furnish us with power against her enemies.
Why dispute about nature? Was it according to nature that Adam was suddenly formed from clay and emerged? Was it natural — in the sense of the natural use by which man proceeds from man — that man should then have his origin from earth? You will believe in a creation you did not see and for which no example among men is provided to you. You will certainly believe not so much in God as in your own Moses. That a rib was built up into a woman you do not deny. And that was not from nature either. Come then — are you able to believe that anything is born except from fitting seed implanted? We find it established that cats conceive from catnip, and goats from vervain, and vultures conceive and give birth without intercourse. Could the Son of God not be conceived by the Holy Spirit for no other reason than that your envy was unwilling? Bees create young from the seed of their work, while smaller flies assail one another with frequent copulations. Was God the Father, then, and was the Son Himself, incapable of procuring a conception for Himself — He who had provided even to so many tiny creatures the growth of propagation without His own seed?
God prepared seed in the Virgin’s womb. The Jews of that time differ from those contemporaneous with Christ. — But you say: God indeed could have done this for Himself and for anyone, but He for whose mother was to be made fruitful without male seed through the Spirit, as you assert, was neither God nor the Son of God; therefore neither did God act for Him, nor could He act for Himself. You lie. Tell me: after Isaiah said that the people who walked in darkness saw a great light, and on those dwelling in the region of the shadow of death a light has dawned (Is. 9:2) — who is the little child born to us, the son given to us (Is. 9:6) of whom he speaks shortly after? I know you will say, as you have said when I have wrestled with some of you on this word: the Son, the one called born, is a man. And when I pressed the point — saying that in your view this is about the Messiah — you replied: the Messiah, in our view, will be a pure man. Will He be God and man? Perish the thought, you said — let divinity not be ascribed to one who is merely human. He will be a prudent man, destined to reign for a time, afterwards to have an end of both His reign and His body. Behold what folly — nay, what stupidity — there is in the Jews of today, by comparison with those who were contemporaries of the Lord Jesus. They said: We have heard from the law that Christ abides for ever (Jn. 12:34); the moderns assign Him limits of death.
Attend, wretched ones, how absurd your view is. Continue with what follows: The government is upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Father of the world to come, Prince of Peace (Is. 9:6). He who above was asserted to be both born and a son, and given to us, is now called both God and Father of the world to come. And lest that very divinity be thought merely perfunctory — as in: Bring him before the gods (Ex. 22:8), or I have made you a god to Pharaoh (Ex. 7:1) — the eternity of His power is added: He is called Father, not Lord, of the world to come (Is. 9:6). There plainly is the Wisdom who reaches from end to end mightily and disposes all things sweetly (Wis. 8:1). Moreover, after the multiplication of government, after the perpetuity of peace, after the throne of David in judgment, and its perpetual confirmation, it is added: Henceforth and forever (Is. 9:7). Would such a one be able to find no small lodging for Himself, He who rules the world to come?
I am forced, to confound your obstinacy, to resort to examples from the most lowly creatures. Naturalists and historians hand down that in a certain province mares conceive from the wind. Is it then that nature has prevailed over the Holy Spirit, that the advantages of localities and the privileges of breezes transcend His power?
Chapter III
Further on the same point.
The virginal conception is demonstrated from the Old Testament. — Are you still disbelieving the Virgin? Recognise the text of Isaiah that you well know: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call His name Emmanuel (Is. 7:14). But you say that almah, a Hebrew word, signifies among you not a virgin but a young woman, and a young woman may clearly be non-virgin. But Jerome (Commentary on Isaiah, bk. 3, ch. 7, towards the middle) — whom you are accustomed to cite as a learned and trustworthy interpreter, and one of your own community in a certain dispute with me declared he would never wish to depart from his interpretations — not only asserts that this Hebrew word does not merely mean “young woman,” as you say “betulah” does, but says it properly expresses a virgin, one who always remains hidden from men’s intercourse. But you, mindful of your obstinacy, hold on to the ambiguous sense of “young woman.” For if you were to concede, this single word would appear to go a great way towards overcoming you.
Let us suppose, then, that the word here means “young woman.” Tell me what it means that the preceding text says Behold, the Lord Himself will give you a sign (Is. 7:14), immediately followed — with no prior identification of the young woman — by Behold, a virgin shall conceive. If the one conceiving were not a virgin, how would her conceiving be a sign? But one of them, older than flint, objected that the same young woman was the wife of the prophet, and that she is mentioned in the subsequent verses. I adduced as witnesses the faithful Uriah the priest and Zechariah son of Barachiah, and I said I had approached the prophetess, and she had conceived and borne a son (Is. 8:2–3). I found in our volumes under grace, namely Anna daughter of Phanuel (Lk. 2:36) and the four virgin daughters of Philip who prophesied (Acts 21:9), that women may have prophets as husbands yet be called prophetesses because they prophesied through them. For Huldah is called in the book of Kings under king Josiah, not prophetess but prophetess — I do not know that I have read this word in the old books. It is clear that Huldah’s husband is not called a prophet (2 Kgs. 22:14).
Let us, however, suppose as they would have it that she was also the prophet’s wife. Since I know for certain that, just as among you neither an abbess nor a deaconess, though wife of an abbot or deacon, loses the name of countess if she were governing a county, so a prophetess is so called purely by her function — let us leave this digression and return to where it was inconvenient for them. What does it mean, then, that he approached his own wife — as they say — under two faithful witnesses? In Hebrew usage approach is regularly used for intercourse, as in Ezekiel: Do not approach a menstruating woman (Ezek. 18:6). If you then say that Zechariah and Isaiah had intercourse with their wives, i.e. the prophetesses, under the eyes of faithful witnesses, and that the woman conceived, and immediately at that very moment gave birth — with the spittle of whose mouths are you not to be covered, with whose dung are you not to be stoned, for heaping on that most holy man so disgraceful a dishonour, and for piling up so great a lie on the other hand?
If, therefore, that reading cannot stand, let us concede, even in your terms, that a young woman should conceive: why is there no mention of whose seed she was to receive from whom she was to conceive? But if that were added, the sign that was promised would no longer be a sign. Therefore either a father must be named, or, if a virgin or young woman conceives and gives birth, it is a sign. But if it is a sign, it is contrary to the common use of nature. Therefore, since what was conceived and born is called Emmanuel, that is, God with us — which God provides as a general sign to the house of David, that is, to the Church — understand, or be convicted, you wicked men: whether you will or not, He who is the author and disposer of nature prepared for Himself what He willed in nature, indeed beyond nature. And He who disposed it, He who was born in her, He who founded her, could not have chosen anything other than what was most pure. It is therefore established that not merely a young woman, not merely a virgin, but a most chaste virgin beyond the ordinary purity of human beings. And He whom she bore stood as a sign for the peoples (Is. 11:10), because no one deserved salvation who did not look to Him.
Tell me, you who affect the mastership of your law: what consonance of reason is there in that child’s eating butter and honey, so that He may know to refuse evil and choose good (Is. 7:15)? Does one eat butter so that hatred of all evil may follow, and the eating of honey pass into the soul in such a way as to imbue it with the choice of good? I confess that up to now I have hated butter, and paid little attention to honey; but from now on I shall snatch both with a greedy throat, since you have taught that it has such power.
I know you will crow in your fashion at this point. Hear, even if turned away, what is true. Butter is made from flesh, honey is made from celestial dew. By butter, therefore, is meant the humanity of the Saviour, by whose mildness the harshness of our sins is tempered. By honey the Divinity is signified, by whose wisdom the intelligence of our reason is sweetened. That blessed child ate these things, because in Himself alone He joined the two substances of God and man. Through human nature, therefore, by which He provided examples of virtue, He knew — that is, made us know — the ugliness of crimes; and through the draft of divinity He intimated the sweetness of interior charity.
Chapter IV
He continues and pursues the prophecy of Isaiah. — The same prophet continues after many things: There shall come forth a rod from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall ascend from his root (Is. 11:1). Why a rod? Because upright, singular, and unique in purity, extended in total subtlety. Tell me, you who refuse to receive any allegories in the five books of Moses but do not deny that the prophetic books are full of mysteries — tell me, what is the rod? What does it mean to come forth? What is the flower ascending not from the branch but from the root? There is no doubt you think this spoken of our Messiah. I ask, therefore, that you give a distributed account of what I have proposed. If you call the Messiah the rod, who will be the flower? Attend, whether what I shall say is at least plausible.
If rods had been spoken of in the plural, from which a flower might arise, they might rightly be taken to signify conjugal persons. But since it is a rod, it seems to connote singularity. If you understand a father without his consort, we know that according to nature a male alone does nothing. If a mother without a father, nothing in your view — but something in mine, and indeed the prophetic view. She came forth because she was set forth pre-eminent and without example in all the human race. Had the prophet said There shall come forth a rod from whose branch a flower shall ascend, one might suppose it referred to a husband and his rib. But it ascends not from the branch, not from an equal, but from the root of the rod — formed solely from the blood of the Virgin Mother by the Holy Spirit. But why a flower? On account of the fragrance of all the virtues, and because He is fair above the sons of men (Ps. 44:3), and because from a flower fruit springs up. For He is the tree planted by the streams of waters, that gives its fruit in its season (Ps. 1:3).
The fullness of all Divinity dwells in Christ, but in other men only according to the measure of virtue. — Upon this flower, he says, the Spirit of the Lord shall rest (Is. 11:2), etc. Since it is agreed between you and us that these things are said of Christ, yet you believe that Christ will live for a certain time and cease for a certain time, and that He will be born as others are of man and woman, I cannot suppose that any pure man could possess such richness and continuity of graces, especially since it is asserted that the Spirit will not merely come but rest upon Him. For although the spirit of Elijah is written to have rested upon Elisha, and Elisha is read to have deserved a double portion, it is one thing for a man’s spirit to have passed to a man, another to have had the fullness of the entire divine gift. Of servants it is said: He gave them his goods, to each according to his proper ability (Matt. 25:15). But of Christ God gives not the Spirit by measure (Jn. 3:34). But since you do not accept the testimonies of our Scriptures, attend to what follows, for it seems more than human:
He shall not judge according to the sight of His eyes, nor reprove according to the hearing of His ears (Is. 11:3). When does a man judge justly, unless of those things which sight and hearing confirm? And why in your law are two or three witnesses, under whose testimony every word stands, commanded (Deut. 17:6), except about things heard and seen? The sense is therefore: men judge of things comprehended by the senses, less mindful of internal things; He judges the humble, that is, discerns justly the merits of individuals, distributing to each their own, and reproves in equity for the meek of the earth, chastising those He loves so that He may teach goodness and discipline and make earth and not dust which the wind carries off, giving drink in tears and by measure.
And He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked (Is. 11:4). How does Christ, whom both we and you understand here, strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, if He is a pure man? The rod of His mouth making the earth fall is either to call famine upon the earth, or to punish the sins of men by whatever other corrections. To strike the earth with the rod of His mouth is to terrify the souls of the delinquent with the power of His word. He slays the wicked with the breath of His lips when, through the understanding of prophetic speech, He destroys from the state of sin such a one as this. And as it says in Job: Thou art not unjust: so who is? The lips of Christ are the prophets. Their spirit is the interior sense; for you follow the body, that is, the letter. Moreover, with the breath of His lips He slays the wicked — namely him whom you await in place of the Messiah, the Antichrist; for by the illumination of His advent He will destroy him (2 Thess. 2:8). Does this seem to you the work of any mere human? And how can justice and faith be the cincture of His loins, when in material things no mingling of material things is possible? It is as if he were saying: whatever in that person of God and man is thought carnal, is entirely encompassed by spiritual virtue. But the loins and kidneys — regions known for pleasure — are rightly put for carnality. You may laugh at my interpretation; give me yours, if you please, but it will never be able to be said that all this fits a pure man; for earthly power strikes the earth by word, or makes it tremble by a look, but does not slay the wicked by spirit, nor gird its loins with faith or justice.
I would add what follows about the cohabitation of contrary substances, were I not to consider it superfluous. For whoever wishes to gather in a friendly spirit the evidence of Christ’s announcement in these and similar passages will easily be able to see those divergent things coming together peacefully — which comes down to this: All nations whatsoever You have made shall come and adore before You, O Lord (Ps. 85:9), and A people I had not known served me (Ps. 17:45).
Chapter V
Further on virginity.
As for the blessed Mary’s virginity — let it be known for certain that where Christ the Son chose His dwelling most purely and most excellently, that very womb was so much purer as it was worthier. Virginity is most worthy, even when it is besieged by temptations; but far more glorious when it is such that, with all impulses stilled and calmed, it is compared to the first state of the first human beings. You surely believe that holy men once dwelt in certain places and animated them not only for living well but even for prophesying more frequently. Likewise, because the Holy Spirit is not bound by law, He was able to imbue even those He wished, and to sharpen their prophecy. Consider Saul, whom a spirit of wickedness had formerly driven, and his servants who came to slay David: the same Spirit, overturning their former perversity, so transformed them that the faithless king sang among the prophets day and night. What then can you argue against what was done for the conception of the Virgin? What is more contrary to nature than for the Author of purity to slide into filthy hearts? Certainly in your own ancient times you had holy men, whom we read were worthy of angelic visits. Daniel was most worthy of all manner of celibacy, who, as I believe, by the vision of Gabriel — you know for how many days — showed no weakness, even in the slightest, when an angel was visibly appearing to him. Is a she-ass worthier than a prophet? Is a brute animal holier than those holy men who saw no such thing? I pass over the fact that she spoke, which is not natural; I will say this: that for every irrational creature to perceive rational and angelic things is far more contrary to nature.
Cease, obstinate ones; let your verbosity rest, for all your reason has collapsed. You who entangle your hearts with thefts and usuries — how do you see through the causes of God’s sacraments and the sacraments of causes? Does that tiny quantity of human seed weigh heavier than God’s omnipotence or will, so that unless it goes first, God can accomplish nothing — as though the Author of nature needs the aids of nature? I labour in vain against your stubbornness, because unless you believe in Him whom we believe is Christ, you will never be able to cease from this attack against us, nor will you think rightly about the Mother whose Son you loathe. Nevertheless, what will not profit you will not harm the faithful to know. Let us now pass on to other matters.
Book Three: On the Human Conversation of Christ on Earth
Chapter I
Why do you speak of the long sojourn of the Lord Jesus Christ among men, you who admit that your own God dwelt with you for forty years? For in the Psalms it is read: For forty years I was provoked by that generation (Ps. 94:10). And in the book of Kings: I have walked in a tabernacle and in a tent in the various places through which I passed with all the children of Israel (2 Sam. 7:6). Also in Deuteronomy: You shall have a place outside the camp to which you shall go when nature requires, carrying a stake on your belt; and when you sit down, you shall dig around, and covering with earth what you have voided, you shall ease yourself. For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to rescue you; therefore your camp shall be holy, and nothing foul shall appear in it (Deut. 23:12–14). You, then, who boast that God dwelt so long among you — to govern your camp, to lead you into the land — will it seem absurd to you that God, the Son of God, would endure such proximity and common lodging in order to prepare the nations for God, and to call you to more spiritual things?
But if you bring up the filth of cohabitation, because you carried stakes in your belts and covered up your excrement so that the camp might be clean for God walking through it, your little children and wives were exempt from staking, yet they no less relieved their bowels and their ordure. God, therefore, who was stirred up on all sides by sudden encounters, either did not see these things at all, or bore the uncleannesses of the males with difficulty but was not troubled at all by those of women and infants. And what about the herds and flocks that stayed there? Why did not your vigilant and attentive good ancestors, following in the tracks of the flocks, collect the pellets dropping from the backsides of the goats and sheep, and bury the spurious — so to speak — young animals, so that as God passed by He might not soil His shoes with cow dung of greater worth? And of course the incontinence of infants was known in their swaddlings, and mothers or attendants were washing out these impurities. Who could tell how often God stood, not idle, at the door while these things were being done? That plague also, which is wont to occur in the innermost recesses of bedchambers, had surely not ceased occurring while God was walking about.
Most wretched of men, who think God, who is spirit, inhales the stenches of bodies! Was it strange if the Son of God in bodily form endured what, in your stories, your incorporeal God by no means tolerated among you for forty years? God-made-man certainly bore nothing heavier than your God in turn bore from your murmuring. For He truly carried you as an eagle carries her young on her shoulders; and yet heavenly food sent down, frequent miracles, constant divine embassies, and the announcements of future good things could not keep you back from complaint. We know that it was easier for our God to bear His own flesh — nay, rather His cross — than for yours to bear your restlessness. For when He slew you, you sought Him; you loved Him with your mouth but lied with your heart. Let us now touch on some matters concerning His passion.
Chapter II
On the Passion of Christ.
Inglorious was His aspect among men, and His form among the sons of men (Is. 52:14). The aspect and form whereby He is fairer than the sons of men is still despised by the Jews, while His divine works are suppressed and the sharing of flesh and death is set forth. He shall sprinkle many nations (Is. 52:15) — with what shall He sprinkle, and with what? With that hyssop plainly that grows on the wall, with which David wishes to be sprinkled and be cleansed, with which lepers were sprinkled under the law. He shall sprinkle with blood — but His own (Lev. 14:7): many nations, he says, not all — for the Lord knows who are His. Kings shall shut their mouths before Him (Is. 52:15). For none of those, however holy, who rule themselves completely, has dared to violate the mysteries of His dispensation; those to whom He has not been announced have seen. We are the ones who see, because we believe in Him, even if we do not always have full understanding of that very faith. Yet we tenaciously pursue the faith of the Fathers and embrace it as if without a preacher.
And those who had not heard have contemplated Him, for before our mind’s eye He is inscribed by the love of faith — and though scarcely anyone proclaims Him, He is sought by piety — or this is all the meaning: Many kings and prophets wished to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it (Lk. 10:24): and yet they had both, because they believed in Him as coming. Hence the same prophet: O that You would break the heavens and come down (Is. 64:1)! He breaks the heavens who brought to effect the prophetic promises made about Himself.
There follows the voice of believers lamenting about you: Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? (Is. 53:1) — as if to say: those things we have heard, that is, understood, scarcely anyone is willing to believe, and in the weakness of a man God’s strength is by no means recognised. And He shall grow up as a tender plant before Him (Is. 53:2), because He appeared humble, but before Him (Ibid.), because He is the one in whom the Father was well pleased. He ascended also as a root out of a dry ground (Ibid.), because He allowed Himself to be slowly recognised. He was plainly the living grain that remained almost alone; dying, He brought much fruit (Jn. 12:24). Or He ascended as a root out of dry ground because He was His own origin in Mary, into whom no wave of human seed poured itself.
He had no beauty or comeliness; and we saw Him, and there was no sightliness, and we desired Him despised and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity, and His face was as it were hidden from us, and He was despised, wherefore we esteemed Him not (Is. 53:2–3). In these words, where not His person but the contemptibility of human passions in His person is so noted, the question emerges about how He who is said to be desired is a little later reported as not esteemed. He was desired, as I think, when it was said to Him: How long will You keep our soul in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly (Jn. 10:24). He was not esteemed when He was called a glutton and drinker, and demonic, or was mocked on the cross. We thought Him as it were a leper, and smitten by God, and humiliated (Is. 53:4) — and was cried out by the voice of the Jews that He was not of God, and that He was a sinner because He had not kept the Sabbath; and for His arrogance…
[The central portion of the chapter, treating the other Isaian Servant Songs, the seventy weeks of Daniel, and the prophecy of the Son of Man, is summarised here to indicate the argument while keeping within practical bounds.]
The prophecy of Daniel’s seventy weeks (Dan. 9:24–27) Guibert then expounds at length. The seventy weeks contain four hundred and ninety years. After sixty-two weeks Christ will be slain, and the people who will deny Him will not be His; and the people with a coming leader will lay waste the city and the sanctuary, and its end is desolation. This was fulfilled by the Romans under Vespasian. In the middle of the last week, when Christ offered Himself to the Father, the offering and sacrifice failed; and in the Temple was the abomination of desolation — for where God is not, neither is any good. The desolation endures to the consummation and end of the ages.
Guibert asks the Jews to name to whom these things apply if not to Christ. He then cites the vision in Daniel 7 of one like a son of man coming in the clouds to the Ancient of Days, who receives everlasting power and a kingdom that shall not be destroyed — arguing that eternal power belongs only to one who is God.
He similarly expounds the stone cut without hands from a mountain (Dan. 2:34–35), which shattered all kingdoms and became a great mountain filling the whole earth: since all human kingdoms are mortal and transitory, only a kingdom founded on the Holy of Holies endures forever.
Chapter III
Further on the same point.
Guibert continues the demonstration from Psalms — The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at My right hand (Ps. 110:1) — asking how David could be the Son of God in such a manner as to inherit the nations and the ends of the earth (Ps. 2:7–8). He argues that David in no full sense ruled the gentiles: the Philistines’ commanders told their king not to allow David to fight with them, and the “alien sons” are David’s own flesh and blood. Therefore the psalm speaks of Christ.
He cites: The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from his thighs, until He comes who is to be sent, and He shall be the expectation of the nations (Gen. 49:10). He cites Isaiah: He who shall stand as a sign for the peoples, Him the nations shall beseech (Is. 11:10). He asks what the Psalms and Isaiah trumpet but the calling of the nations and hope in the name of Christ. He cites Malachi: From the rising of the sun even to the going down, My name is great among the nations, and in every place there is sacrifice and there is offered to My name a clean oblation, for My name is great among the nations (Mal. 1:11) — and argues that when Jews are asked why they lack temple, priesthood, and altar they claim the land is impure, but this prophecy does not support them.
He then cites Balaam’s oracle: A star shall rise out of Jacob and a sceptre shall spring up from Israel, and shall smite the princes of Moab and shall ravage all the sons of Seth; and Idumaea shall be his possession, and Seir shall be a possession for his enemies (Num. 24:17–18). Mary is the star illuminated by the true Sun; Christ is the sceptre, the rod of total rectitude. The “princes of Moab” are the gentiles without law whose father is the devil (Moab meaning from the father, or from him). Seth (interpreted as stupefied) means the Jews who did not know or understand and walk in darkness. The rod devastates them because the knowledge of the law that Jewry falsely usurps, Christ truly gives to the gentile people.
Israel shall act valiantly (Num. 24:18) — Israel means directed with God: he who is directed with God acts valiantly who defends the Christian faith even among dire torments. From Jacob shall he come who shall rule, and shall destroy the remains of the city (Num. 24:19) — that is, Christ rises from the Jews, yet the Christian people especially shows the strength of Christ.
Chapter IV
On the Resurrection of Christ.
Having such arguments and examples about God’s assumption of humanity, His passion, resurrection, and ascension — and finding them so abundant that their multiplicity produces a poverty of expression in those who have them abundantly to hand — it pleased me to have brought forward only those that demonstrate God in man. For if eternal God is proved by the open endorsement of your Scriptures, what great thing did He do in restoring a suffering body to life, when even the corpse of Elisha did that? You hear David, when he was complaining of the excessive weight of distress which usually provokes wakefulness in men, saying: I slept, and was fast asleep, and I arose (Ps. 3:6). Elsewhere, asserting the piercing of hands and feet (Ps. 21:17); in Hosea, that death will be death from God to death exhibiting itself (Hos. 13:14); and again in the Psalm that God ascended with a shout, and the Lord with the sound of a trumpet (Ps. 46:6); that He ascended on high and led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men (Eph. 4:8). For it is certain, according to the Apostle, that none ascends except the one established to have descended (Eph. 4:9).
On the calling of the gentiles. — Since throughout your Scriptures such testimonies shine like sparks, it is supremely clear that the calling of the nations, celebrated throughout the prophetic books, has been undeniably fulfilled. Into all the earth has gone out the sound of the preachers, and to the ends of the world their words (Ps. 18:4). No one can object to us on account of the apostasy of certain nations — just as no one could object to Isaiah, who had called the Jews a sinful people, a wicked seed, corrupt children (Is. 1:4). He said afterwards: Hear, O Israel, my servant, and you, the most upright one whom I have chosen (Is. 41:1). If they were a wicked seed and sinful people, how was the one He had chosen most upright? But it is not in doubt that in your Scriptures and ours the whole is customarily taken for a part and a part for the whole: All flesh shall come to You (Ps. 64:2) — meaning some from all flesh shall come to You. For to Him who was to rise from death it is said: Arise, O God, judge the earth, for You shall inherit… not all the nations, but in all the nations (Ps. 81:8). And when Elijah complained that he alone was left (1 Kgs. 19:10), he heard of seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal (1 Kgs. 19:18). So even if most of the world has gone back, still Christ’s power is not diminished on that account.
Chapter V
He addresses the Jews. — Therefore, since I have assailed you somewhat with authorities and argumentation, let me now press you with a few questions. I know what you will say: “How can we change the law given to us by God from heaven, indeed graven by His own finger, promulgated with terrors, the glory of flames and the trembling of the mountain, and given to no nation in the world? Even if human laws are altered, who will abolish God’s commands?”
In answer to the Jews, he proves by the authority of Scripture that God abrogated the law. — I reply: whatever horror, whatever magnificence was outwardly displayed in giving the law, is not greatly to be valued; for these are often expended on lesser matters. Samuel, when the people desired a king, said: Is it not wheat-harvest today? I will call upon the Lord, and He will send thunder and rain (1 Sam. 12:17). Uzziah the king, when he usurped the priestly office and entered the sanctuary, experienced the quaking of the earth at great portents — even the opening of vast chasms, which Amos mentions. Nothing happened to you that could not have happened elsewhere more easily. Moses fasted for forty days, and we know Elijah did the same for a lighter reason. If Moses spoke face to face with God, Isaiah professes that he saw the Lord God of Hosts seated on a high throne, and certain other prophets likewise. Did not God appear to Balaam the soothsayer and encounter him several times? Thunder and the like arise from the troublesomeness of the air. Even in other provinces there are portents — winter in some, summer in others.
The only issue at stake, then, is that God provided those signs. If the law is therefore to be judged immutable, let us see from the very beginnings of the ages what He established, and what established things He changed for places, times, and persons. Certainly in the creation of the first human beings, when Scripture had said they were placed over land and water creatures, God added: Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your food (Gen. 1:29). But after the flood, when He had again poured out the same grant of dominion to Noah and his sons, He added: All fishes have been delivered into your hand, and everything that moves and lives shall be meat for you, except that flesh with blood you shall not eat (Gen. 9:2–3). You have God changing His mind, to lead us from herbs to the food of flesh. Finally under Moses, when He dealt with the discrimination of foods, as if forgetting what He had granted — namely that all that moves and lives is food — He forbade certain things as unclean.
Again, with the wife presented to him: A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife (Gen. 2:24). He did not say “wives” but “wife.” Yet after the flood we read that Abraham had Hagar from the side of Sarah, and indeed God sometimes arranged it. Jacob and Moses and many most upright men under the law, we know had several wives without the law’s contradiction. The words of God to Adam are accepted as certainly God’s own words; and Jesus the Lord attributes these words to God.
To the woman who had persuaded the man to disobey, God had said: You shall be under the man’s power, and he shall rule over you (Gen. 3:16). He Himself speaks to Abraham: In all that Sarah says to you, obey her voice (Gen. 21:12). See how much authority He added for the woman over a man He could have taught directly.
Cain and Seth, sons of Adam, you know whence they derived their marriages — from their own sisters. But God could have created wives for them from elsewhere; He Himself arranged it so that it had to be so. And this, along with the same thing concerning aunts and cousins, was most strictly forbidden afterwards by the Mosaic edict.
God had commanded: Make no graven image, no molten thing, no similitude, no sign in your land; and yet in the tabernacle Cherubim were sculpted at the Lord’s command. What of the bronze serpent set before the fiery serpents, at the sight of which anyone who had been struck and looked on it would be saved? Was it not a sign, a similitude? And certainly, as the book of Kings testifies, up to the times of Hezekiah the Jews burned incense to it; and certainly God, who instituted that portent, was not ignorant that their proneness to idols would make great error of it. This — against His own commands — God ordered.
The tabernacle itself, which God had set up from lowest to highest by His own mouth, Solomon replaced with new construction, to such an extent that it would have been called sacrilege — nay, idolatry — if anyone had revered those places after the Temple’s dedication. Whence it is frequently said in reproach: Yet the people still sacrificed on the high places (2 Kgs. 14:4).
Gold, silver, vessels, and vestments of the Egyptians God had commanded you to borrow from them in a loan — which, humanly lent but inhumanly retained, as it seems, you took with God’s permission. Nevertheless God afterwards promulgated: you shall not steal, you shall not defraud, you shall not covet.
Chapter VI
Although God is immutable, He appears to change His sentences in order to adapt to the changeableness of men. This is also confirmed by argument. — You have, I think, very many examples of the changes of divine sentences, from which you can gather that God — while immutable Himself — gave changeable sentences to changeable men, for their education in novel circumstances. Just as you see little children trained in infancy with some rudiments and in adolescence with others, and when fully mature, arranged by a stricter mode, and with the elderly the deepest matters discussed — so understand that God worked with the progressions of this world. For as it is fitting for a little child to be formed in the rudiments of speech by the constant talk of nurses and caregivers, and as he grows up to be restrained from the licence of infancy by a sterner pedagogy, and in early youth to be completely restrained, and in manhood, being fully educated, to be ruled by the love of virtue with the rod set aside — so God gradually accustomed the new world first to His own voices and those of angels, and as it were corrected the stammering lips of the world in the manner of His own speech. Then later, as in Noah’s and Abraham’s times, with few things, He began to discipline and mark it with signs; under Moses, as though lifting an adolescent somewhat from former baseness, He compelled it to feel something of manhood.
The perfect age began with Christ. The old law teaches to seek temporal things, Christ’s law eternal ones. — But under the grace of the Redeemer, as if to a now weighty mind capable of His full divinity, He would bare the abrupt depth of His internal counsel — as to those who serve their lords from love alone, the secrets of those lords are more easily disclosed: Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knows not what his lord does; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known to you (Jn. 15:15). Here the Holy Spirit, who is love, is supplied as teacher. Here the law is inscribed not in stone but in hearts and viscera; because, as the same prophet otherwise testifies, a fleshy heart is imbued with a new spirit, with the stony heart removed (Ezek. 36:26). So great has now become the evidence of our faith through God’s grace that no one need any longer be instructed about the knowledge of the Son of God incarnate — for the unlearned and learned alike know that He is the one who came to wash away all crimes — but let there now be teaching everywhere on correcting deeds and conduct.
Chapter VII
He demonstrates from the Old Testament the coming of Christ.
The testament formerly given to your fathers having been transferred, not destroyed, to the understanding of sounder observance — why do you, wicked Jew, raise against us the pig, the hare, and the oyster we eat? Not a trace of your Temple remains, the priesthood has fallen, virtually the same type of your nation is obliterated; dispersions wander everywhere throughout the whole earth. With the sanctuary, priesthood, kingdom, and virtually the people itself vacant — nay, destroyed — what remains of the law’s force? For almost the entire law hangs on the care of the Temple and priesthood. After God Himself, and none other, has subverted this whole sum of the law, what will you say of the minutiae of other precepts?
You hear the covenant of a new dispensation, at whose coming no one doubts that the old has been annulled. To whom do you attribute what is said: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech (Ps. 110:4)? Whose person do you think it is who speaks to God in the psalm? Sacrifice and oblation you did not will; but ears you have fashioned for me. Holocaust and for sin You did not require; then I said: Behold, I come (Ps. 39:7–8). If you refer these words to David — that God therefore fashioned ears for him, that is gave him obedience, because he neglected sacrifices — it will be equivalent to: Obedience is better than victims (1 Sam. 15:22). If to the Messiah whom you vainly await as your own, it is false — since you expect him to serve most dutifully those ceremonies. But if to Christ, He alone in a special sense learned obedience from the things He suffered (Heb. 5:8), because not by holocausts and sin-offerings had He learned to please the Father. While there have been many priests, which of them existed forever? Who indeed is eternal except God? But I think you will not find God called priest anywhere except when Christ is understood. Christ, therefore, is in this respect alone priest, who said Behold I come (Ps. 39:8), because He brought Himself as victim to the Father for sin. For — He says — since You are displeased with futile sacrifice, I am coming, Father, to offer myself to You. For I am the one of whom it is written in the head of the book, that I should do Your will (Ps. 39:9). This sense now goes beyond David’s person. What is the head of this book? Blessed is the man who has not walked, and so forth, up to whatever he does shall prosper (Ps. 1:1–3). Who is it to whom the present verse corresponds as a type — who shall not have walked, shall not have stood, shall not have sat? If a pure man could perhaps lack the third of these, no man who has ever lived has been free of either of the first two. Who has meditated on God’s law day and night — that is, ceaselessly? Does not Jedithun sing: For all is vanity, every man that lives; and in an image does he pass by, and is disquieted in vain (Ps. 38:6–7)?
Accept Christ Himself, will you or no — in whatever here transcends man. He is born not in the course of waters but beside them, because He is propagated not in nature fluid through sin, but is seen only in the likeness of sinful flesh. And rightly not a pool but a flowing water is the Virgin who generates — wherein no sediment rests — who provided the plantation of blessing its fruit, but its own fruit, and at its own time. Whoever is good bears fruit, but not his own; for without God no one can do anything. But He provided properly His own, because what He did, only God could do; and He had from Himself what He did. His time too was His own, since He who was born when He willed also died when He willed. His time was His own, when at the fullness of time He bestowed the light of knowledge on a blind world. His leaf shall not fall off (Ps. 1:3), because though heaven and earth may pass away, yet His word shall not pass away (Matt. 24:35). All His deeds shall prosper, for His right hand shall lead Him marvellously.
Chapter VIII
Behold, most foul one, you have your prophets — nay, prophets opposing your practices to such an extent that one who sacrifices and one who kills a dog are set in parallel. Why do you grunt at me your swine and make your hares squeak? Why do you repeat the speech of the ruminant and the division of hooves — you who see so abundantly evidently annulled the Temple and priesthood, in which so much of your law’s force arises and on which its entire intention turns? What power, O most wretched one, do you think the lower members will have when the head has been cut off?
Hear yet more, if you have too few witnesses on this point. God speaks in Isaiah, choosing spiritual goods with the rejection of carnal ones: To whom shall I look, save to the humble and contrite in spirit, and trembling at my word? He that kills an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrifices a sheep, as if he cut the brain of a dog; he that offers an oblation, as if he offered swine’s blood; he that remembers incense, as if he blessed an idol (Is. 66:2–3). But you say: “Certainly it cannot be denied that God forbade the eating of pork.” Plainly, I say — no less certain is it that He commanded the sacrifice of bulls and rams and other animals, and afterward declared these things void by His own mouth, as you hear from the prophets. But perhaps with sacrifice and Temple rejected, abstinence from pork’s flesh takes precedence. If you charge us — to whom nothing was commanded — with eating pork, why do you not wear blue fringes on the four corners of your cloaks? He who commanded not to eat pork, that same God commanded fringes to be carried (Num. 15:38). We eat pork for a very different reason from that by which you have removed the fringes. Transgressors, therefore, are you — who neglect commands clearly given to you. We transgress nothing, who received no commands from that source. You devote yourselves to theft, heaping up usury on the necks of the poor; you put aside love of God with all your heart and love of neighbour as yourself and other useful things, and spin yourselves around trivialities.
Repent, at last overcome by so great an accumulation of testimony and witnesses; stripped of the flesh, be capable of holy inwardness. Come with Hosea the prophet, and let us return to him whom you think you follow but flee from — the Lord — for He from the origin of the ages, by predestination and promises, began, and at the end of times will save us by the efficacy of His passion; He will strike — that is, by the powerful teachings of souls, He will lay bare wounds in us. Struck through, He will not delay to heal us with blood and with water. He will revive us after two days; on the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight; and we shall know, and we shall follow on to know the Lord. His going forth is prepared as the morning (Hos. 6:1–3). But having said enough, as we think, on these points, let us go on to others.
Chapter IX
He refutes the Jews who accuse Christians of idolatry.
You reproach us also for adoring the images of the crucified Lord Jesus, or the very wood of the cross, as though accusing us of a kind of idolatry, as if it were clearly forbidden by your law. We, on the contrary, hold that nothing except the very substance of God is to be adored; and even if we are seen to venerate certain external things, it is not what is seen that we worship, but what we gather from what is seen. Certainly Nathan the prophet is read in your books to have adored King David when seeking the crown for Solomon (1 Kgs. 1:23) — in which, to believe that he sensed anything divine would be judged impious. Joshua, seeing Israel fleeing and slaughtered, fell prostrate before the ark of the Lord (Jos. 7:6), and is said in the book of Judges to have continued in vigils. Was the ark God, or was God, or was a part of God, lurking in it? Daniel, after the king’s decree that no one was to ask anything of any of the gods, opened his windows in the upper room facing Jerusalem and three times a day knelt down, prayed, and gave thanks to his God (Dan. 6:10–11). Was Jerusalem or the Temple — for the sake of which that genuflection was turned in that direction — God, because he had decided to bow in that direction? Is it believed that everything reported as adored among you was dignified with divine worship?
For what reason Christians adore images. — By attending in visible signs to what those signs signify, we restrain the vagabond mind and, as if by a sort of reminder, by a quick glance at pictures, bring it back towards invisible things. Why was that bronze serpent set up for you — which you afterward worshipped — unless so that you would ask what this kind of portent might mean? Nor were the Cherubim placed idly in the Temple and the tabernacle. Bulls and lions too deserved to be specially sculpted there, but gave you fitting occasions for interpretations. Laugh, since you can, at us for adoring Jesus hanging on a cross, apparently weak and bloodless — everyone understands how much more ridiculous were your ancestors who adored Baal-Peor, the idol of lust, that is, Priapus. Laughable — nay, deplorable — is the fact that very many of you understand the doctrine of Christianity fully and yet do not turn from error. Know this: for us, to whom God has given the knowledge of Scripture and has granted, with imagination removed, the wing of faith and contemplation, the assistance of sculptures is not necessary; but it benefits those who are unlettered and sluggish and who, unable to attain by reading what they are to know, learn it by such aids.
Chapter X
He shows that Christians do not worship three Gods. On the Trinity in God.
There remains the final question, which we are to discuss as proposed by you. You say that we worship three gods because we pronounce Father, Son, and Holy Spirit under a threefold distinction. From the mass of testimonies cited above it has been proved that God has a Son, that He is established as born. That the Holy Spirit is spoken of everywhere in your Scriptures is plain. Therefore, just as we put forward three persons, we are plainly accused by you of worshipping three gods. Do you believe God to be uncircumscribed and incomprehensible? If perhaps you do, why do you, in imagination, pile up three thrones of persons with bodies and members? If you think God a whole, and the Son, as we believe, is in Him, the Son cannot be anything other than what the Father is; otherwise He does not exist. In a man there can be what is not the man himself; in God, nothing can be that is not God. For there are distinctions in a man of qualities and activities — in God, however, when they are said to be in God, they are received not as accidental but as substantially God.
The Son is the will of the Father; the Holy Spirit is power. — If you accept the Son, understand Him not as one generated outside but perceive what is generated within Him. Accept the Son therefore as the will of the Father — a will that came to the evidence of effects, as it were, when He committed Himself to flesh. But this will, which is directed from God toward us, necessarily has power by which it can do what it wills; and this is the Holy Spirit, who creates for Him a body in the Virgin. For the will of men is idle unless power follows. The possibility, therefore, accompanies the will of the Father. In the Scriptures just as love, so also power is called the same Spirit: The power of the Most High shall overshadow you (Lk. 1:35), and The power of God unto salvation to every believer (Rom. 1:16). The will of the Father, therefore, is committed to effect through power in this manner, and thence what is effected has been delivered to our knowledge.
To dispute about God to anyone is not fitting. But when examples of what is around us are provided, this is done so that it may be shown that three things can cohere inseparably with each other. When this is done, faith has no merit, as is written, to which human reason furnishes experiment (St. Gregory, Homily 26). This Trinity is spoken of in this age by us more by way of address than substantially — where necessarily, for the instruction of our understanding about the persons, because we can do it no other way, we conjugate their names step by step and syllable by syllable. But when we shall have drunk from the fountain of life and shall see God in God, light in light, we shall need no gradation of speech in naming them. If our mouth, tongue, and breath all move together for the use of speech, with none of them absent or superior — then it is the height of madness to deny that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist, can act, and operate indivisibly. For if we were saying there are three Gods, we would plainly commit a portion of world governance to each, and none could be supreme who had equals in act and name in any way. And while at one time we favoured this one, at another that one, according to the alternation of portions, perhaps whichever one’s kingdom seemed less convenient we would either value less, or press with open disparagement. Yet you find nothing of this in our doctrine, and we shall not treat long with you on this matter, for while we discuss these things you only create mockery in hardened minds. For those deliberating whether to believe, there will be no lack of teachers who were able to instruct.
The Lord is truly risen. — This at least hear, whether you will or not: our Redeemer, whom you falsely claim has rotted, lives; and on the last day, as you too believe, we shall rise from the earth. And in our flesh we shall see God — Jesus, that is, whom you interpret as Saviour. But can anyone who is in the flesh see God, even if he has already passed beyond corruption — a thing barely accomplished even by angelic spirits? Desire seeks efficiency. How, then, shall he see? Being in the flesh, he will be able to behold the Son of God incarnate — now, in that He has risen incorruptibly, immortal. For each, both man in himself and God, is the Son of God. Since He lacks this name, He is neither dead nor buried.
It can also be understood most lucidly that when Job pledges to behold his Saviour in his own flesh — that is, in the same human nature as is his — he signifies an individual of mortal and rational nature, and presses home what he has said: I myself shall see Him, and not another (Job 19:27). Who would in some way be another if, putting off man, He remained a spirit. He repeats this a third time: And my eyes shall see (Ibid.). Where he expressed eyes so carefully, it became evident that the body of God — that which he was going to see — is the future. But God cannot be seen from a body.
Chapter XI
Behold, we have taken up arms against God’s enemies, against both enemy and defender; with these we have done what we could, not what we ought. We have suppressed many things, because we refrained from citing ambiguous testimonies from their books. For an example that resolves one dispute by another does the job no good. If to the perfidious and scornful what I have done seems worthless, I may perhaps not undeservedly please the faithful, who dare not or do not know how to ventilate such things, because even if not very usefully, I have at least faithfully done what was enjoined on me. If anything of infamy or of praise is earned for this, it rightly belongs to You, Father, who commanded it. For if what has been done is good, it is the fruit of Your faith and prayers; if badly done, on both counts the venture was rash. Let no one reprove me for reproving the most wicked errors, feeble and dull as I am. Let him remember the she-ass reproving the senselessness of the prophet. For I am better — though a bad man — than a good she-ass.
But after this debate — such as it is — there seems to be a story of a certain Jew that I ought not to pass over in silence, one that may be reckoned more powerful than all conflicts of words. He testified that while he was still a boy he was in Laon, and in a certain house was listening to a certain cleric disputing with some Jew. Since the cleric could not withstand the wind-bagging of that faithless man, he said: “In the name of Jesus the Lord, I will take hold of a burning brand at the burning end with my bare hand and carry it outside the door of the house.” (A fire was nearby.) Nor did the Jew object — waiting to see whether he would be burned in the faith of his Jesus. But the cleric, burning with marvellous boldness, seized the glowing brand in his right hand and carried it, however long he pleased, to wherever he wanted, and throwing it down showed his hand unharmed by the fire. The wicked man marvelled, but was not struck by the miracle to faith. The same thing, by him who reported it to me, was compared to nothing less than conjuror’s tricks.
Say, most wretched ones: is it not the name of divinity to which the elements yield obedience? But you say that while on earth He never called Himself God. For when someone inquiring whether He was God pressed Him, He replied: You say it (Matt. 26:64). It is as you say, as if He were saying: “You say it, but I do not say it.” O fools! Attend to what follows: Hereafter you shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven (Matt. 26:64). And even to the traitor, pointing to the same thing, He said: for to one asking, Surely not I? He replied You say it (Matt. 26:25). You understand what is implied. I pass over the others who attend to what was bodily done. Read John, in whom He speaks of almost nothing else than His consubstantiality with the Father: You believe in God; believe also in me. I am in the Father and the Father is in me. He that believes in me sees the Father also (Jn. 14:1, 10), and thousands like this.
THE END.
Translator’s Notes
(n.1) Guibert refers to events described at length in his autobiography De Vita Sua, bk. 1. The licentious and Judaising lord referred to in Book One is identified in De Vita Sua bk. 3, cap. 15 as John, Count of Soissons.
(n.2) The word “Neutericum” (Neuter-one) is Guibert’s own neologism for those who adhere to neither Christian nor Jewish practice fully, yet draw on both.
(n.3) Catnip (nepetha = calamint) and vervain (verbena): ancient natural history traditions held that certain plants had generative properties for animals without male involvement.
(n.4) “Goats from vervain” — the printed text reads capellas with a note seu vanellos aves (“or lapwing birds”), suggesting the original had a quadruped. The sense follows from the parallel with cats.
(n.5) Guibert’s exegesis of butter and honey (Is. 7:15) as signifying Christ’s humanity and divinity respectively is traditional patristic allegory; he is being ironic in pretending he had not known this until his Jewish interlocutors explained it.
(n.6) The story of the miracle of the burning brand at Laon appears to draw on the same atmosphere of Jewish-Christian polemic in early twelfth-century Laon that features in several of Guibert’s other writings.
Source. Patrologia Latina – Translated by Claude.AI from Patrologia Latina 156, cols. 489–528 (Migne, Paris 1880), being Guibert of Nogent, Tractatus de Incarnatione contra Iudaeos, Libri I–III, with the dedicatory letter to Bishop Bernard of Soissons.