Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue: The Theological Foundation of Ambrose's Ethics (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) [1 ed.] 9780195369939, 0195369939

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Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue

OXFORD STUDIES IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY Series Editor David C. Steinmetz, Duke University Editorial Board Irena Backus, Université de Genève Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia THE UNACCOMMODATED CALVIN Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition Richard A. Muller THE CONFESSIONALIZATION OF HUMANISM IN REFORMATION GERMANY Erika Rummell THE PLEASURE OF DISCERNMENT Marguerite de Navarre as Theologian Carol Thysell REFORMATION READINGS OF THE APOCALYPSE Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg Irena Backus WRITING THE WRONGS Women of the Old Testament among Biblical Commentators from Philo through the Reformation John L. Thompson THE HUNGRY ARE DYING Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia Susan R. Holman RESCUE FOR THE DEAD The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity Jeffrey A. Trumbower AFTER CALVIN Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition Richard A. Muller

THE PASSIONS OF CHRIST IN HIGH-MEDIEVAL THOUGHT An Essay on Christological Development Kevin Madigan GOD’S IRISHMEN Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland Crawford Gribben REFORMING SAINTS Saint’s Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470–1530 David J. Collins GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS ON THE TRINITY AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD In Your Light We Shall See Light Christopher A. Beeley THE JUDAIZING CALVIN Sixteenth-Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms G. Sujin Pak REVIVING THE DEAD LETTER Johann David Michaelis and the Quest for Hebrew Antiquity Michael C. Legaspi ARE YOU ALONE WISE? Debates about Certainty in the Early Modern Church Susan E. Schreiner

THE POVERTY OF RICHES St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered Kenneth Baxter Wolf

EMPIRE OF SOULS Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) and the Christian Commonwealth Stefania Tutino

REFORMING MARY Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Sermons of the Sixteenth Century Beth Kreitzer

MARTIN BUCER’S DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION Reformation Theology and Early Modern Irenicism Brian Lugioyo

TEACHING THE REFORMATION Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–1629 Amy Nelson Burnett

CHRISTIAN GRACE AND PAGAN VIRTUE The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics J. Warren Smith

Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics

J. WARREN SMITH

2011

Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, J. Warren, 1964– Christian grace and pagan virtue : the theological foundation of Ambrose’s ethics / J. Warren Smith. p. cm. — (Oxford studies in historical theology) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-19-536993-9 1. Ambrose, Saint, Bishop of Milan, d. 397. 2. Christian ethics. I. Title. BJ1212.S63 2010 241′.0414092—dc22 2010009159

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

For My Wife and Friend Kimberly Conner Doughty Whose patience and encouragement daily mirror the constancy of God’s grace. God did not create [man and woman] as strangers but made them from one and the same flesh, indicating the strength of the union between them. They were destined to be joined to one another side by side, as they walked together looking toward the goal of their journey. —St. Augustine, On the Good of Marriage 1.1

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Contents

Preface, ix Prolegomena: The Ritual Context for Ambrose’s Soteriology, 3 PART I

The Loss of Harmonic Unity: Ambrose’s Account of the Fallen Human Condition

1. The Soul: Ambrose’s True Self, 11 2. Essential Unity of Soul and Body: Ambrose’s Hylomorphic Theory, 29 3. The Body of Death: The Legacy of the Fall, 43 PART II

Raised to New Life: Ambrose’s Theology of Baptism

4. Baptism: Sacrament of Justification, 69 5. Resurrection and Regeneration, 125 6. Baptismal Regeneration: Participation in the New Humanity, 159 7. The New Desire of the Inner Man, 199 Epilogue, 223 Notes, 225 Bibliography, 287 Scripture Index, 309 Subject and Name Index, 313

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Preface

The Project: Ambrose as Moral Theologian This book examines a moment in the history of Christian moral theology. The setting is Milan in the later fourth century and the central theological voice to which we will be listening is that of Ambrose. As such, this project is concerned with two metaethical questions in the study of Christian thought—first, the relationship of theology and ethics, and second, the influence of pagan virtue theory upon Christian moral discourse—and it proceeds by using Ambrose’s teachings to examine how the community of the Church shapes the Christian’s belief about right conduct and the proper ordering of life. As Wayne Meeks has put it, Christian ethics’ explanation of why we act or should act a certain way is derived from our Christian sense of who we are.1 “Who we are” is mediated by the ecclesial community through its catechesis, its interpretation of Scripture in sermons and treatises, its canonization of sacred texts, the enforcement of corporate discipline, and above all, in its liturgy and sacraments, especially baptism, the sacrament of initiation into the Christian community. This process of formation occurs in what Stanley Hauerwas calls “communities of character” that establish and inculcate those norms of conduct and moral sensibilities and habits that influence private and social conduct.2 Yet for the Christian the question “Who are we?” is inescapably a theological one. For the identity of the ecclesial community

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is bound to its covenantal relationship with the God that constitutes the Christian community. In other words, initiation into the Christian community is not primarily the creation of social ties with other people, but with God. Unlike other communities, in which fellowship with its members is an end in itself, the fellowship within the Christian community is not an end in itself but chiefly the means to fellowship with God. Clearly, Paul’s letters (and those of his disciples writing in his name) provide examples of early theological accounts of the Christian community described in Christological and pneumatological terms, as when they speak of being initiated into the Church through being united with Christ in his death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3–8; Col. 2:12), or being incorporated into “the body of Christ” (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 6:15, 12:27; Eph. 1:23, 5:23), or being adopted by the Spirit of Christ through whom we become joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:10–23; Eph. 4:4). Ambrose, to be sure, was not Paul. Yet for the purpose of examining the relation of theology and ethics, the case of Pauline ethics is a helpful analog. For Paul, the Christological and pneumatological character of the Church has direct implications for the Christian’s moral life (Rom. 6:11–14). To be reconciled to God through grace and made alive through the indwelling of Christ’s Spirit, the Christian should not fall back into the sinful life of the “old man” but live in the new freedom granted by rebirth in the Spirit. In this way, Christianity began to heal the breach in Hellenistic thought between philosophy and ethics. As Abraham Malherbe has explained, in classical Greek culture ethics was dependent upon philosophy, which provided knowledge of the moral good. With the rise of Skepticism in the late Academy, the dogmatic philosophical positions were called into question. As people began to doubt the philosophical systems upon which ethics had been based, they emphasized conduct that “appeared to be self-evidently right, irrespective of the philosophical system that might have originally provided the logical framework for it.”3 For Christian moralists, the Christological and pneumatological character of the Church provided the logical framework for Christian ethics. Even in the situational context of Paul’s correspondence with his churches, Paul’s theological arguments have as their goal the moral correction of his people. In these letters, as Richard Hays puts it, “we see theology in progress, unfolding. Paul is not simply repeating already formulated doctrines; rather, he is theologizing as he writes, and the constant aim of his theological reflection is to shape the behavior of his churches. Theology is for Paul never merely a speculative exercise; it is always a tool for constructing community.”4 By focusing upon Ambrose as a moral theologian, this book seeks to explore how this fourth-century Latin bishop articulated for his catechumens, congregants, and clergy the relationship between their identity in the community that is the body of Christ and the character of life made possible by their

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participation in it. Although a discussion of the virtues is unavoidable, the chief concern here is Ambrose’s answer to the question, “Who are we?” that is foundational to his answer to the question, “How should we live?” A second recurring set of questions in the study of early Christian ethics concerns the relation between Christian moral teachings and the ethical theories from the various philosophical schools of antiquity. What, if anything, was distinctive of Christian ethics that set it apart from the moral teaching of Hellenistic moral philosophers? What use did Christian theologians and moralists make of pagan moral theory? How, if at all, did the inclusion of nonChristian moral theory in early Christian ethics make a substantive change in the Church’s moral teachings? If there was a substantive change, was it a corruption of the Gospel? Or was the use of philosophy in Christian moral discourse primarily a rhetorical strategy for speaking to Christians raised in that intellectual milieu? How did the re-presentation of non-Christian accounts of virtue within the matrix of the Christian salvation narrative and the ecclesial community’s theological self-understanding alter the character of the pagan virtues? The language of Christian moral discourse was not new, being largely adapted from older systems; nonetheless, as Meeks says, Christianity provided an “idiom of morality” that was sufficiently different to bring about a “tectonic shift of cultural values.”5 Yet the key point is that Christianity brought a shift in moral norms, not the creation of a new moral universe. There was common ground in the moral sensibilities of Hellenistic moral philosophers and Christian moralists, such as Paul. Indeed, one of the concerns of Paul and his disciples is that the members of the Christian communities not fall short of the moral expectations of their non-Christian neighbors in a way that would bring shame or moral censure on the Church by outsiders. Paul drew on the points of affinity between the teachings of the philosophical koine and of his Gospel in order to instruct the fledgling Christian communities. Yet, as Malherbe has pointed out, Paul did not deploy these philosophical traditions in a pedantic or self-conscious manner. His objective, after all, was not to draw attention to the philosophical systems for their own sake, but to teach the churches about a life according to the Gospel. Nonetheless, by comparing Paul’s ethical teachings with the moral philosophy that was the background for his discourse, one can appreciate the originality of Paul’s use of the philosophical traditions.6 In the history of Ambrosian scholarship, the relationship between Ambrose’s theology and ethics, and the influence of pagan moral philosophy on it, have become intertwined. How scholars have judged Ambrose’s reliance upon classical and Hellenistic ethics has often determined how seriously interpreters take the theological foundation of his ethics. In other words, if

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Ambrose’s ethics are largely derived from pagan philosophical sources, then they cannot be viewed as an outgrowth of his theology. The question of Ambrose’s reliance upon classical and Hellenistic sources was of minimal concern among Ambrose’s commentators in the first half of the twentieth century. For them the emphasis was on Ambrose as the churchman who presided over the Christian triumph over paganism and Arianism and who defended the authority of the Church against the authority of the emperor. Consequently, little time was devoted to the significance of philosophy for Ambrose’s theology and ethics. For instance, P. De Labriolle, in his 1928 biography The Life and Times of Ambrose, begins his narrative with the Altar of Victory controversy.7 F. Homes Dudden, in his two-volume work The Life and Times of Saint Ambrose, saves the discussion of Ambrose as ethicist and theologian until the end of his second volume. While Dudden does devote 175 pages to Ambrose as ethicist and theologian, he barely acknowledges Ambrose’s classical sources, confining his analysis of Cicero’s influence on Ambrose’s De officiis to a single extended footnote.8 Arguably, the first significant studies of Ambrose’s use of philosophical sources came in the works of Pierre Courcelle and Pierre Hadot.9 In his essay “Platon et Plotin dans trois sermons de Saint Ambroise,” Hadot demonstrated the direct parallels between passages from the Phaedo, Enneads 1.1, 1.7, and 1.8, and Porphyry’s De regressu animae and passages in Ambrose’s treatises De Isaac and De bono mortis. On the assumption that these treatises were compiled from catechetical homilies that Ambrose preached in Lent of 386, the year Augustine was baptized in Milan, Courcelle argued that Augustine had heard these homilies during his period as a catechumen. Thus Augustine’s knowledge of Neoplatonism was, at least in part, mediated by Ambrose’s preaching. Yet Hadot observes that the mere appearance of quotations from an author does not mean that Plotinus’s thought was the source of the idea. In the case of Ambrose’s use of Plotinus and Porphyry, there is no evidence that Ambrose subscribed to the core tenets of Neoplatonism. That is, Ambrose does not describe the soul’s highest good, as Plotinus does, in passing beyond contemplation of the intelligible order and entering into ecstatic union with the One. Goulven Madec, in Saint Ambroise et la Philosophie, offers perhaps the most sweeping account of the philosophical sources Ambrose alludes to or quotes from in his writings.10 However, Madec shares Hadot’s doubts about the significance of these sources, for despite the many quotations from Plato, Cicero, Plotinus, and others, Ambrose’s attitude toward pagan philosophy is, at best, ambivalent, and his interest in philosophical arguments themselves seems only marginal. It is even possible, Madec suggests, that Ambrose did not read Plotinus directly, but gained knowledge of the Enneads through his reading of

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the Cappadocian Fathers or Simplicianus, the Christian Neoplatonist who instructed Ambrose in the Christian faith in preparation for his baptism and ordination. Madec concludes that whatever the source of Ambrose’s knowledge of the philosophers, Christianity was for him the true philosophy, itself the result of sacramental regeneration in baptism. Andrew Lenox-Conyngham, although sharing Hadot’s and Madec’s view of the limited value of philosophy for Ambrose, nevertheless points out that Ambrose probably encountered philosophy while learning Greek and studying the liberal arts, and, raised in a Christian home in Rome between 340 and 360 A.D., may have moved in the same circles as the famous Neoplatonist convert to Christianity, Marius Victorinus.11 Moreover, Lenox-Conyngham takes seriously Paulinus of Milan’s account that Ambrose in his protest at being made a bishop said that he planned to devote himself to philosophy instead. Yet with his baptism, Ambrose’s view of philosophy changed. Lenox-Conyngham contends that readers must take seriously Ambrose’s open criticism of moral philosophers, even in a text like De officiis, which is transparently modeled on Cicero’s work by that name. Contra Courcelle, he argues that Ambrose’s posture toward philosophy is similar to that of Origen, perhaps the Christian theologian most influential upon Ambrose’s thought. Origen taught that Christians, like the Hebrew slaves who “plundered the Egyptians” during their exodus, should be cautiously selective in their appropriation of elements of classical culture. “Verbal imitation is not to be confused with doctrinal influence and the very variety of philosophical influence on Ambrose ought to make us cautious. Ambrose passes from one . . . [philosophy to the other] because he refuses to attach himself to any of them.”12 Most important, Lenox-Conyngham sees Ambrose’s view of baptism as such a radical break that it is hard to see Ambrose promoting a synthesis of pagan philosophy and Christianity. Rather, his use of philosophy illustrates the impossibility of such a synthesis. The principal alternative to philosophical sources as the foundation of Ambrose’s thought is Scripture itself. Hadot writes, “La vérité de la Bible et la foi qui y répond constituent, aux yeux d’Ambroise, le monde de l’orthodoxie. . . . Les philosophes eux-mêmes n’ont naturellement pas leur place dans le monde de l’orthodoxie chrétienne.”13 In his assessment of Ambrose’s notion of the spiritual senses of the inner man, Madec sees Ambrose’s argument constructed not by allusions to the Neoplatonic inward turn of the soul but through his appropriation of biblical images that speak analogically of our perception of God as through the five senses.14 Similarly, in his discussion of Ambrose as a mystagogical preacher, Craig Alan Satterlee explains that in Ambrose’s sermons the exegesis of Scripture was of secondary importance to the rhetorical task of incorporating biblical quotations or paraphrases so that the language of

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Scripture washed over the minds of his listeners. “Convinced that the bible’s mode of expression was the most appropriate for pastoral speech, Ambrose sounded like the bible, reproducing in his preaching the texture and rhythm of scripture itself. Ambrose accomplishes this biblical imitation by assimilating in one homogeneous speech the wealth of hundreds of scriptural memories.”15 The homiletical context for Ambrose’s theologizing means that his theology is highly unsystematic, yet, as Rowan Greer explains, the unsystematic character of patristic theology reflects a pervasive sense among the Fathers that their theological vision merely puts them on the road to truth, providing only fragmentary glimpses into a reality that will never be clear this side of the eschaton.16 The scriptural character of Ambrose’s sermons transforms the meaning of philosophical categories once they are placed alongside the biblical narrative. When the narrative of salvation history establishes the implicit framework for Ambrose’s thought, Baziel Maes argues, Scripture provides the cohesion and coherence of Ambrose’s theology.17 Whether addressing natural law or the concept of charity, Ambrose reinterprets classical ideas in the light of salvation history. Additionally, while Origen’s and Philo’s commentaries on the lives of Israel’s patriarchs influenced Ambrose’s exegesis of Genesis more than any other outside source for his catechetical homilies,18 according to Hervé Savon and E. Lucchesi, Ambrose’s theology, particularly his eschatology, in turn affected his appropriation and modification of Philo’s exegesis.19 Given the freedom with which Ambrose borrows from Christian as well as pagan sources, Ambrose may not be considered an original thinker but merely an uncritical transmitter of a variety of traditions available to him. Yves-Marie Duval counters that in the case of asceticism, specifically Ambrose’s De viginibus, his repetition of references to Cyprian and Athanasius indicate his reliance upon their writings during his early years as bishop.20 Nonetheless, he concludes that the context of northern Italy in the fourth century is so different from Cyprian’s North Africa or Athanasius’s Egyptian desert that Ambrose exhibits great originality in his adaptation of these texts for his Milanese congregants. For others, however, Ambrose’s borrowing of Plato and Plotinus is not merely literary ornamentation, but indicates a lack of theological originality and betrays the fundamentally Platonic orientation of his thought. Growing out of comparative studies of Augustine and Ambrose, Patout Burns and John Cavadini argue that, unlike Augustine’s critique of his classical and Hellenistic milieu, Ambrose’s uncritical use of Plotinus reveals an almost Gnostic disregard for the body and material creation and his excessive confidence in the capacity of reason.21 By emphasizing the contrast between Ambrose and Augustine, they argue that Ambrose represents not a lasting influence upon

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Augustine, but only a short-lived influence upon the young Augustine—an influence of which the mature Augustine is rightly critical. More recently, Michele Renee Salzman has argued that the engagement of philosophical sources was a part of an evangelistic measure by the church to convert Roman aristocrats concerned about a status-conscious culture.22 Indeed, Ambrose’s rhetorical style would have appealed to this aristocratic audience, and no doubt his own discussion of wealth, which he labored to explain as not intrinsically bad, would have been appreciated. Whether the aristocratic audiences underwent true conversion—Salzman claims they changed very little about their lifestyle—is another question. While Ambrose’s philosophical formation or his rhetorical use of it cannot be denied, I will argue that his reading of Scripture, especially Paul’s epistles, was transformative. To speak of Platonic, Stoic, and Aristotelian theories of virtue shaping Ambrose’s description of the Christian moral life may be the concern of many scholars, but I would rather invert such a line of enquiry and examine how Ambrose’s theological commitments influence his appropriation of these theories. This conjoining of the Hellenistic and Catholic cultures may create a portrait of the virtuous Christian who formally resembles the self-sufficient Stoic sage, yet by participation through baptism in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, her identity and moral ethos are reshaped. For Ambrose’s Christian, being virtuous is living one’s life as the “new man” born in the waters of baptism. Thus, Ambrose’s baptismal theology transforms the character of the virtuous life from that exemplified by a Stoic or Plotinian resignation to fate to a life characterized by the patient endurance of Christian martyrs and prophetic patriarchs hopeful of resurrection and beatific fellowship with God. One factor that has influenced some scholars’ judgments about Ambrose’s seriousness as a theologian is the curious manner of his ascent to the episcopacy. Paulinus, Ambrose’s first biographer, describes his episcopacy as having a philosophical tone from the very beginning: “But he was to be Christ’s true philosopher who, having disdained worldly display, would follow in the steps of the fishermen who gathered together peoples for Christ, not with fancy words but with simple speech and the doctrine of the true faith, who were sent without a satchel or a staff and even converted philosophers.”23 Thus Paulinus melds Ambrose’s pastoral duty of teaching the doctrine of the Church with his supposed interest in philosophy, and, with Ambrose’s insistence on being baptized by a Catholic bishop and his commitment to the promotion of Nicene orthodoxy, we see the work of Christ’s true philosopher.24 Although Ambrose’s most prominent biographers earlier in the last century, for example, P. de Labroille, F. Homes Dudden, and Angelo Paredi, sought to set Ambrose’s life in the larger historical context of the fourth century, they

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uncritically followed Paulinus’s hagiography.25 The more recent biographies by Neil McLynn, D. H. Williams, and John Moorhead have sought to reconstruct the elevation of Ambrose, the unbaptized provincial governor, to the cural chair of one of the most important episcopal sees in the Latin West.26 However, this recent renarration of Ambrose’s ascendancy has also called into question the status of Ambrose’s religious and intellectual interest in theological matters and his commitment to ecclesial factions in Milan. Both McLynn and Williams argue, contra Paulinus, that the Anti-Nicenes in Milan were not a last remnant of Arianism that Ambrose from the time of his elevation to the episcopacy set out to crush. On the contrary, each contends that the Anti-Nicenes or Homoians by virtue of Auxentius’s control over Milan dominated northern Italy. Auxentius used Valentinian I’s policy of religious neutrality to resist conciliar condemnations from Paris and Rome that sought to expel him from Milan. Yet McLynn and Williams offer strikingly different accounts of Ambrose’s rise to bishop and his ecclesial policy toward the Homoians. According to McLynn, Ambrose ascended to the see of Milan as “an agent of sectarian factionalism” protecting the interests of Pro-Nicenes.27 From this beginning, McLynn characterizes Ambrose as pursuing a policy of realpolitik, the chief aim of which was to expand and safeguard his political and ecclesial authority. He is critical of historians who have “allowed Ambrose to impose his own interpretation upon events, conjuring up elaborate ideologies and strategies from his slogans.”28 McLynn sees Ambrose’s writing not as evidence of a large-scale ideological or theological agenda but as tactics of selfpresentation necessary to overcome the realities of “the rough and tumble of [Roman] political life.” McLynn’s contrast between tactics of political maneuver over against ideologies and strategies reveals his inclination to see in Ambrose’s writings, not statements of his personal theological position, but rhetorical maneuvers. By not treating Ambrose’s theological statements sympathetically, but as a rhetorical smokescreen, McLynn leaves his readers with the decided impression that Ambrose is not seriously interested in theology. McLynn’s operating assumption is that the pursuit of politico-ecclesial objectives and a commitment to the theological component of pastoral duties are mutually exclusive. This assumption is deeply flawed. The suspicion that being concerned with the mundane machinations of the hardball politics of Church-state relations in the fourth century is incompatible with the lofty and spiritual-minded enterprise of theology, while perhaps a nice idea, is historically unfounded. In the history of the ancient Church, two of its most politically ruthless and arguably personally unpleasant bishops, Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, were undeniably among the Church’s most profound and influential theologians. Thus even if one were to grant McLynn’s account of

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Ambrose’s realpolitik, one cannot assume that his homiletic theology was but a facade. Williams, in contrast with McLynn, depicts Ambrose as gradually growing into the office of teacher and theologian. Once consecrated bishop, Ambrose did not pursue an obviously partisan agenda. Although he made his own theological commitment clear by being baptized by a Pro-Nicene—Williams speculates that it might have been Simplicianus—there is no evidence that he tried to purge Milan of Homoian clergy.29 He questions Paulinus’s claim that Ambrose restored the relics of Auxentius’s Pro-Nicene predecessor Bishop Dionysius as a repudiation of Auxentius and a symbolic declaration of his alignment with the Pro-Nicenes.30 Ambrose is largely silent on the issue of the Homoians until 378, when he penned the first two books of De fide at the request of the Emperor Gratian. He enters the Trinitarian debates in order to counter the pro-Homoian Empress Justina’s direct challenge to Ambrose’s authority.31 De fide offered clarification of Ambrose’s theology following charges by the Illyrian bishop, Palladius, that Ambrose’s endorsement of Nicaea with its description of the Father and Son as consubstantial was tantamount to the polytheism of paganism.32 Unlike McLynn, Williams, though not uncritical of the weakness of Ambrose’s early, immature theological efforts like De fide I and II, does not minimize the mounting significance of theology for the bishop of Milan. Although Ambrose’s articulation of his own Trinitarian theology as well as his critique of the Latin Homoians continued to develop and gain greater nuance in his third book of De fide and De Spiritu Sancto, this doctrine is essentially the position that he integrates into his catechetical treatises on the patriarchs, his exegetical work on the Gospel of Luke, and his treatises on the Incarnation and the Sacraments, as well as his funeral oration for his brother, Satyrus. While De fide and De Spiritu Sancto are not properly works in moral theology and so are not prominent texts in this study, the Trinitarian theology that Ambrose develops in these texts informs in subtle ways his accounts of a Christian’s identity and way of life. Ambrose’s answer to the question “Who are we?” that is foundational for answering “What should we do?” is found chiefly in his theology of baptism. Through an examination of how Ambrose narrates human nature fashioned in the image of God, the corruption of sin, and the healing work of baptismal grace, this book bridges the work of scholars on the sacraments and those writing on the moral life. While Craig Satterlee’s excellent book explores Ambrose’s theology of baptism, his work focuses primarily on Ambrose’s postbaptismal instruction in De mysteriis and De sacramentis and so does not examine Ambrose’s virtue theory in his catechetical treatises. Marcia Colish acknowledges that for Ambrose human agency apart from grace is inadequate for the highest virtue

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and so baptism is necessary for the life of virtue.33 Yet her acknowledgment of the importance of grace does not offer a detailed explanation of what this grace is and why it is essential to the life of virtue. Nor is there an account of how for Ambrose humanity’s natural freedom and capacity for virtue is in any way compromised by the fall. What is needed is an account of how Ambrose’s understanding of baptism informs his catechetical preparation for baptism and how baptism substantively affects the neophyte’s capacity for virtue. Moreover, my study of Ambrose’s thought engages, not just the patriarchal treatises, but also his Exposition on Luke, On the Duties of Clergy, On the Good of Death (the sequel to Isaac, which Colish omits from her study of Ambrose’s catechesis), and his dogmatic works on the sacraments, the Incarnation, and the Trinity. The advantage to studying the catechetical treatises alongside Ambrose’s other writings is that one sees the repetition of important theological themes and of arguments based on certain key passages of Scripture (such as Rom. 7). In this thematic repetition, one is able to detect strands of theological and exegetical continuity throughout his corpus—a continuity that challenges the critique that Ambrose’s use of Scripture and theological arguments is purely ad hoc and so lacks theological coherence. This broader examination provides a more balanced view of Ambrose’s thought than a study concentrating upon a single text. By showing how Ambrose draws his account of the fallen human condition and the need for grace from his reading of Paul, this book extends the argument of Hadot, Madec, and Lenox-Conyngham that Ambrose’s theology is primarily an expression of his reading of Scripture—albeit in conversation with philosopher-exegetes like Philo and Origen—rather than Plato or Plotinus. Moreover, by looking at a wide variety of Ambrose’s writings, I will engage Burns and Cavadini’s critiques of Ambrose’s theology. Although Ambrose does not have the speculative temperament or brilliance of Origen or Augustine, he nonetheless shares their critical attitude toward philosophy, and, when we examine Ambrose’s exploration of the themes of creation, corruption, and resurrection, it is clear that Ambrose’s rich Christian anthropology would sit well with that of Origen and Augustine. So too would his account of the fall, which, though not fully Augustinian, is close enough in its language that Augustine, in his debates with Julian of Eclanum about the transmission of original sin, is able to point to Ambrose as supporting his position.

The Structure of the Book This book is broken down into two parts. The first examines human nature and its present condition. The second treats Ambrose’s view of baptism and the

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generation of new life in and through the Body of Christ. Although as a fourthcentury Latin bishop Ambrose does not take anthropology as the necessary starting point for all theological reflection and instruction, I nevertheless begin with his account of the human for two reasons. First, many misunderstandings of Ambrose’s thought, especially his use of philosophy and the aim of his ascetic teachings, have arisen from misreadings of Ambrose’s description of the soul and body. Therefore, correcting this misunderstanding is necessary to make headway toward understanding Ambrose’s account of the Christian life. Second, this book is ultimately about Ambrose’s soteriology and his view of the Christian life. As such, it is necessary to establish from the outset the difference between the human condition as God intended it in paradise and the human condition that after the fall must be healed by grace. That is, the life of virtue for Ambrose is inseparable from the story of redemption symbolically enacted in the ritual of baptism. Since the larger aim of this project is to see the significance of Ambrose’s depiction of baptismal grace for his representation of the life of virtue, it is necessary to begin by trying to understand Ambrose’s view of the sinful human condition that Christ’s grace washes away. Chapter 1, “The Soul: Ambrose’s True Self,” introduces Ambrose’s controversial description of the soul in De Isaac and De bono mortis. Here I seek to correct our understanding of how Ambrose uses Plato and Plotinus by showing how he deploys the Plotinian language to articulate for his catechumens Paul’s account of human life under sin. Chapter 2, “Essential Unity of Soul and Body: Ambrose’s Hylomorphic Theory,” provides an account of Ambrose’s vision of the essential character of the person as a psychosomatic unity. Here we see the cooperative relationship of soul and body that existed in paradise. This dynamic relation of soul and body, rational and nonrational, explains the elements of man’s constitution that are presupposed in Ambrose’s discussion of virtue. Chapter 3, “The Body of Death: The Legacy of the Fall,” presents Ambrose’s account of the fall and examines how the fundamental harmony of the soul and body in paradise is broken, affecting human capacities thereafter. The body that is subject to death and decay becomes Paul’s “body of death” and acquires the character of “flesh” or concupiscence against which the rational soul wars and from which it seeks to escape. Having set the problem of the human condition, Part II, “Raised to New Life: Ambrose’s Theology of Baptism,” explains both the inability of the law to deliver humanity from sin and concupiscence and therefore the necessity of baptismal grace. Chapter 4, “Baptism: Sacrament of Justification,” turns to the subject of Torah, the centerpiece of biblical ethics, and Ambrose’s view of law based on his reading of Romans 7. Unpacking Ambrose’s account of the salvific significance of Christ’s death on the cross and the catechumen’s

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participation in that death through baptism, the chapter proceeds with an analysis of Ambrose’s understanding of justification by faith. In baptism the Spirit confers the gift of faith—a natural disposition corrupted in the fall— such that the Christian is both clothed in the faith of Israel and empowered with the actual righteousness of devotion that bears the likeness to Christ’s faithfulness. Why does such faith merit justification? And how is the gift of faith in baptism integrally related to the cultivation of the virtues? These become the critical questions with which the chapter climaxes. Chapter 5, “Resurrection and Regeneration,” probes Ambrose’s account of the resurrection and how it provides a paradigm for thinking about the healing work of grace. Thus baptism is seen as sacramental regeneration, with the baptized participating in Christ’s Incarnation and resurrection. Chapter 6, “Baptismal Regeneration: Participation in the New Humanity,” focuses on the Christological and pneumatological foundation of Ambrose’s baptismal theology. Christ is the New Adam in whom the Christian participates through the work of the Spirit in baptism. Through participation in Christ’s humanity, Christians are made capable of attaining a degree of virtue proper to the image of God they could not have attained as slaves to concupiscence. Chapter 7, “The New Desire of the Inner Man,” addresses the fundamental question: How is the Christian actually changed through baptism? As demonstrated in the early chapters, corrupt concupiscence, which is Adam’s bequest to posterity, is the source of disorder within the person, the inner conflict between soul and body. Therefore, baptism as a sacrament of regeneration brings not only liberation from the debt of sin, but also the renewal of nature that is capable of overcoming the division caused by concupiscence. This chapter examines how baptism frees humanity from bondage to concupiscence.

A Word of Thanks The research for this project began shortly after my daughter Katherine, now seven, was born. My son, Thomas, was only a distant hope. As I look back over those years, I am humbled when I recall all the various people who contributed their time and energies to this project. The Wabash Center Summer Research Grant connected with the Wabash Center Summer Workshop for Pre-tenure Faculty in Seminaries funded my writing of the essay “Justification and Merit before the Pelagian Controversy: The Case of Ambrose of Milan,” published in Pro Ecclesia Spring 2007, which began this writing of this book. Over the years I have had the help of a wonderful group of research assistants, Doug Johnson, Dan Rhodes, Chris Furr, Jennifer Barry-Lenger, David Fink, Julie Dotterweich,

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Jill Hicks, Rebecca Hylander, Amy Keeton, and Cayce Stapp, who have typed, read, proofread, and checked footnotes for this manuscript. I am deeply indebted to Anne Weston and Jacquelyn Norris, whose editing on the early chapters got the manuscript ready for my tenure review. When the manuscript had gotten out of hand in size, Judith Heyhoe went through and helped me trim the fat and think about what a manageable form of the project could look like. Jennifer L. Benedict meticulously worked through the proofs and saved me from much embarrassment from errors that otherwise would have slipped into print. Their editorial skills have been invaluable in catching my typing and grammatical errors and most of all in refining my otherwise cumbersome prose. To them the reader is in debt. I am also thankful for the work of the editorial team at Oxford University Press, Tamzen Benfield, Charlotte Steinhardt, and Karen Fisher, for their conversion of this manuscript into a book. I am thankful to my Duke colleagues David Steinmetz and Richard Lischer for the delightful lunch conversations that helped me think through my approach and presentation of Ambrose as theologian and preacher and who guided me through the tenure process. John Jones and Boyd Taylor Coolman read drafts of my book proposal and offered extremely helpful suggestions for conceiving the shape and purpose of this project. I have been blessed with divinity students and graduate students who have been constant conversation partners as we have read Ambrose together: Ariel Bybee, John Slotemaker, David Fink, Warren Kinghorn, Brian Bantum, Philip Anderas, Brantley Dean, Jennifer Barry-Lenger, Tom McGlothlin, Andrew Thompson, and Maria Doerfler. My memories of our discussions of Ambrose are by far the happiest of this whole process. Elizabeth Clark, Susan Keefe, Daniel H. Williams, Craig Alan Satterlee, Robert Wilken, Stanley Hauerwas, Jason Byassee, George Parsenios, and Christopher Beeley all read portions of the manuscript at various stage of its maturation. Their suggestions and correction of my missteps have both deepened my insight into Ambrose and saved me from public embarrassment. Rowan Greer must be singled out for his contribution to this book. His copious comments and suggestions have helped me penetrate more deeply Ambrose’s thought and add greater nuance to my reading of Ambrose. He remains a dear friend and mentor. David Steinmetz, editor of the Oxford Studies in Historical Theology, and Cynthia Read at Oxford University Press have been so supportive and patient with the production of the manuscript. To them I am grateful. Penultimately, I am thankful for the support of my wife, Kimberly Doughty, who graciously volunteered to read, edit, and format the manuscript. With her mathematical mind, Kim always presses me to be clearer and simpler in my argumentation. I am grateful beyond words for her appreciation of the place of my research and writing in my vocation as minister and teacher. Laus et honor Deo super omnia.

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Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue

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Prolegomena The Ritual Context for Ambrose’s Soteriology

The soteriology of Saint Ambrose centers on baptism. As a sacramental enactment of the salvation narrative, as a ritual intertwined with the biblical account of God’s redemptive work for Israel and in Christ, baptism is at the heart of Ambrose’s theology and his mystagogical preaching. Baptism is the means by which a catechumen’s eyes are opened to the grace of Christ’s gospel, and so it should be no surprise that baptismal images permeate Ambrose’s sermons as he embraces and catechizes those who would be received into the Church. However, while it will be through Ambrose’s detailed description of the ritual in On the Sacraments and On the Mysteries that I shall explore his baptismal theology, let me begin with an account of Ambrose’s most famous baptizand: Augustine. Reading book IX of Augustine’s Confessions alongside Ambrose’s On the Mysteries and On the Sacraments, while not adding substantially to or changing one’s understanding of Augustine’s conversion, serves to fill the gaps in Augustine’s otherwise vivid autobiography. For the purposes of this project, however, the details of the baptismal ritual do far more than provide images that enhance a reader’s mental picture of Augustine’s baptism. For in Ambrose’s account of the Christian’s participation in the divine economy, baptism is the central act. Its symbols are themselves allusions to images and events in the biblical narrative and provide the central metaphors that Ambrose deploys in his description of the Christian life. Even in his prebaptismal catechesis, in which he consciously does not disclose

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prematurely the ritual mystery, Ambrose nonetheless alludes to the stages of the ritual so that astute catechumens might be prepared to connect the Christian life described in the catechesis with the ritual in which they are participating. For modern readers whose experience of baptism is likely quite different from the rite as practiced in late fourth-century Milan, this reconstruction of Augustine’s baptism establishes concretely the ritual context and metaphorical language with which Ambrose articulates his soteriology.

The Case of Augustine’s Baptism On April 24, 387, during the Easter vigil at Milan, Augustine was baptized by Ambrose’s hands, and so after years of delay and resistance was finally initiated into the Catholic Church. As a boy, he had received the quasi-sacramental initiation into the first stage of the catechumenate—these catechumens were called aspirantes in Milan—by being “signed with the cross,”1 which “marked admission to the Christian community, though not full membership.”2 While not permitted to witness the holy mystery of Eucharist prior to baptismal initiation, the young Augustine had heard the proclamation of the promises of eternal life in the readings of Scripture and sermons, and had repeatedly received a small measure of salt as a sign of the Eucharist that would come at baptism.3 Once after a severe bout of fever, Augustine, fearing himself near death, asked to be baptized, but when he recovered quickly, his mother, Monica, refused to summon a priest to fulfill her son’s request. She feared that he would commit some sin after baptism that would be “graver and more perilous.”4 Later, despite enduring further illness in Rome, adolescent cynicism about the Church’s use of baptism5 and skepticism about the reality of Christ’s Incarnation and atoning death6 extinguished for Augustine any further desire to be baptized. Following his experience in the garden in Milan in August 386 when God “drained the cesspit of corruption in [his] heart” and freed his mind from “the gnawing need to seek advancement and riches . . . and [to] scratch [his] itchy lust,”7 Augustine used a debilitating respiratory condition as an excuse to leave his teaching post early for the upcoming holiday—a vacation he secretly intended to mark the end of his tenure as Milan’s rhetoricae magister.8 Together with several close friends, Augustine withdrew from public life in Milan to live “as a catechumen on holiday” at his patron’s estate at Cassiciacum.9 This contemplative life of philosophical discourse and reading of the Psalms was but an interlude of preparation before returning to Milan as a competens (catechumen).10 While at Cassiciacum, Augustine was afflicted with a severe toothache that rendered him incapable of speaking. Writing on a wax tablet, he asked his friends

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to kneel and invoke God’s healing mercy, and through prayer the affliction was lifted from him. “It came home to me most deeply that this was a sign of your powerful will, and I rejoiced in my faith as I praised your name; yet this same faith did not allow me to be complacent about my past sins, which had not yet been forgiven me through baptism.”11 In addition to announcing officially his retirement from the post of Milan’s instructor of rhetoric, Augustine wrote Ambrose confessing his sins, explaining his “present intention”—to seek baptism at Easter—and asking his recommendation for readings “the better to prepare [himself ] for so great a grace and render [him] more fit to receive it.”12 By late February or early March, Augustine and his friends had returned to Milan to enroll officially among the competentes—those in the second stage of the catechumenate—as candidates for baptism.13 Thus during Lent 387, Augustine the competens, together with Alypius, Adeodatus, and the other catechumens, attended services once or twice daily in the third and ninth hours during Holy Week. During the portion of the service that the catechumens were allowed to attend—later called missa catechumenorum—Ambrose used the readings from Genesis and Proverbs to instruct the catechumens in the virtues required of the baptized and in an understanding of the Christian life based on the lives of the patriarchs. These patriarchs were examples of the virtuous life and types of Christ, who is the perfection of all virtues.14 The homilies that Augustine heard from Ambrose are likely preserved in some modified and synthesized form in Ambrose’s treatises On Abraham, On Isaac, or the Soul, its sequel On the Good of Death, On Jacob and the Happy Life, and On Joseph. The possible influence of Ambrose’s patriarchal sermons, especially his use of Plotinus, upon Augustine has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate.15 Most of the discussion centers around the dating of homilies: Were they preached in the spring of 387 or later? If, as internal evidence suggests, On Joseph, for instance, was written later than 387, Augustine could not have heard this sermon.16 However, this conclusion rests upon the doubtful assumption that catechetical homilies were preached only once. This need not be the case. Unlike homilies delivered to the congregation as a whole, which must be new each week, catechetical homilies are delivered to a new class of catechumens each Lent. To them the homilies would be unfamiliar even if the bishop had delivered the same homily to prior groups of catechumens.17 Thus, it is probable that Augustine the catechumen would have heard at least variations of the sermons that came to comprise Ambrose’s patriarchal treatises. On the third, fourth, and fifth Saturdays of Lent, Augustine returned to the cathedral for scrutinies, traditionally a service of exorcism for the sanctification of body and soul.18 Ambrose did not instruct Augustine in the creed until the

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Sunday before Easter, in a ceremony called the traditio symboli, which carried the sense of the transmission of a treasure held in common by the Church.19 Although Augustine does not relate the substance of this catechesis, he did recall its emotional intensity years later in his own catechetical treatise On Faith and Works. Indeed, about the details of his initiation Augustine is remarkably silent— writing only “And so we were baptized”20—his brevity perhaps a means of preserving the secrecy of the Heavenly Mysteries, the significance of which would be meaningful only to one who had already passed through the grace of initiation.21 Ambrose, however, does give us in vivid detail an account of the ritual. Writing presumably after the fashion of Eastern bishops who converted their catechetical homilies into treatises that would be models for their priests, he composed his treatises On the Mysteries and On the Sacraments from his postbaptismal homilies, and walked the newly initiated Christians through each stage of the rite, interpreting for them the significance of the Heavenly Mysteries through which they passed. Unless Ambrose altered the Milanese ritual of baptism between the writing of these texts and Easter 387, which seems highly unlikely, we can with confidence reconstruct this holy moment in Augustine’s life.

The Baptism During the vigil on Holy Saturday evening, Augustine assembled with his fellow catechumens in the catechumeneum adjacent to the baptistery.22 Here the ritual of baptism began with the preparatory rite of Ephpheta. Ambrose touched Augustine’s ears and nostrils, quoting Jesus’ word spoken when healing the deaf-mute in Sidon: “Ephpheta”—“Be open”—that he might hear the questions posed to him and breathe in the holy aroma of Christ.23 Augustine was then led backward into the inner chamber of the marble, tomblike baptistery, which Ambrose calls alternatively the Holy of Holies or Sanctuary of Regeneration.24 Then a priest and a deacon stripped Augustine of his clothes and anointed him from head to foot with olive oil, symbolizing his preparation for a contest against the devil.25 Standing a little distance from the font in the vestibule of the baptistery and still facing west, Augustine began this contest against his demonic adversary with the ritual of renunciation.26 Ambrose asked him, “Do you renounce the devil and his works?” and “Do you renounce the world and its pleasures?” With his stern reply, “Abrenuntio—I do renounce,”27 Augustine was turned to the east—toward the octagonal font in the center of the room—to receive Christ both by union with him in the font and at his eschatological

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return.28 Then Ambrose performed an exorcism and consecration of the font by invoking the Trinity and making the sign of the cross, touching the water of the font with an olive branch as Moses touched the bitter waters of Marah with his staff, itself a type of the cross.29 This was to satisfy Ambrose’s insistence that the water of the font be interpreted in the light of Christ’s death and resurrection.30 In his turn, Augustine entered the baptismal font and descended three marble steps into it. There, Ambrose asked him three questions: Do you believe in God the Father Almighty? Do you believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and his cross? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Each time Augustine replied “Credo!” and each time Ambrose immersed him.31 When Augustine rose from the pool, his head was anointed with myron or chrism, symbolizing his reception of the divine wisdom.32 Following the anointing, Augustine participated in a rite distinctive to the Milanese order of baptism: Ambrose or a priest in the “ministry of humility” (humilitatis ministerio)33 knelt before him and washed his feet.34 At last, the naked Augustine was covered with a white robe symbolizing his putting on Christ,35 and the ritual of baptism reached its climax with the bestowal of the “spiritual seal”—the perfectio of baptism—when Ambrose invoked the Spirit upon the initiates and marked them with the sign of the cross36 that they might receive the sevenfold gifts or virtues of the Spirit.37 Ambrose, following the Eastern tradition of confirmation immediately after baptism, explained the Trinitarian character of Augustine’s anointing in the Spirit: “God the Father sealed you; Christ the Lord confirmed you, and gave a pledge [pignus], the Spirit, in your hearts, as you have learned in the lesson of the Apostle.”38 Now clothed with this symbol of the resurrection and anointed with the Spirit, the newly baptized Augustine left the baptistery in a joyful procession singing responsively Psalms 42 and 23 as he, his son, and closest friend together with the other initiates made their way into the cathedral and up to the altar to receive the Eucharist. Of the experience, Augustine remembered his feeling of joy and peace: “[A]nd all our dread about our earlier lives dropped away from us. During the days that followed I could not get enough of the wonderful sweetness that filled me as I meditated upon your deep design for the salvation of the human race.”39

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PART I

The Loss of Harmonic Unity Ambrose’s Account of the Fallen Human Condition

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1 The Soul Ambrose’s True Self

Ambrose’s treatises—On Isaac, or the Soul, and its sequel On the Good of Death—are composite works based on his catechetical homilies. These sermons he delivered to his competentes who had officially enrolled with the bishop to begin the rigorous instruction in the faith in preparation for baptism at Easter.1 Ambrose intended the sermons to provide the catechumens with an occasion to contemplate the virtuous lives of Israel’s patriarchs and matriarchs, lives that in various ways prefigured Jesus’ embodiment of perfect virtue and so were models for the new life as members of the body of Christ. The lives of the patriarchs were “signs of virtue in action” that gave living illustrations of the virtues the catechumens were to imitate. Therefore, he deemed biography to be pedagogically preferable to instruction by mere precept.2 The Genesis account of Isaac’s courtship and marriage to Rebekah seemed particularly appropriate for the catechumen. At different points in his exposition of the Genesis narrative, Ambrose intends for the catechumens to see themselves sometimes in the place of Isaac and sometimes in the place of Rebekah. Although the ostensible purpose of the catechetical homilies on the patriarchs was moral instruction, the treatises do not offer moral instruction alone. Ambrose certainly derives standards for Christian ethical conduct from the narrative of Genesis. But he sees the biblical text as multilayered, containing, in addition to the moral meaning, also a natural meaning (that is, concerning the nature of the created

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world) and a mystical meaning (that is, concerning the spiritual union of the soul and God).3 An exposition of the lives of Israel’s patriarchs who prefigure Christ and the church naturally leads Ambrose to comment on Christ’s passion, the work of the Holy Spirit, the eschatological hope of the resurrection, and other doctrines that provide the theological foundation for his theory of virtue and the Christian life. Theological anthropology is one such theological locus that Ambrose discusses in detail in Isaac and On the Good of Death. Isaac is Ambrose’s fullest treatment of psychology: the nature of the soul, its relationship to the body, and its telos, fellowship with God. Within the pedagogical logic of Ambrose’s catechesis, Isaac functions to train the catechumens in the knowledge of the soul necessary for the right understanding of Christian life.4 When the catechumen properly understands that God is the chief end of the soul and how the soul is related to the body, she is able to understand how necessary is the cultivation of virtue for entry into mystical fellowship with God. In On the Good of Death, Ambrose offers this description of the relationship of the soul and the body: The [soul] is what we are; the [body is] what belongs to us. If anyone loves the beauty of the soul, he loves us; if anyone loves the grace of the body, he loves not the man himself, but the beauty of the flesh, which quickly wastes away and disappears.5 Here Ambrose locates the individual’s identity in the immortal soul, the locus of the self, the “I” of the rational subject. The body, by contrast, does not define the person. It is but the soul’s possession, its property. At best the body is like a musical instrument, which, when properly controlled by the sovereign rational soul, produces “music in euphonious accord with the life of virtue.”6 At worst, if not properly directed and restrained by reason, the body is the source of the passions,7 and thus the source of distraction and deception.8 As the locus of death with its gradual process of decay and pain, the body is a veritable prison from which death brings blessed release.9 There was nothing particularly novel about this view of the human condition for people of the late fourth century. Although Plato in the Phaedo, his earliest work on the immortality of the soul, does not say expressly that the soul is the individual, the force of his logic drives in this direction. Since the body is mortal and the soul immortal, the individual is her soul, which carries on existence after death.10 Therefore, Socrates does not fear death precisely because it is not the end of his life but rather the occasion for his entry into a higher and truer form of existence, as a soul freed from the fetters of the body.11 While the individual self is, for Plato, implicitly identified with the immortal soul, for Plotinus, the self is explicitly equated with the

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soul. At the beginning of Ennead IV.7, “On the Immortality of the Soul,” Plotinus writes: One might discover as follows, by an investigation according to the nature of the subject, whether each individual one of us human beings is immortal, or whether the whole human being is destroyed, or whether some of it goes away to dispersion and destruction but some of it, the part which is the self, abides for ever [ta de menei eis aei, haper estin autos]. Man could not be a simple thing, but there is in him a soul, and he has a body as well, whether it is our tool or attached to us in some other way. . . . So, if this body of ours is a part of us, the whole of us is not immortal, but if it is a tool, it must, since it was given us for a certain time, be of a nature to last for that time. But the other part is the most important and [is] the man himself; if it is this, then it is related to the body as form to matter or user to tool; in either way, the soul is the self [hē psychē autos].12 By locating immortality in the soul, Plotinus concludes that the soul is the locus of the self, and the body is merely the material aspect of our existence, a tool to serve the ends of our true self, the rational soul.13 Based on passages such as the one above, Ambrose appears at first glance to offer a recitation of Platonist psychology with a sprinkling of biblical proof texts to give it theological legitimacy.14 It is premature, however, to conclude based on his allusions, paraphrases, and direct quotations from Plato and Plotinus that Ambrose’s anthropology is essentially Hellenistic rather than biblical. Such a judgment assumes that one can go behind the text to determine the primary source of inspiration for his anthropology. Moreover, it overlooks the abundance of biblical citations and their role in Ambrose’s homilies. Did a prior philosophical commitment cause him to use Platonist anthropology as the primary lens through which he read Scripture? Or did his reading of Scripture evoke recollections of passages from non-Christian philosophers whose ideas bore a certain family resemblance to Scripture and so seemed rhetorically appropriate and theologically sound to incorporate? Although Ambrose undoubtedly gives chief authority to Scripture over non-Christian sources for establishing the standard of truth, any attempt to identify the initial source of his inspiration—Scripture or Platonism—is a chicken-and-egg debate. Instead it is better to begin with the certain point that Ambrose brings the Platonist and biblical views together to establish the anthropological basis for the Christian life of virtue. This is undoubtedly true since these treatises on the patriarchs function as moral exhortations for catechumens rather than as works of speculative theology (e.g., Origen’s On First Principles or Gregory of

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Nyssa’s On the Making of Man) that attempt to offer a more systematic account of human nature. This is clear when one contrasts his relatively brief description of the nature of the soul with his more numerous warnings about the dangers of following the pleasures of the body. Even recent scholarship, such as that of Margaret Miles, has exposed the caricature of the common view that Neoplatonism espouses a radical dualism between body and soul.15 So too, Ambrose has a more complex view of the soul’s relationship with the body. His highly negative description of the relation between soul and body in On the Good of Death can be rightly understood only when placed in the larger context of three important strands of Ambrose’s thought: (1) his understanding of the proper harmonious relation of soul and body that God intended; (2) the present corruption of the soul and body that resulted from the fall; and (3) the challenges that sensual distractions pose for the soul trying to follow the will of God. In subsequent chapters, we shall see that Ambrose’s treatment of the resurrection and the role of grace in restoring a harmonic relationship of soul and body creates a fuller view of man as a psychosomatic unity. For the time being, however, the working hypothesis of this chapter is that Ambrose, like many of his theological contemporaries and many philosophical schools from the time of Antiochus of Ascalon, was philosophically eclectic.16 While Antiochus sought to unify the great schools of antiquity by integrating Stoic ethics and Aristotelian logic into Plato’s metaphysics and cosmology, Christian theologians from Justin on drew upon the truths, however fragmentary and incomplete, from philosophy to explain the higher and more certain truths of God’s revelation. It is not surprising to see Ambrose borrow ideas and language from the science of his day to describe the human condition. His anthropology is both Platonist and biblical. Yet Ambrose’s appropriation of Platonist language to speak of the soul and body is ultimately governed by biblical rather than dogmatic philosophical commitments.17 Specifically, his appropriation and deployment of Platonic and Plotinian ideas rests upon a deep logic derived from his reading of the letters of Paul. It is also appropriate to recognize the cultural and polemical context in which Ambrose is preaching and writing. Paganism, far from being the religious relic of a few cultural conservatives, was a serious rival religion that was, at least from the Christian perspective, a threat to Catholic Christianity.18 With Symmachus’s appeals to the emperor to restore the Altar of Victory to the senate house in Rome, the threat of a resurgence of paganism had come to northern Italy and Ambrose had to counter the Neoplatonism of Symmachus, which was hostile to Christianity.19 Ambrose employed a variety of rhetorical approaches and media to attract and persuade his listeners.20 He was certainly willing to match the rhetorical finesse of pagans like Symmachus.21 One strategy,

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therefore, was to use philosophy as a tool of his apologetics that would highlight Christianity’s affinities with the claims of philosophy and at the same time allow him to reinterpret a Platonist psychology or Ciceronian view of virtue in Christian terms.22 As one raised in the classical and Hellenistic paideia, Ambrose would have accepted many aspects of this pagan worldview as true and so would, like all preachers engaged in apologetics, have taken for granted that, despite serious differences, there were shared aspects of the Christian and pagan visions of reality. Turning to Plotinus to articulate his view of the soul to an audience, some of whom also had read Plotinus, would have been a perfectly natural move for a preacher like Ambrose.23 Ambrose’s definition or description of the substance of the soul in Isaac 2.4 is remarkably brief. Following Plotinus’s argument from Ennead IV.7, Ambrose summarily dismisses materialist psychologies that identify the soul with blood or fire or breath or even less materialistic depictions of the soul as something such as harmony—for this too reduces the soul to something bodily.24 Although Plotinus does not mention those psychologies that equate the soul with blood, he directly challenges the Stoic identification of the soul with pneuma—that warm, moist, and breathy substance that gives life and form to other matter—on the grounds that pneuma, as a material substance that is inherently formless and ever-changing, can neither give life and order to matter nor preserve the ordered existence.25 Rather, the only source of life for material substance is a nonmaterial and rational source capable of communicating form from the divine Nous to the formless matter.26 Ambrose, by contrast, offers no argument, either adapted from Plotinus or of his own, to refute Stoic views of the soul. Instead, he appeals directly to the Genesis 2:7 description of Adam as “a living soul” and so concludes that the soul is simply the ruling and life-giving force of the body. As the animating principle of the body it is also the cause of perception and the emotional reaction to those perceptions.27 Moreover, based on the use of the word soul in Genesis 26:46—“all souls that went down to Egypt”—he concludes that anima refers to mankind generically.28 Yet Ambrose takes soul in this generic sense to refer to humanity as God intended human beings to be, that is, as rational creatures who cleave to God.29 Thus at the very outset of his account of the human condition, Ambrose is relatively unconcerned with offering a philosophical account of the soul’s nature. Rather he is primarily concerned with defining human nature in terms of its relationship with its Creator. Ambrose locates an individual’s identity in the soul by appealing to the soul’s immortal nature.30 Although the soul is the life of the body, its existence is not confined to the flesh it animates, but lives on independent of the body from which it is separated at death.31 Ambrose’s argument for the soul’s survival in

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death rests on evidence from Scripture. Based on God’s words in the parable of the rich fool—“Fool! This night your soul is demanded of you” (Luke 12:13−21)— Ambrose takes Jesus to mean that at death the soul is handed over to God and, therefore, not destroyed. He finds further support for this view in Jesus’ admonition (Matt. 10:28) to the disciples not to fear the one who can destroy only the body, but to fear instead the One who can destroy both by consigning the soul to hell.32 This second part of Jesus’ warning is problematic for Ambrose since Jesus speaks of the soul’s destruction. Ambrose’s view that the soul is immortal seems to contradict Jesus’ words on this point. But he explains that unlike the body, the soul cannot be destroyed at the hand of mortals, but is destroyed in the sense of its eternal isolation from the presence of God.33 By contrast, the soul of the righteous remains “always” in God’s hands (Ps. 119:109). Ambrose concludes, “If the soul is in the hand of God, surely our soul is not shut up in the tomb with the body nor is it held by the funeral pyre, but enjoys a holy repose.”34 In On Abraham, the first of his catechetical treatises, Ambrose explains God’s call to Abraham to “go out of the land of your kin” to mean that the rational and immortal soul should flee the mortal body: [W]hen a man dies, his flesh is corrupted, his senses perish, his voice is lost: the mind remains immortal, receiving eternal life. Hence, it is summoned to another land, full of blessedness, where it perceives not falsehood instead of truth as in this life, but . . . it lays aside the gloom of [bodily] corruption and, its face unveiled, examines with its gaze the grace of the blessed life.35 This distinction between the immortal soul and the transitory and corruptible body leads Ambrose to locate the individual’s identity in the soul rather than the body. “We are one thing, our possessions are something else; he who is clothed is one person, his clothing something else.”36 The body is like a possession that can be stolen from us, an article of clothing that is put off at death and put back on at the resurrection. Therefore, even as the individual is distinct from her possessions, so too the individual is distinct from her body, which her persecutors can destroy.37 As we shall see, this distinction between the self (soul) and the body (and all other possessions) plays an important rhetorical role not only in Ambrose’s teaching on the Christian’s proper view of death, but in his ethical arguments concerning the proper attitude toward wealth and possessions. What is interesting about this discussion is how unphilosophical it is. Although Ambrose follows Plotinus and Cicero by ruling out the identification of the soul with any material substance, he does not offer an alternative description.

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Nor does he bother to argue, as does Socrates in the Phaedo (78B–C), for the soul’s immortality. Rather, in the context of catechesis, his concern is to point the catechumens toward a minimal but essential Christian understanding of the soul, grounded in the witness of Scripture. In addition to appealing to biblical passages that presuppose the immortal nature of the soul, Ambrose grounds his view of the self as the immortal soul on God’s fashioning of humanity in God’s own image and likeness. Central to Ambrose’s contention is his assumption that the soul, not the body, is the locus of the imago Dei. For it is the soul’s bearing of the divine image in its rational nature that distinguishes humanity from the rest of God’s embodied creatures.38 In the sixth book of the Hexameron, his commentary on the six days of creation, Ambrose praises God’s creation of animals and commends study of the beasts as morally edifying. Even wild animals, he says, possess certain virtues that human beings would do well to imitate. The ant is industrious and the dog is a good guardian and shows gratitude.39 Though lacking the reflective and analytical skills of reason, these animals possess in their senses a sagacity akin to reason. They intuit what human beings must grasp by argument.40 It would do people greater good, Ambrose concludes, to study the way of nonrational creatures than to study argumentation. “Of more value is the testimony given by nature than is the proof presented by doctrine.”41 By their sense of smell, animals are able to discern which foods are good to eat and which bring death. Ambrose, in extolling their sense of smell, is not suggesting that we should rely upon our olfactory senses to distinguish what is beneficial from what is harmful. Rather, we should follow the animals’ example of trusting the instruction we receive from nature in avoiding the causes of pain and death (that is, sin) and seeking what is sweet (for the soul).42 For all the virtues and sagacity with which God invests animals, man’s worth lies in being made in the image of God. Ambrose begins his discussion of anthropology in Hexameron by affirming that man is a psychosomatic unity and thus the body and the senses should rightly be viewed as constitutive of the self. Commenting on the command of Deuteronomy 4:9, “Attend to thyself alone,” Ambrose explains that we must distinguish between who we are, what is ours, and what is external to us.43 At first glance, there is nothing remarkable in this interpretation. The necessity of distinguishing between the self and what is external to the self is a standard Stoic motif.44 What is interesting about this passage, though, is that having just included the body with the soul in his definition of “who we are,” Ambrose immediately says that the body’s members and its faculties of sense are “what belongs to us.” At the same time, he contrasts the body, “which belongs to us,” with “what is external to us,” such as clothing, wealth, and reputation. Since the

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body with the senses will be raised at the resurrection and enter into the life to come, it cannot be lumped into the same class of transitory things that belong only to the present age. The body is proper to our life now and in the eschaton and thus is ours in a way that possessions which serve only the present needs are not. Interestingly, he praises the human body as the most magnificent material display of grace and beauty in God’s creation. Although some animals possess greater size or physical strength, the human body’s beauty is found in its moderate form, neither too big nor too small.45 Yet, its smaller size affords human beings an erect posture, which reveals man’s lofty nature.46 Moreover, the senses, especially the head and eyes, are perfectly fashioned to serve the life of virtue.47 Here Ambrose gestures to the theme of the body’s instrumental function in the service of the rational soul’s pursuits. Yet man’s greatness lies, not in the body, but in his likeness to God. For however noble the structure of the human body, the material body cannot bear the image of the nonmaterial God.48 Thus, although the body together with the soul constitutes the self, the soul is the locus of the divine image and is the distinctive feature of human nature. The wisdom of God’s providence permeates all his creatures; yet human beings, Ambrose says, “possess above and beyond all other creatures a faculty of the soul which in itself has nothing in common with the rest of created things.”49 Since God is nonmaterial and invisible, the divine image in which we are made, Ambrose reasons, must refer to our incorporeal soul or spirit.50 Appealing to Jesus’ reply to Philip’s request, “Show us the Father,” Ambrose concludes from Jesus’ words, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9), that Christ is the “image” of God and thus is the archetype after which the soul is modeled.51 Yet he goes on to say that God’s decision to make man in “our likeness” means that humanity bears the image, not of one person, but of the one divine and eternal substance common to Father and Son.52 From this description of the divine image, Ambrose moves immediately to discuss why “attending to thyself alone” rightly means caring for the soul that bears the image of God. Here Ambrose offers two arguments as to why our concern should be for the soul over the body. First, the soul is distinct from the body in that the soul possesses the capacity to mirror the divine virtues. “Attend, rather, to your soul and mind, whence all our deliberations emanate and to which the profit of your works is referred. Here only is the fullness of wisdom, the plentitude of piety and justice of which God speaks—for all virtue comes from God.”53 The soul is the source of the deliberations and calculations upon which our actions are based. In order for our actions to be virtuous, the soul must possess justice, wisdom, and piety. Only by the soul’s contemplation of God are we able to participate in the divine and so reflect the virtues of God. For

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Ambrose continues, “That soul, which holds in itself the flashing beauty of the virtues and the splendor of piety, is painted by God. That soul is well painted in which shines the imprint of the divine operation. That soul is well painted in which resides the splendor of grace and the reflection of its paternal nature. According to this image which is reflected is the picture precious.”54 His primary point is that we should concentrate on the beauty of the soul because the soul, like the interior walls of Jerusalem, has been adorned by God with God’s own virtues. Where one sees the beauty of virtue, one sees the artistry of God’s creative operation.55 Such likeness to the divine is not hidden but shines out on the world through the soul.56 Such a soul that simultaneously sets its thoughts upon God and gives life to the body does not participate in worldly vanity, but bears the divine image to the world. The soul’s rational nature enables it to desire not the transient goods of earth but the heavenly goods of God.57 For the soul, because it is like God in being nonmaterial, has the capacity for self-transcendence necessary for contemplation. Unlike the material body, which is confined to a particular place and time, our souls “are free to wander far and wide in acts of reflection and of counsel. . .  . We who are now in Italy have in mind what seems to pertain to affairs in the east or in the west.”58 The soul can be united with those who are absent and have “conversation” with the dead through meditation upon their written words,59 and can enter into communion with God in heaven itself: “[The mind’s] vision crosses boundaries and gazes intently on what is hidden. . . . God is attained and Christ is approached.”60 Since the soul is the locus of the image of God, Ambrose takes the injunction of Deuteronomy to “attend to thyself alone” to mean that we must be concerned to preserve the beauty of the soul by centering the soul’s meditations upon the God who is the source of virtue and beauty. Ambrose points to Adam as the example of one who did not attend to the things of the soul. “Adam before he sinned conformed to this [divine] image. But after his fall he lost that celestial image and took on one that is terrestrial.”61 If the mind is turned not upon God but upon the earthly, then the human soul replaces the image of God with the likeness of the brutes,62 and humankind loses its lofty nature and becomes subject to vanity. Following his definition of the soul as the animating principle of the body, Ambrose comments that the psalmist’s low view of humanity—“Man is become like vanity” (Ps. 144:4 [LXX])—is not a fitting description of the excellence of the soul’s nature. “Man according to the image of God is not like to vanity, but he who has lost it [the imago Dei] and has fallen into sin and has tumbled into material things—such a man is like vanity.”63 Thus, without the celestial image, the soul cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.

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Ambrose thus draws together two themes: the soul as the locus of the imago Dei and the soul as the immortal portion of the self that survives the body in death. “Our soul, therefore, is made to the image of God. In this is man’s entire essence, because without it man is nothing but earth and into earth he shall return. Hence, in order to convince you that without the soul the flesh is nothing, Scripture says, ‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.’”64 Here, Ambrose shares an understanding of essence with Gregory of Nyssa.65 The essence of a thing is not a composite definition of genera (the general characteristics shared among a group of similar beings) and differentiae (the unique characteristics that distinguish one species from another). Rather, the essence is only that unique feature distinctive of the particular creature. For Ambrose, the distinctive feature of man is the imago Dei located in the soul—“Your soul is made to the image of God, whereas your body is related to the beasts”66—and because it bears the divine image, it is nonmaterial and immortal spirit, which thus cannot be killed. And yet, there is a sense that the soul’s true deliverance from death—the death that is separation from God—is dependent upon its participation in God. By such participation, the mind reflects the image of the eternal and immortal God, and if it fails to participate in God, it forfeits paradise, as did Adam. By turning its thoughts and desires from God to the lesser goods of earth, the soul exchanges the immortal image for the likeness of mortal and corruptible earth. Indeed, Ambrose’s conclusion in Hexameron VI.7 is that by trusting in the life of the body and seeking the goods of the flesh, we not only become alienated from what is essential in human nature, but become “deprived of the aid of [our] soul.”67 The superiority of the soul to the body is that the soul can apprehend, desire, and enjoy the incorruptible beauty of heaven. More than his reading of Genesis as equating “flesh” with fallen humanity (Gen. 6:3), Ambrose’s interpretation of Romans 7 leads him to equate the self with the soul. This he contrasts with the body, which is the locus of sin. In a book full of exegetically and theologically controversial passages, Romans 7 provided ample grist for the disputational mill among theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries. For Ambrose’s anthropology, the critical verses are 7:14–15 and 22–24: We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner man, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me a slave to the law of sin which dwells in my members.

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Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? In Paul’s self-description as “sold under sin” (Rom. 7:14), he speaks of himself as conflicted, not doing what he wants, yet doing what he hates (7:15). In Ambrose’s gloss of the passage, the “law of the flesh” corresponds with the “law of sin” (that is, the impulse of disobedience to the law of the mind). The “body of death” is the body of corruption, which is subject to the impulses of concupiscence. Of course, many questions surround this passage. Exactly what does Paul hate? Does he hate his outward compliance with the law that is contrary to certain deep desires? Or is it the presence of sinful impulses and their involuntary, outward manifestations? Is Paul speaking of his own experience of sin or is he adopting for himself the persona of the conflicted sinner? But Ambrose does not pose these questions. He focuses on Paul’s description of being under the power of sin as a war between the law of the mind and the law of the flesh, a war in which he is “a prisoner to the law of sin” (7:23). Ambrose explains Paul’s account of the divided self: Although Paul said that both men were at war in him, the inner man [interiorem] and the external man [exteriorem], yet he preferred to establish himself in the part that comprises the soul rather than in the body [in corporis parte]. For when his soul, in which he preferred to exist, was being drawn captive to sin, he confirms his preference, saying, “Unhappy man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” Thus he desired to be delivered from the flesh [a carne], from an external enemy, so to speak.68 Ambrose, following Origen, weaves together Romans 7 with the language of 2 Corinthians 4:16 in which Paul contrasts the inner nature that is being renewed with the outer nature that is wasting away.69 Thus the law of the flesh that is synonymous with the “body of death” (Rom. 7) corresponds to the outer nature of 2 Corinthians 4. Likewise, the inner man who consents to the law of the mind (Rom. 7:22) is the inner nature that is renewed (2 Cor. 4). This inner man is the soul. The law of sin is something from which the inner man desires to be delivered. Although Ambrose acknowledges that Paul is both the internal man and the external man in the sense that both are “in him,” he reads Paul as identifying principally with the inner man. This “true” Paul speaks through the text of Romans. Thus Ambrose equates the true Paul with his soul, which desires to do what the law of the mind commands and cries out to be liberated from the body of death. To understand his distinction between the soul (as the true self) and the body, it is necessary to be clear about Ambrose’s terminology. One point of

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recurring confusion for readers of Ambrose’s anthropology is his inconsistent use of the terms body (corpus) and flesh (caro). On the one hand, Ambrose distinguishes caro, which carries the connotation of sin, from corpus, which is morally neutral. For example, in commenting on God’s judgment against the antediluvian generation, “My spirit shall not remain in those men, since they are flesh” (Gen. 6:3), Ambrose is clear that God withdraws his spirit from the Nephilim, not because they are embodied creatures per se, but because they are sinful (6:5–7).70 In this case, as elsewhere, caro corresponds to the Pauline description of sin as “the desire of the flesh” (epithymian sarkos) that stands in contrast with the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:16–26). In his discussion of Jesus’ apocalyptic account of the two women grinding wheat, one of whom is taken and the other who remains (Luke 17:35–36), Ambrose says that the two women represent the two minds in man: the outer mind that is corrupt and the inner mind that is renewed by the sacraments and united with the Spirit.71 The outer mind is the flesh. Ambrose describes this outer mind as self-exalted spirit, unwilling to submit to Christ: And perhaps, that [mind] which is exalted is inferior, “puffed up by the sense of his flesh [carnis], and not holding the head,” because it turns aside from observation of the saving precepts of our Lord. . . . The other [that is, the inner mind] is the more preeminent who loves humility, seeks wisdom. . . . So the one is carnal [carnalis] and other spiritual. For as we understand from the Apostle’s words that the seducer who exalts himself with haughty spirit is puffed up with the mind of the flesh, so we also show that the holy man is renewed in the spirit of his mind. . . . Thus, he shows that there are two minds, the one which, conquered by sin, is made a mind of the flesh [mens carnis], the other which, joined to the Spirit, abjures the enticements of the flesh [carnis illecebras].72 Ambrose equates the mind of the outer man with the mind of the devil, or “the seducer,” in that it is fundamentally rebellious and raises itself above Christ. It is ironic that the devil is the paradigm of the carnal or fleshly mind since the devil was understood as a demon or fallen member of the heavenly host, and therefore did not possess a material body.73 Yet this only underscores the point that for Ambrose, caro in its Pauline sense is not primarily a problem of the body, but of a corrupt and prideful orientation of the mind. On the other hand, however, Ambrose at times uses caro in a morally neutral sense as a synonym for corpus. In Isaac, Ambrose interprets Song of Songs 1:8, “Go forth in the tracks of the flocks and pasture your kids beside the tents of the shepherds,” to mean that the soul, like an ever-attentive shepherd, should

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exercise care over his flock, that is, the body. “Further, each man should exercise the care of himself by a kind of royal power if he checks the excesses of the body [corporis] in himself and reduces his flesh [carnem] to servitude. And so it was said, ‘The Kingdom of God is within you.’”74 Ambrose’s larger point is that the kingdom of God is realized in us when the soul exerts its royal power to moderate the impulses of the body. But for our purposes here, the important point is that the clause “[he] reduces his flesh to servitude” is merely a restatement or expansion of the point of the previous clause, “he checks the excesses of the body.” Here Ambrose is not using caro in the Pauline sense of sin. His point is that the rational soul makes the body, not sin, the servant of the soul’s judgment and will. Thus he uses caro simply as another word for corpus. In On Jacob and the Happy Life, Ambrose uses caro in a similar manner. Having offered up his abbreviated version of the classic free-will defense, he categorically rejects any move that locates the cause of sin in the body: Why do we blame the flesh [carnem], as if it were weak? Our members are the tools [arma] of wrong and the tools of right. . . . [I]f your eye has looked upon a woman to covet her, you have opened a wound, you have driven a weapon into your body [corpori]; your members are tools of sin . . . your members are tools of iniquity. And so passion [affectus], not the flesh [caro], is the author of guilt [culpae], for the flesh is a servant of the will [voluntatis ministra].75 Here he equates caro with the members of the body, such as the eyes, which he describes with the morally neutral label of “tool.” The “flesh” cannot be blamed for vice since it is merely an instrument to achieve that end—be it virtue or vice—which is the object of one’s liberum arbitrium. Moreover, he explicitly contrasts caro, the tool, with concupiscentia, or perverse desire, which is “the author of guilt.” Thus corrupt desire, not the body (caro) itself, is the locus of sin’s origin. Similarly, in a Christological context Ambrose employs caro to refer to Christ’s body or human nature, not sin. Commenting on the episode in Luke 2 when twelve-year-old Jesus is left behind in Jerusalem, Ambrose refers to Mary and Joseph as “his parents according to the flesh.” Since Ambrose clearly affirms the biblical account of Jesus’ virginal conception, he views Joseph as merely Jesus’ adoptive father and not actually the progenitor of his “flesh,” either in the sense of Jesus’ body or his human nature more generally. Thus, “his parents according to the flesh” (secundum carnem parentum) carries the sense of “his earthly parents.” Even in this sense, however, caro taken as “earthly” does not have the pejorative connotation of “worldly.” Yet, in the same sentence Ambrose goes on to use caro to refer more clearly to his physical or

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human nature. Using Jesus’ three days in the temple as a figure of his three days in the tomb, he writes, “He who according to the flesh [secundum carnem] assuredly was filled with the wisdom and grace of God is found after three days in the Temple [as] a sign that he who was believed dead for our faith would rise again after three days from his triumphal passion.”76 According to the flesh (that is, in his humanity), Jesus was gifted with divine wisdom and grace and was sustained for the three days in the temple even as he was in the grave for three days according to his human nature. In either case, Ambrose’s use of caro here does not convey the Pauline sense of sin. It is important to recognize Ambrose’s inconsistent use of the term caro. For at times when describing the soul’s separation from caro he means from vice, and at other times he means from the material body itself. The challenge for readers of Ambrose is to figure out which meaning of caro he intends in a given passage. Of more immediate concern, however, is Ambrose’s tendency in distinguishing the soul and body to blur the lines between anthropology and hamartiology. That is, he moves very quickly from a description of human nature per se to a description of fallen humanity; his account of the soul and body is of a soul and body already inscribed with the character of sin. For example, in Isaac he poses the anthropological question, “What, then, is man? Soul, or body, or a union of both?” He then tries to respond by distinguishing between righteous humanity as God intended, which is equated with “soul,” and sinful humanity, which is pejoratively labeled “flesh” or caro.77 This categorical shift from anthropology to hamartiology is confusing. The body, which Ambrose opposes to the soul, is not equated with the pure human nature of Eden, but with humanity’s sinful condition. As such, the body in its problematic form is not the body per se but the body corrupted by sin, or in Paul’s words, “this body of death” (Rom. 7:24). In the context of his reading of Romans 7, Ambrose uses the terms caro and corpus interchangeably; that is, “body” takes on the pejorative meaning of “flesh.” The body of death bears in its members the “law of the flesh” and the “law of sin.” In Jacob, Ambrose repeats the opposition of the law of the mind and the fleshly impulses characteristic of the body of death: [T]hat mind is good which has the control of reason and is directed toward the teachings of wisdom; but it endures a grievous strife with the body of death [cum mortis corpore], and often the enticement of the flesh [carnis illecebra] conquers the reason of the mind. Accordingly, the Lord first gave the law; the mind of man devoted itself to the law by way of compliance and began to serve it so as to be subject to it. But the flesh [caro] was not subdued, because the wisdom of the flesh

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[sapientia carnis] was not subject to the law and opposed its teachings. For the flesh could not have been obedient to virtue, since it had been given over to its own desires and enveloped in its own panderings.78 As with his earlier discussion in Isaac, Ambrose here equates the body of death with the flesh and its desires that resists the law of God. Yet the mind’s conflict with the flesh is not separate from the mind’s struggle to control the bodily impulses. In Abraham, he explains that Paul’s cry in Romans 7:24, “O wretch that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” is his response to the internal battle between the law of the flesh warring against the law of the mind. Deliverance from the body of death means being released from “the delights of the flesh.” Here flesh does not simply mean sin but sinful desires that are centered upon sensual pleasures. Ambrose paraphrases Paul’s cry for deliverance: “So who is there to loose me from these fetters and join me, free, to God, and turn aside my senses to soberness of soul, rather than the drunkenness of the body?”79 The critique of the body in Isaac and On the Good of Death should not be read as a dualistic opposition of soul and material embodiment, that union that God created in the beginning. Rather his complaint about the body is a critique of the body of death that is inscribed with weakness and corruption resulting from sin. Ambrose does equate flesh with the impulses or passions of the body that are the source of the soul’s struggle in its pursuit of virtue.80 Consequently, when Ambrose tells the catechumens that “the [soul] is what we are; the [body] is what belongs to us,” he imitates what he understands Paul to say in Romans 7. That is, we are our soul—the inner man—that recognizes the goodness and truth of the law of God and desires to live in accordance with that law. For the rational soul that would control the body and cleave to God is that remnant of the goodness of our original creation. Thus, when Ambrose speaks of the body as something not proper to us, he refers not to corporeal existence generally speaking but to that in the body that the corruption of sin adheres to. It is this corrupt body that is alien to our proper identity. Ambrose’s identification of the soul as the true self (Isaac 2.3) with Paul’s inner man follows Origen, who in his Commentary on the Song of Songs warns his readers of the danger that illicit love for a seducer, rather than the legitimate bridegroom, can overtake the soul. Yet Ambrose’s identification of the soul with the inner man is consistent with his view of the regenerative work of baptism. In the spiritual renewal of human nature through the anointing of Christ’s Spirit in the sacraments, Christ places his seal, that is, his Spirit, upon the soul such that faith may shine forth from the image of God.81 Waters

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of the font touch the body, but the outpouring of the Spirit in baptism restores the divine image to the soul. Likewise, he describes the body of Christ in the Eucharist as spiritual since it feeds and strengthens the substance of the soul.82 Although more will be said about the regenerative work of baptism upon the soul in chapters 5 and 6, the critical point here is that when Ambrose speaks of the soul as the true self, he speaks not only in anthropological terms. Rather, he is commenting upon human nature as it is reconstituted through the work of Christ in the Incarnation and our initiation into the body of Christ through the sacraments. Consequently, the soul that is the true self is the soul in whom the divine image is restored at baptism. This soul is the inner man of Romans 7. If we return to the catechetical homilies, we will see that Ambrose’s distinction between the soul that is the true self and our corrupt and alien nemesis that is the outer man or the body of death serves an important rhetorical function. He uses the soul/body and inner/outer language to teach the catechumens to shift their thoughts from external goods that please the body’s senses to goods of God that they encounter inwardly in the soul. In saying that we are our souls and not the bodies that we possess, his point is that an individual’s proper beauty is not the transitory beauty of the body. True beauty is found in the soul, which can share in those virtues that reflect the beauty of the divine archetype and are discernible only by the intellect. Moreover, he insists that those who are attracted to the comeliness of our outward appearance love us only for the superficial and fleeting beauty of our body and so do not, rightly speaking, love us. Ambrose’s assumption is that what is real is that which endures. To be sure, as creatures who by definition are not eternal, our soul does not possess a beauty like God’s, eternal and perfect. Nonetheless, the beauty of the soul outlasts the radiance of youthful beauty, the pursuit of which is vain. Indeed the vanity of bodily beauty is not limited to the body itself, but includes all perishable things.83 Ambrose’s point is that the catechumen should seek that beauty in herself and in others that is not subject to decay with the mere passage of time. Moreover, she should seek fellowship with those who are capable of recognizing and loving that proper beauty. Among the catechumens who were wealthy, this argument was a clever rhetorical move. On the one hand, he issued a warning to the wealthy of Milan against the foolishness of adorning themselves with the fleeting beauty of jewelry or opulent villas. Even more foolish than amassing possessions that are of no benefit to the soul is the vanity of building expensive tombs, which house not the soul but only our bodily remains.84 On the other hand, his assertion that those who love only the outward forms of beauty do not love us for who we really are appeals to the experience of those wealthy citizens with whom

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friendship is sought by many, not out of genuine love of them as individuals, but to achieve some material or social advantage.85 Therefore, Ambrose implies they will be properly valued according to their virtue in the community of Christians who are concerned not with their external appearances and possessions but with their soul. In sum, Ambrose’s identification of the individual’s true self with the soul is undeniably dependent upon stock arguments from the Platonist tradition and classic passages from Plotinus’s Enneads. Yet he shows remarkably little interest in the philosophical arguments per se. Rather, as a Christian bishop he appropriates the ideas to serve his rhetorical and pedagogical task of instructing catechumens and setting a model of catechesis for his priests. Therefore, he does not try to justify his claims sola ratione but makes his argument from Scripture, especially his reading of Paul’s account of the inner man of Romans 7. What appears to be an opposition of soul and body is, for Ambrose, merely his account of the tension that Paul describes between the inner man reborn in baptism and the body of death. Thus Ambrose’s anthropology—his description of human nature and the human condition—is framed within the narrative of salvation. The inner man is the divine image that God fashioned in the soul in the beginning and where Christ places the seal of his likeness in baptism. By this image, the soul is able to participate in God, to come into God’s presence, and to have the divine image continually renewed. Thus the soul is the self, not simply because it is by nature immortal and so survives the body’s reduction to dust in death, but because the soul can participate in the One who is life itself. When Ambrose tells his catechumens that the soul is who they are, he is not drawing a dualistic division between body and soul. Rather, he is teaching them that with baptism comes a new understanding of the self. The baptized Christian puts to death her former preoccupation with the externals of bodily beauty and physical possessions, and cares for the soul that enjoys communion with God and so comes to reflect the unfading beauty of God. Therefore, one cannot understand Ambrose’s full account of the soul without understanding the soul’s reformation and reorientation in baptism. To this subject I return in my discussion of the life of contemplation and the Plotinian “inward turn” in chapter 4. Although Ambrose insists that the soul is the self and the body is the soul’s instrument or tool, it would be a misunderstanding to construe this as a denigration of the body. On the contrary, Ambrose conceives of the Christian life, not as a retreat from the world into the private space of the soul, but as living as a fully engaged member of the community of faith and a citizen of the world. Consequently, when he says that the body is the tool of the soul, Ambrose means that the body becomes the mechanism by which the goals of the soul are accomplished in the world. The life of the soul is lived

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out in the world through the body. Such a view of the Christian life presupposes the fundamental unity of body and soul. To understand how the body is the mind’s instrument, we need to examine Ambrose’s conception of the unity of the higher rational faculties of the soul and the soul’s appetites or bodily passions.

2 Essential Unity of Soul and Body Ambrose’s Hylomorphic Theory

For Aristotle, a thing is what it does: the human soul animates the body in accordance with its range of powers and so makes it a proper human body. Therefore, the soul is the form or actualizing principle of the body. Aristotle illustrates the idea using the analogy of the eye and vision. Even as vision is the activity of the eye, so is soul the activity of the body. The eye without vision ceases to be an eye and the body without the soul ceases to be a living organism.1 Every natural body is a compound of form and matter: matter (hylē) that possesses only potentiality until it is given specific shape (morphē) or form (eidos). Within this hylomorphic view of the person, the soul as first principle is not only the formal cause (the cause of one’s existence) and the efficient cause (the cause of mental and physical movement), but also the final cause. The soul supplies the body with its purpose and orders the body’s movement to that end.2 “Like a highly skilled artisan, the soul leads the body in its service where it will, fashions out of it the form it has chosen, and makes the virtues it has willed resound in it.”3 The soul is the form of the body in the sense that its virtues or lack of virtues determine the actions of the body. The ends established by the soul determine what the body is and what it does. In his account of the body’s instrumental relation to the soul, Ambrose clearly shares Aristotle’s view that the soul is both the formal cause of the body in that it is the animating or actualizing principle and the final cause as that which determines the end to which our bodily actions are directed. Yet Aristotle’s is not

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the only version of the hylomorphic account of the body and soul that may be in the background of Ambrose’s anthropology. As we have already seen, Plotinus, too, explicitly employs a hylomorphic model to describe the relationship of the soul and body: “But the other part [the soul] is the most important and [is] the man himself; if it is this, then it [the soul] is related to the body as form is to matter or the user is to a tool.”4 Plotinus’s hylomorphic anthropology is derived from his account of the emanation of the cosmic Soul (Psychē) from Mind or Intellect (Nous). Soul is the creative impulse that arises from the Intellect’s vision of the beauty of the One—a vision not of the One in its absolute simplicity and unity but as “unity in multiplicity.” The Intellect’s vision of the One in multiplicity is its vision of the Forms.5 Soul is the creative desire or appetite of the Intellect aroused by its love of the Beautiful. While Intellect contemplates the beauty of the One, Soul is the desire to communicate the beauty of the Forms to chaotic and unformed matter, fashioning it into a likeness of the Forms that comprise the Intellect’s vision of the One.6 Thus, in the case of the individual, her soul (an extension of the cosmic Soul) communicates the beauty of the Forms to the Matter of her body, but can only do so by exercising its rational nature to contemplate the Forms, which it then reflects. Naturally, therefore, the soul focused upon the beauty of the Forms takes on a resemblance to the Divine beauty that it contemplates, and the character of the soul is informed by what it thinks about. Since the soul gives form to the matter of the body by ordering its activities, the beauty of the soul is ultimately reflected in the beauty of the body, a beauty that is moral and made manifest in virtuous actions. The outward form of the soul’s life in the body is an index of the beauty of the rational soul.7 Thus the soul’s two duties are interrelated: the soul must set its thoughts upon the Forms and at the same time govern the body.8 Matter that is not mastered by the rational soul and conformed to the pattern of reason (that is, the Forms), loses form and beauty and so returns to the ugliness of formless prime matter.9 This is precisely what happens when the soul neglects the highest activity of its rational nature—contemplation of the Divine. The danger the soul faces is that in being attentive to the body it will become so distracted by bodily needs and sensual beauty that it fails to be attentive to the intelligible beauty of the Forms. This marks the beginning of the soul’s corruption. For when the soul focuses upon the unstable beauty of material things, its character is informed by the ugliness and instability of matter and it fails to govern the body according to the principle of reason.10 Therefore, in order for the soul to govern the body by conforming the body to the principle of reason, it must be moderate in its involvement with the body and sensual pleasures so that it may remain sufficiently detached to contemplate the Forms.11

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Ambrose’s hylomorphic view of human nature more closely resembles that of Plotinus than that of Aristotle. He shares Plotinus’s concern for the tension of the human condition between living in the world and remaining cognizant that our life is in God. As an embodied creature, the Christian must attend to her own body’s needs, as well as her duties to human society, but at the same time, she must not let her soul become so preoccupied with bodily and worldly concerns that she becomes distracted and forgets that its life is hidden with Christ in heaven. In De bono mortis, Ambrose contrasts the way of the world that is filled with hidden snares (Ps. 141:4) with the Way that the Christian follows. Explaining how we follow the Way of Christ, he appeals to Romans 8:7, arguing that we die to the world (i.e., “the wisdom of the flesh that is hostile to God”) in order that we might live according to the Spirit of Christ and so be subject to God (Ps. 61:2 [LXX]). The way of the world that is characterized by greed and the love of luxury is the direct result of the soul’s involvement in bodily affairs that produces a compassio or “sympathy” between soul and body. By compassio, Ambrose means the reciprocating influence of soul and body; what happens to the body has potential consequences for the soul. What touches the body also touches the soul through the senses. “For one who sees is much affected by what he sees, and one who hears by what he hears.”12 As with Plotinus’s account of the fall of the soul due to its entanglements with the body, for Ambrose this problematic compassion of the soul and body results in an inversion of the hierarchical relationship of soul and body and a corruption of both: For if there is a joining, the flesh [caro], which is the lesser element, becomes better than the soul, which is greater, because the soul gives life to the body [corpori], but the flesh [caro] pours death into the soul . . . the very nature of each is brought into disorder. And so the soul receives into itself the insensibility of the dead body, and the body performs all the functions of the soul.13 Here the “flesh” that “pours death into the soul” cannot be distinguished from the body. For the flesh is synonymous with “the body of death”—the body in its corrupt condition that actively resists the law of the mind and that, as we shall see, corrupts and co-opts the intellect—and as a result of the joining of rational soul with the body, disorder ensues. Thus, the soul, instead of seeking after virtue and the goods of God, follows the desires of the pleasure-seeking body, which in turn no longer enjoys the health that is the reward of moderation. In this way Ambrose is able to use a Plotinian hylomorphic theory of the soul and body to explain how the body becomes the “body of death” (Rom. 7:24): the disordered relation of soul and body that results from the soul’s turn from God

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leads to the mutual corruption of body and soul as the soul cannot give life to the body and the body’s attraction to sensual pleasure “pours death into the soul” by warring against the judgment of the mind. Although Ambrose’s hylomorphic anthropology follows Plotinus’s, his account differs on one major point. Plotinus sees the fall of the soul as virtually inevitable;14 however, Ambrose does not see the corruption of both the soul and body as inherent to the union of soul and body and thus inevitably leading to the soul’s falling away from God. Explaining how the body of death “wars against the mind” (Rom. 7:23) due to the disorder of soul and body, Ambrose then makes the point that this corruption is characteristic of sinful humanity and not of the natural relation of soul and body: “[D]o not think that disorder occurs merely because the soul is infused into the body. Take for example the gift of light, for the light is poured out upon the earth and yet is not confounded with it. And so let the working of elements whose nature is unlike not be confounded, but let the soul be in the body to give it life, to rule and enlighten it.”15 Thus the natural and appropriate union of soul and body is likened to the sunlight that permeates the atmosphere, illuminating and giving life to the earth, but which is not “attached” to the world in such a way that the nature of the light is changed. So, too, the soul should permeate the body, filling it with life but without being trapped in the body by its desire for bodily things. This metaphor of sunlight and the earth illustrates both Plotinian and Ambrosian hylomorphism: the soul gives life to the body by being in the body and yet is able to govern the body rightly only by remaining sufficiently detached from the pleasures of the body that it may properly be focused upon God. In this way the soul’s nature is not confounded in that it remains oriented to God. Likewise, the body’s nature is properly ordered according to the moderating rule of the rational soul. Within Ambrose’s hylomorphic view of soul and body, there is an unavoidable compassion (compassio) that is appropriate between the soul and body. Quoting Jesus’ expression of emotion, “My soul is sorrowful, even unto death” (Matt. 26:38, Mark 14:34), Ambrose explains that the soul’s disposition is affected by its compassion with the body. Presumably, he associates fear of death with our natural impulse for self-preservation (that is, a preservation of the body’s existence since the soul is immortal) and our aversion to bodily pain. Yet the soul controls how this compassion is expressed just as a singer controls the tone and melody of her song. “The soul too, playing in moderation on the body as if on a musical stringed instrument, strikes the passions of the flesh as if they were notes. . . . Thus it produces music in euphonious accord with a virtuous way of life.”16 This view of the soul’s compassion for the body illustrates how Ambrose sees the proper psychosomatic unity of human life. Apatheia, in

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the extreme sense of total absence of emotion, is an impossible goal. As embodied creatures, we will be moved in our souls by our bodily experiences or even by the recollection or anticipation of physical activities. Yet it is precisely because the soul can be so affected by the body that the soul must control the body in such a manner that the body does not excessively or inappropriately influence it. But when the soul governs the body according to reason, our lives are characterized by a harmonic compassion of soul and body.

Under the Rule of Reason: The Passions within Ambrose’s Tripartite Soul When Ambrose contrasts the harmony of body and soul with the conflict between the two or speaks of the body as the instrument of the soul, he is at times thinking of the physical body—our muscle tissue, bones, limbs, and vital organs. For the physical body is both the locus of decay and suffering and the instrument that performs acts of virtue. Whether following God where he leads (Abraham) or fleeing from a seductress (Joseph) or binding up a patient’s wounds (the Good Samaritan) or enduring physical abuse at the hands of a persecutor (Jesus), these are all virtuous actions that require a cooperative integrity of soul and body. Discomfort in the body indicates disharmony between soul and body, whereas health, such as that perfect health to which the saints shall be restored at the resurrection, indicates harmony. While Ambrose does discuss the healing transformation of “the body of death” that comes at the resurrection, he devotes more attention to the question of the moral unity of soul and body that is characteristic of a virtuous life. However, it is perhaps something of a misnomer to speak of conflict in the sense of the soul and body seeking different ends. In Ambrose’s anthropology, one typical of his day, the body does not actually do or seek anything except as it is moved by the animating soul. Therefore, moral unity is not, properly speaking, harmony of the soul and body but harmony between competing faculties or impulses of the soul that have different orientations. In other words, the soul’s higher, rational faculties were made by God to apprehend and seek the invisible goods of God. The soul’s lower faculties, its appetites, serve the body’s needs for food, sleep, a mate for reproduction, and so forth. Because these appetites are oriented to the physical needs of life, Ambrose often calls them “the passions of the body.” Therefore, when Ambrose speaks of the body in either conflict or harmony with the soul, he means the bodily appetites. In Abraham, Ambrose speaks simply of conflict or harmony between the “rational” (rationabilis)—denoting the soul’s intellectual faculties or mind—and the “the nonrational” (irrationabilis)—corresponding to

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the senses, bodily appetites, and emotions.17 Therefore, to understand Ambrose’s conception of the moral harmony of body and soul, it is essential to examine his view of the structure and dynamics of the soul’s various faculties and the relation of the intellectual faculty to the appetites. In book VII of his commentary on Luke, Ambrose is troubled by Jesus’ prophecy that his preaching, far from bringing peace, will break the unity of a household, pitting son against father and mother against daughter (Luke 12:51– 53). Not only do these words seem to overturn the fifth commandment, “Honor thy father and mother,” but they appear to contradict both Paul’s description of Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, when he calls Jesus “our peace” (Eph. 2:14), and Jesus’ own declaration of peace to the disciples during the farewell discourse in John (14:27).18 Ambrose resolves the conundrum by explaining the “religious meaning” of the text: honor should be given to our parents so long as greater honor and deference are given to God our creator.19 However, to this meaning of the passage, Ambrose adds a “deeper meaning” or “mystical” sense that illuminates the relation of the soul and body. Focusing on Jesus’ description of the division of the household as “three set against two,” Ambrose explains that the household symbolizes the individual. While it is common to speak of the body and soul as two separate things, in fact they are one, and the household is a single unit even as the man is a psychosomatic unity. Although the body and soul are two distinct natures, yet they are truly one when soul and body “agree”; that is, when the body serves and is subject to the soul in submission to the law of God.20 The “three set against two” is a mystical reference to the three chief dispositions or feelings (affectiones) of the soul “in the body”: the rational (rationabilis), the appetitive (concupiscibilis), and the impetuous (impetibilis).21 These affectiones Ambrose explicitly equates with Plato’s threefold division of the soul into reason (logistikon), spirit (thymikon), and appetite (epithymētikon). Yet in order to appreciate Ambrose’s account of the psychosomatic unity of the person, it is necessary to notice how he modifies Plato’s model of the tripartite soul. Plato’s descriptions of the soul as tripartite in Republic and Phaedrus, though quite different accounts, mark a significant development in his psychology. In Phaedo and other early writings on the soul, he argues that the soul must be utterly simple in order to be immortal.22 Thus, he locates the nonrational impulses or emotions, such as desire and anger, in the body. To be free from the body at death is to be liberated from the passions that hamper the rational soul’s contemplative search for knowledge and wisdom.23 In Republic, Plato introduces his theory of the tripartite division of the soul: reason, spirit, and appetite.24 Reason (logistikon), the highest faculty, is capable of transcending the many particular goods of the material world and grasping

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the intelligible Good. The spirited faculty (thymikon) and the appetitive faculty (epithymētikon) serve the needs of the body. The spirited faculty, following the legislation of sovereign reason, justly orders the soul by marshaling the soul’s appetitive drive to pursue and attain those goods judged appropriate by reason while at the same time reining in the nonrational appetites.25 The impulses of the appetitive faculty are not bad. Yet because the appetites either are inclined to excess in their desire for things that are sensually pleasing or are reluctant to endure hard or unpleasant demands of duty, their impulses need to be held in check or moderated by the power of self-control that resides with the spirited faculty. Thus Plato’s political model in Republic offers a description of the soul’s structure to explain how the three faculties must work in concert to attain the highest good. Plato’s model of the soul in Phaedrus is a chariot comprised of three parts: a charioteer and two horses. The souls of men are pulled by two horses of very different temperaments and upbringing. One is a white horse of noble character that is naturally inclined to follow the direction of the charioteer on its upward course to the heavens.26 The other is a black beast of ignoble character that is resistant to the charioteer’s commands and instead of pulling the chariot heavenward would pull it down toward the things of the earth.27 Plato’s point with the chariot allegory is twofold. First, he depicts the descent of souls—be it a cosmic fall of souls into embodiment or simply the daily temptation of becoming preoccupied with the material world—as the result of our failure to rein in the downward impulse of vice. Second, the allegory explains why reason is not able to see the heavenly realities more clearly; namely, we do not have a sustained vision of the intelligible world because we are constantly being pulled away from the heavens by the sensually oriented vices of the soul. Only by cultivating virtues strong enough to resist the pull of vice can reason behold its proper object. Plato’s accounts of the soul are, directly or indirectly, background for Ambrose’s description of the soul’s life “in the body.” The soul’s perfection, for Ambrose, is attained when the soul and body exist in a harmonious unity undisturbed by the “passions of the body.” At the outset of his catechetical instruction in the homilies of Abraham, he situates the catechumens’ preparation for Easter baptism within the framework of his theological anthropology. Beginning by interpreting God’s instructions to Abraham to “Go forth out of thy land and out of thy kindred” (Gen. 12:1) to mean that Abraham and his audience should “depart . . . from the habitation of this land, viz. our body . . . and from bodily enticements and delights,”28 Ambrose proceeds to explain that, analogically, the soul should leave its habitation in the body. However, Ambrose refines the metaphor of leave taking, explaining that the soul “must

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unyoke and separate the rational part [the mind] . . . from the nonrational part [the senses],”29 and thereby overcome “all the passions of the body and the limitations of the senses whereby we are cheated and deluded.”30 However, salvation does not come by separation of the nonmaterial substance of the soul from the material substance of the body at death. On the contrary, the soul and body shall be redeemed together.31 Such redemption is not delayed until the resurrection, for Ambrose interprets Abraham’s wealth “in cattle, silver and gold” (Gen. 13:2) to refer to his mastery of the nonrational bodily senses, thereby making the nonrational elements of the soul rational.32 Abraham is rich because he is able to harness the potential good of the nonrational faculties for virtue. Whether the bodily senses, like dumb cattle, prove profitable or self-destructive depends upon the wielding of reason, like the directing of cattle by skilled herdsmen.33 Ambrose’s understanding of the harmony between the soul and the bodily passions or impulses is not based on a simplistic view of reason’s autocratic dominion over the soul’s lower faculties. Rather, he depicts the intellect and the nonrational affectiones of desire and irascibility as working together in a constructive tension necessary for virtue. In his discussion in De officiis of doing all things in “due measure” (honestas) that is characteristic of priestly decorum, Ambrose describes the psychological dynamic between reason (intellectus) and the impulses (impetus) arising from the appetitive faculty (appetitus). Having said that, one needs to be conscious of the forces that affect the soul, especially potentially sudden, violent movements of impulse, he elaborates: This force, though, is actually twofold in character. One side is to be found in impulse [appetitu], the other in reason [ratione]. The job of reason is to restrain impulse, to bring it into subjection, to lead it where it will, and to put it through a process of careful instruction, as it were, to make it understand what it needs to do and what it needs to avoid, so that it becomes submissive to reason, as an animal is submissive to a good trainer [domitrici].34 Here reason is compared to a domitrix who domesticates animals by teaching them to be submissive to her will. As we saw earlier, Plato presents the intellect, represented as the guardian or the charioteer, as using the spirited faculty, represented by the auxiliaries or the horse of noble breeding, as a counterforce to constrain the power of the appetitive faculty. For Ambrose, the intellect itself is the counterforce that restrains the appetitive impulses. Whereas the appetites generate motion and activity, the intellect can discern the truth, essential in apprehending the moral good, which is not obvious but must be sought by unhurried reflection. Consequently, the deliberation of the intellect “diffuses a

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calmness and stillness over us” that cools the fiery impulse of the appetites. Ambrose explains, “this is the way we are formed, so that the thought of good things comes naturally to our mind, and impulse submits to reason—so long as we are genuinely keen to concentrate our mind upon ensuring that what we do is seemly.”35 The good thoughts that “come naturally to our mind,” whereby the impulses are reined in and calm is restored in the soul, likely refer to the mind’s knowledge of the natural law. In Jacob, Ambrose explains how the mind counters the heat of “burning concupiscence” by “channel[ing] the emotions elsewhere”:36 For indeed, when God created man and implanted in him moral laws and feelings [mores sensusque], at that time He established the royal rule of the mind over man’s motions, so that all his feelings and emotions [sensus motusque] would be governed by its strength and power. God added this to His creature’s beauty, that He would mold man’s very mind with divine precepts and fashion it with the teachings of wisdom; with these man would know what he must avoid and realize what he must choose.37 The mind’s imperium is exercised over the emotions. When we are mindful of the higher goods of God as contained in the natural or implanted knowledge of the divine law (mores), the appetites are then oriented by the intellect to God. Informed by thoughts of God’s will and goodness, our appetites are not as likely to be inflamed to action by any momentary experiences such as pleasure or irritation. Ambrose explains that being centered upon the Good and desiring to act in conformity with God’s will prevents us from giving undue significance to any lesser good that might arouse immoderate desire or anger. The goal of reason’s control over the appetites is not their extirpation, but their restraint and transformation. In Jacob, Ambrose makes the case that the restraint of the appetites through virtue is teachable. Through good discourse, the mind learns the value of reason’s careful deliberations that restrain the quick impulse of passion. Through reasoned judgments man exercises the freedom of the will to resist the inclination of emotions toward vice. But Ambrose is quick to qualify the extent of reason’s power over the soul’s emotions (affectiones): Now the gravest form of sinful passion is concupiscence, but reason mitigates [emollit] and restrains it. For it is able to mitigate but cannot uproot it [eradicare], because the soul that is capable of reason is not master of its passions but can only restrain [repressor] them. And it is not possible for the irascible man not to get angry, but only that he

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restrain himself through reason, check his indignation, and withdraw from punitiveness.38 Ambrose here is not saying that the affectiones such as concupiscentia and iracundia in themselves are sinful. On the contrary, pointing to the psalmist’s exhortation, “Be angry but do not sin” (Ps. 4:4), he claims that they are the elements of human nature that lead to sin, such as revenge, but only if uncontrolled by reason. So intrinsic are they to man’s constitution that they cannot be “uprooted” but only restrained. “[W]ho is so great that he can rid himself of bodily passion?”39 Indeed, Ambrose commenting on Psalm 4:5 insists the man who is free from anger, though perhaps thought a milder and gentler person, is in fact no more virtuous than the man who feels anger but successfully checks its violent impulse.40 Although the appetitive and irascible impulses of passion are “often so fixed in our nature and character that [they] simply cannot be uprooted or avoided,” the force and character of passion can be moderated through training.41 When in De officiis he refers to reason as the domitrix, Ambrose implies that reason can domesticate the nonrational appetites. When reason restrains the appetites, holding them with a tight rein, they are no longer resistant to the will of the intellect but become compliant with its commands. Alternatively, reason’s discipline need not be harsh or coercive, but can be a gentle and persuasive force.42 Either way, reason exerts control over these natural impulses by calculating whether it is more advantageous for us to act on our impulse or not.43 Ultimately, Ambrose’s goal is the sublimation or transformation of concupiscence into a holy desire that aids reason in virtuous action. But this end is achieved by a threefold process of domestication that begins with the courage of piety.

Domestication through the Wisdom of Piety The power of reason to restrain the nonrational impulses lies for Ambrose in the intellect’s knowledge of our duty to God, in whom our true advantage lies. Abraham is a common example of the virtuous man who overcomes the impulses of his emotions because he is mindful of the obligations of piety (devotio). When Abraham took Sarah into Egypt, he was naturally afraid that the Egyptians, out of lust for Sarah, would kill him and violate his wife.44 But, Ambrose explains, “[Y]et for all that, reason, or the obligation to honour the vows he made to God [exsequendae devotionis], prevailed with him. So long as he enjoyed God’s favour, he believed, he would be quite safe whatever the circumstances; but if

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he offended the Lord he felt sure that he would not remain unharmed even if he stayed at home. And so it was that reason overcame his impulse [appetitum] and rendered it obedient.”45 Following Plato’s definition of courage as knowing what or who should rightly be feared,46 Ambrose depicts Abraham’s courage in Egypt as being dependent upon reason, which reminds him of the priority of his obligation to obey God’s command. In this way, reason confirms the prudence of acting according to piety (devotio). Similarly in Jacob, Ambrose draws upon the conduct of the mother of the seven martyred brothers (4 Macc. 8–17) to illustrate reason’s restraint of maternal love. When Antiochus failed to persuade the aged Eleazer to eat foods prohibited by the dietary code of Torah, the king took seven brothers “handsome, modest, and noble” (8:3) and offered them the choice between “adopting the Greek way of life”—to gain the king’s friendship and position in the government (8:7–8)—or being tortured and executed (8:9). The brothers refused to eat. While they were tortured, Antiochus required their mother to watch her sons’ suffering, confident that she would break down under extreme grief and sympathy arising from her motherly affection and womanly weakness (15:4–5). The sight of their mother’s emotional distress at their own torment, Antiochus trusted, would weaken her sons’ resolve. Instead, however, of appealing to their regard for her grief, the mother exhorts her youngest, the last to die: “I bore you, I gave you milk to drink, do not lose your excellence” (2 Macc. 7:27). Unlike most mothers who would try to prevent their sons’ martyrdoms, Ambrose says: [S]he considered that her maternal love lay in this, if she could urge her sons to a life that is everlasting rather than a temporal one. Therefore, as a devout mother, she was looking to the struggles in which her sons were engaged. Although her mother’s heart was shaken with compassion, by the zeal of her piety [pietatis studio] she checked her grief. . . . Restraining her natural groans of sorrow [naturae gemitibus], she desired that her sons’ punishment be increased, so that their death might come more quickly . . . but [also] that she might gain them all as joint heirs of death.47 As with Abraham’s taking Isaac to be sacrificed, the mother of the seven sons is not without feeling or emotion. Her virtue is not apatheia in the sense of being free from pathos. Quite to the contrary, Ambrose stresses the depth of grief—“shaken with compassion”—arising from her natural, maternal affection. Indeed, Ambrose takes her “compassion” literally as “suffering with” her sons, for he comments that she “offered in her sons the members of her own body, and it seemed to her that she was undergoing the desired torments

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through her own limbs.”48 Her great virtue lay in her ability to check the impulse of her grief, the impulse to save her sons’ lives, even to the point of not showing her internal struggle and lamentations.49 Maintaining composure is both evidence of her self-mastery and vital for her exhortation to her sons to be credible. Although Ambrose does not attribute to reason the power that checked her emotions, as he does in his explication of Abraham’s trepidations in Egypt, he does say that the mother acted according to the dictates of piety or devotio and with a “zeal for holiness.” Moreover, the mother was able to exhort her sons to preserve their virtue and endure the suffering because she knew the proper end she should desire for her sons was eternal life, which could be gained only by faithfulness in the face of martyrdom.50 Similarly, in another passage from De officiis Ambrose offers a strikingly sympathetic account of Abraham’s emotional conflict over God’s command to sacrifice Isaac: “There he was: a father leading his own son away as a victim; his son was asking him what was happening; his fatherly feelings were being sorely tried but still not overwhelmed; his son kept calling him ‘father,’ piercing his father in the depths of his heart, yet still in no way weakening his pious resolve [devotionem].”51 Ambrose’s description of Isaac’s repeated questions about what was happening to him as his father led the innocent and trusting son off to his death evokes in the reader a sense of the powerful emotions Abraham experienced—the pull of a father’s love for his son. By portraying the palpable force of Abraham’s emotions, Ambrose arouses in his catechumens both sympathy for Abraham’s plight and consequently a deeper appreciation for his piety that is the product of wisdom and courage. Abraham’s piety, his sense of obligation to God, is grounded in his wisdom that recognizes the priority of obeying his Creator’s command over holding onto the good gift of the son (filii gratiam) whom God gave him. Yet Abraham is able to fulfill his pious intention because his courage restrained the impulse of his paternal affections. By holding in check the fatherly impulse to protect the life of his son, reason gives him the courage necessary to act justly and temperately in accordance with the dictates of wisdom. Here Ambrose’s narration of Abraham’s piety and devotion in the sacrifice of Isaac illustrates the relationship of reason and the cardinal virtues that he describes in On Abraham with his adaptation of Plato’s chariot analogy from Phaedrus.52 In On Isaac, Ambrose reinterprets Aminadab’s chariot; now the four horses that pull the chariot are the cardinal virtues, but the charioteer, who guides the soul, harnesses the power of the cardinal virtues with the theological virtues of faith and love.53 Ambrose’s point is that the cardinal virtues are not of themselves sufficient to guide the soul to Christ. For Plato, the impulses of desire proper to the appetitive faculty (epithymētikon) are curbed by an alliance of the

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wisdom of the intellect (logikon) that knows the good and courage of the spirited faculty (thymikon), which is the counterforce that checks the pull of desire. Ambrose depicts the wisdom of Abraham’s piety (devotio) as the source of his courage, which overcomes his personal desires. Given Ambrose’s view of the reciprocity of the virtues, wisdom necessarily certainly entails courage. Yet in his instruction of his catechumens and his priests, Ambrose’s emphasis is on the wisdom of piety that enables Abraham to be obedient to God’s command and so merit a reward: the security of Isaac’s life.

Domestication through the Moderation of Emotion The second way that reason as domitrix domesticates the appetites is by slowing the quickness of our impulse to react. Reason’s repeated use of the firm reins not only makes the emotions docile and readily obedient to its commands, but also makes them more temperate and regulated by means of daily discipline. In the case of anger, reason trains the irascible faculty to be angry at the right time and in the right context. For instance, Ambrose counsels his priests that being angry with oneself for overreacting is appropriate and beneficial, not only because it is a condemnation of one’s own sin, but because it redirects one’s anger from one’s neighbor, against whom we are thereby also less likely to sin.54 Additionally, under the consistent training of reason, the impulses of anger become less virulent and more moderate. While anger cannot be avoided altogether, Ambrose says that “our first aim . . . must be to ensure that, if at all possible, calmness of temperament [tranquillitas] becomes second nature to us [in naturam vertatur]: this can only be achieved through sheer practice, endeavor, and resolve.”55 By reason’s training, the appetites can become so accustomed to restraint that the natural impulse of a quick temper is replaced with the habit of calmness. The cultivation of habitual calmness is vital for the virtuous life. Whereas a person of irascible temperament is apt to act suddenly, impulsively, and without deliberation, the person of a less fiery spirit, in being slow to react, has time to allow for her intellect’s deliberation. Therefore, when she does act, she follows the judgment of reason rather than the impulse of emotion.

Domestication through Sublimation The third form of domestication of the appetitive impulses entails the sublimation of the passions, a harnessing and redirecting of the potentially self-destructive power of the appetites in order to pursue and attain a beneficial end. When the

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intellect makes the impulses of appetite its servant, it arouses a desire for the moral good that sets the soul in motion toward its goal. To be sure, Ambrose is concerned about the dangers inherent in the sudden and rash nature of the appetitive impulse if not controlled by reason—what he called impulses “running ahead” of reason.56 For if we act under the impulsive force of our appetites before reason has time to make a critical judgment of the good we should seek, reason itself is rendered crippled and impotent. “We need to take care, then, that we do not give in to our passions before reason has had a chance to compose our spirit. Very often, anger or distress or the fear of death can paralyze the mind and strike it with some unforeseen blow.”57 Yet he also stresses that without the force of the appetites, apathy or laziness stands to prevent the moral good.58 Not only does reason sublimate the force of the emotions, but it also habituates them to new and holy objects of desire. When Ambrose describes how Christ has torn down the dividing wall that is the cause of internal conflict, the wall he has in mind is the division between the rational and the nonrational, the inward man and the outward man. Christ is our peace in that he has overcome this division and restored in his person harmony between the two. In the Christian, this harmony is achieved when the flesh is submissive to reason and we obey the divine commands. When the soul turns from the pursuit of carnal pleasures and seeks the goods of God that are beyond the senses, then the mind is purified so that it might transform the appetites: [A] pure mind, having doffed the servitude of this world, entices and attracts the body’s senses to its own delights, so that with the use of hearing and reading it feasts on the increase of virtue, and unaware of hunger, is satisfied with the spiritual food of inner strength; indeed, reason is the food of the mind and the noble nourishment of sweetness.59 This is the highest degree of harmony between the soul and the body, the rational and the nonrational, for which man can hope. When our appetites acquire a taste for the sweetness of the intelligible and spiritual, then the nonrational faculties truly become the ally and instrument of the intellect necessary for the pursuit of virtue and obedience to God. This is, for Ambrose, God’s intention for human beings. Yet the human condition and reason’s natural capacity to direct and orient the bodily passions to God are complicated by sin’s corruption of human nature in Adam and Eve’s fall. To understand the struggle between the rational and the nonrational, between the law of the mind and “the body of death” (and to appreciate the regenerative work of baptismal grace for the Christian life of virtue), we need to examine Ambrose’s account of the consequences of the fall.

3 The Body of Death The Legacy of the Fall

The extent of humanity’s capacity for virtue must be assessed against the backdrop of the fall. Although the language of “the fall” is anachronistic when applied to pre-Augustinian theologians, it is nonetheless appropriate to convey the effects of sin upon human nature and the condition of humanity that is contrary to God’s original intention. Ambrose is an interesting figure because of the way he anticipates in certain key respects Augustine’s theory of humanity’s corruption and the transmission of our vitiated nature. Although Ambrose does not provide a full-blown Augustinian view of sin and corruption, he nevertheless depicts man as being in slavery to sin—albeit paradoxically a voluntary slavery—and thus in need of grace to be freed from that condition he often speaks of as, using Paul’s phrase, “the body of death.” The trouble, however, is that Ambrose’s treatment of humanity’s fall from paradise into morality and corrupt concupiscence is sporadic. In De paradiso, he offers an exegesis of Genesis, although its chief aim is to counter a Manichaean interpretation that places the blame for evil upon the Creator,1 and in his Hexameron, he addresses the subject of creation, but, unlike Origen and Augustine,2 does not offer a sustained analysis of Genesis 3 and the consequences of sin. Rather, Ambrose lays out his account of the fall only occasionally when explicating other biblical passages that focus on sin, such as Paul’s second-Adam typology from Romans 5–7 and 1 Corinthians 15. Nevertheless, Ambrose’s

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interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the Two Sons (Luke 15:11–32), which he reads through the lens of 1 Corinthians 15:22, is significant. The prodigal son, like Adam, represents for Ambrose the whole of the human race, and his departure from his father’s house to sojourn in a foreign land resembles the sin of all humanity. However, whereas the prodigal’s life of self-destructive hedonism is a type of humanity’s sin, Adam’s disobedience was not only a type of our sin but was our fall. “Adam was, and we were all in him. Adam was lost, and in him all were lost. Man is refashioned [reformatur] in the man who was lost, and he is made in the likeness of God and restored to his image through divine patience and magnanimity.”3 Not only does Ambrose appeal to Paul’s ascription of the fall of all humanity to Adam (1 Cor. 15:22), but he explains how all fell in Adam because subsequent generations were in Adam. The logic of Ambrose’s position is that of a traducianist anthropology (that is, the view that human nature is passed from generation to generation through the semen, which is the source of the offspring’s soul).4 Since Adam was the prototype and progenitor of the whole human race, all humanity existed in him in potentiality; therefore, the fall not only altered Adam’s nature but corrupted all human nature, and the divine image lost in Adam is lost in us. However extensive or minimal Ambrose believes the effects of the fall to be, he clearly differs with the subsequent view of Pelagius that nature was unaltered by the fall.5 Ambrose’s understanding of the consequences of our being in Adam and falling with Adam is complex as it raises the questions of whether we have inherited merely a corrupted nature or whether we inherited the guilt, as well as the punishment, of Adam’s sin. Based on Ambrose’s discussion of Psalm 48 (LXX), Andrew Lenox-Conyngham contends that Ambrose, unlike Augustine, does not take humanity’s “being mystically present in Adam” to mean that we also share in Adam’s guilt.6 What humanity inherited was the “inclination to sin” (obnoxiam haereditatem)—or the “iniquity of our heel” as spoken of in Psalm 48 (LXX)—rather “than any guilt of our sin [reatum aliquem nostri].”7 This understanding of the “iniquity of our heel” is significant for Ambrose’s practice of foot washing. For Lenox-Conyngham, the washing of the heel signifies our being sacramentally cleansed of the inclination to sin, while baptism washes us of our actual sin. However, such a reading would be hard to square with Ambrose’s insistence that concupiscentia remains, though the neophyte has gained the power to resist it. Moreover, when Ambrose discusses foot washing in De mysteriis, he says of Peter’s request that Jesus wash not only his feet but his whole body: “Peter was clean, but he should have washed his feet, for he has the sin of the first man by succession [de successione], when the serpent overthrew him and persuaded him to error. So his feet are washed, that

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hereditary sins [haereditaria peccata] may be taken away; for our own [nostra propria] [sins] are remitted through baptism.”8 Ambrose makes a distinction between our personal sins, which are forgiven in baptism, and hereditary sin. Yet here, in contrast with Explanatio psalmi 48, Ambrose does not speak merely of an hereditary inclination to sin (obnoxiam haereditatem), but of haereditaria peccata. He makes no terminological distinction between our own sins and our inherited sins; peccata is used for both.9 We, like Peter, receive the hereditary peccata from Adam “by succession,” but they are forgiven by the washing of the feet. Here, hereditary sin seems to imply either the inheritance of guilt or the inheritance of our primal parents’ morality. If the former is the case, one wonders why Ambrose relegates the cleansing of hereditary guilt to the act of foot washing rather than linking it to the death of the old man in the font. What is certain, however, is that Ambrose, in contrast with Pelagius, views Adam’s offspring as having inherited not simply Adam’s bad example but also a corrupt nature and its punishment. One of the critical passages of Scripture in the debate about the character of the fall is Romans 5:12, “Therefore as through one man sin came into the world, and through sin death, and so death passed on into all men, in whom [in quo] all men sinned.” The controversy surrounds how to interpret in quo. In both the Vetus Latina and the Vulgate, the Greek idiom eph’ ho (here the pronoun is neuter), which means “because,” is incorrectly interpreted “in whom” (the pronoun taken to be masculine). Later, Augustine took in quo to mean that all humanity sinned in Adam and so were punished with physical death.10 Surprisingly, in De mysteriis Ambrose does not mention Romans 5:12. The one place in his corpus where Ambrose directly quotes the verse is in his exposition of Luke 4:33—Jesus’ healing in the synagogue of the man with an unclean spirit—where the man is seen as a type of the Jews who have been deceived and entangled by the devil. However, Christ the physician will heal the man through “the sacrament of our common salvation” (summed up in 1 Cor. 15:22).11 Amplifying Paul’s description of Adam’s fallen condition, Ambrose states that due to Adam’s sin, the spirit is “trapped, and burned by bodily fevers, it ails through its suffering with the flesh.”12 As we shall see, the fever here refers to corrupt concupiscence resulting from the soul’s disordered relationship with the body, which also experiences the pains of mortality. Who can heal the spirit of man and save the lives of other children of Adam’s race? Neither the prophets nor angels, but only Christ, who himself escaped death. To support this claim Ambrose cites Romans 5:12 and then concludes, “Thus that man’s [sc. Adam’s] fault is the death of all.”13 Here, humanity inherits from Adam mortality as the result of being cut off from the tree of life rather than sharing in the actual guilt of Adam’s sin.14

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When Ambrose writes, “Man [mankind] is refashioned in the man [Adam] who was lost, and . . . restored to his image through divine patience and magnanimity,” he is not clear to what degree the imago Dei itself was lost.15 Yet by insisting that the divine similitude is “restored” in those who were lost, he at the very least conveys that the image is corrupted in some way by the fall. In Hexameron, Ambrose explains that Adam’s loss of the image entails the loss of “the splendor of grace and the reflection of its paternal pattern in nature,” which God painted upon the soul.16 “Adam before he sinned conformed to this image. But after his fall he lost that celestial image and took on one that is terrestrial. Let us flee from this image which cannot enter the city of God. . . . An unworthy image does not enter there.”17 When Adam set his mind upon the earthly and mundane rather than upon God, he lost the divine image by replacing the “flashing beauty of virtue and splendor of piety” with the image of earthly things. Clearly, Ambrose’s assumption is that the soul mirrors the object of its contemplation, so Adam’s turning from God resulted in his soul mirroring the earthly rather than the divine. Here Ambrose may well be following the Plotinian view that the soul derives its beauty by contemplation of the beauty of the One but becomes distorted when it becomes entangled in sensual things, reflecting the inherently chaotic and formless character of matter.18 However, unlike many other Christian theologians, Ambrose does not use this model to explain the corruption of the body, even though this would fit with his hylomorphic anthropology.19 For Ambrose, the imago Dei can refer both to a structural or natural likeness to God20 and to an active reflection of God’s holiness by conformity to God’s will.21 Indeed, the structural likeness to God gives us the capacity to imitate and so bear the image of God’s goodness according to our will and actions.22 For Ambrose, the divine image is “lost” because sin, which is contrary to the goodness and beauty of God, has defaced the divine likeness in which humanity was made and has also compromised the soul’s ability to approach God and mirror the divine. Thus the sin of the day-old infant, which is addressed in Ambrose’s discussion of God’s words to Moses, entails a lack of holiness that cannot stand before God or know God: “Who shall see my face and live?” (Exod. 33:20). In contrast with the just, who will have the reward of seeing God “face to face,” we cannot now see God because of sin. Later “we will be allowed to look upon the glory of God, and his face will be revealed, but now we are enveloped in the thick substance of the body and covered over by the stains and pollution of the flesh, as it were, and we cannot see with total clarity. . .  . For our eyes cannot bear the sun’s rays and whoever turns too long in that direction is generally blinded.”23 Here Ambrose offers not a phenomenological description of sin, but a description of human nature as it is corrupted by sin. The body (that is, the body of death that has not yet been reconstituted by the resurrection)

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veils the soul, not as a transparent or diaphanous raiment, but as a thick substance through which the heavenly rays cannot easily penetrate. Moreover, to sinful human nature (which Ambrose describes as stained and polluted “flesh”) adheres impurities that obscure our vision or the pollution of sin that renders humanity foul and makes unendurable the fiery purity of God’s holiness. Thus corrupt human nature cuts us off from the vision of God, which is only to be regained through death and resurrection.24 Ambrose expounds upon the loss Adam suffered in the fall in his allegorical reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan, arguing that Jerusalem represents paradise and Jericho stands as a figure of the world to which Adam’s nature was exiled.25 Lest his language of exile be misconstrued as spatial— similar to that used by Origen to account for the fall of rational beings from heaven—Ambrose explains that this exile was not a change of place, but of conduct. As a result of Adam’s disobedience, “[H]e was changed from that Adam who enjoyed eternal blessedness when he turned aside to worldly sins, fell among thieves, among whom he would not have fallen if he had not strayed from the heavenly command and rendered himself vulnerable to them.”26 What is particularly interesting is that Ambrose sees Adam’s conduct as effecting a change in human nature. It is not just Adam and his descendants who are exiled from paradise: it is Adam’s nature. Thus the blessedness of paradise is beyond the grasp of human nature in its current condition, for human beings are now vulnerable to the attack of the “thieves,” symbolic of Satan.27 Obviously, Adam and Eve were not immune to deception even in paradise, but the key point for Ambrose is that in their present condition, Adam’s descendants are weakened and vulnerable to Satan’s deceit in a way they would not have been had Adam not disobeyed God.28 How did Adam’s disobedience render him and his progeny more vulnerable to deception and sin? Quoting 2 Corinthians 11:14 to describe the thieves as figures of angels of darkness who disguise themselves as angels of light, Ambrose contends that when Adam fell into the trap of Satan’s deception, he and his descendants became more susceptible to the deceptive enticements of bodily pleasure. Commenting on Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, Ambrose says, “[W]e must understand the soundness of spirit and body, so that the spirit which toiled in deceits of the serpent is set free. For the soul would never be conquered by the body, unless it were first tempted by the devil. For since the soul drives, quickens, and governs the body, how would it be snatched captive into his snares, unless it were itself bound by the fetter of a mightier power?”29 Ambrose’s assumption here is that in paradise the mind and body existed in a harmonious union under the dominion of reason, and that under the sovereign rule of the intellect the nonrational faculties were not strong

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enough to overthrow the mind. Therefore, the cause of the fall lay not with the body but with an errant judgment of the intellect that had been misled by the serpent’s fallacious argument. Without commenting as to how the devil deceived Eve, Ambrose explains that the devil’s deceptions awakened desires that are like a fever that overpowers the judgment of the mind. Taking the fever that afflicted Simon Peter’s mother-in-law as typical of such desire, Ambrose explains: [O]ur flesh ailed with various fevers and offences, and burned with the unruly temptations of diverse desires. . . . Thus, the one fever inflames the spirit, the other the body; for our lust is a fever whereby desires are kindled. . . . For our extravagance is a fever, our hasty temper is a fever, which although they are vices of the body, nevertheless involve fire in the bones and invade the mind, spirit, and senses. The mind is first distressed by the Devil’s arts. Indeed, the persuasion of the Devil is a fruitful field, a garment, a collar. The grace of honours, the exaltation of powers, the sweetness of feasts, the form of a harlot, is a trap of the Devil.30 Thus the devil used the image of these temporal goods—not just sensual objects but abstract goods such as prestige and power—to inflame the rational and nonrational faculties with the fever of desire. At times these images are from immediate perceptions of beautiful things in the world; at other times they are devilish suggestions to the human imagination. In On Isaac, Ambrose says that although the rational soul is more excellent in nature than the body, it can become corrupted by the nonrational and so abandon moderation and willfully pursue the bodily pleasures to which it is inclined. Then he comments, “[O]r else [the soul] is deceived by the imagination, turns to matter, and is glued to the body. Thus its visibility is hindered, and it is filled with evil, for while it is intent upon evil, it fills itself with vices and grows unrestrained from the want of goodness.”31 Ambrose’s logic is this: once the mind has been deceived by the devil, who focuses the mind upon the apparent good of some worldly object, the mind becomes attached to that object by its desire, and in turn this desire prevents the mind from seeing the deception. Thus Satan’s initial deception turns the mind from the things of God to the lesser goods of the world and so creates the fever of desire that compromises the soul’s rational powers of right discernment. Ambrose’s exposition of the Good Samaritan enumerates what losses Adam’s nature suffered as a result of its exile from paradise.32 Taking advantage of the image of the thieves, he exhorts his readers to beware lest Satan and his minions strip them of that nature renewed in baptism as they had stripped

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Adam of his primal nature.33 As punishment for his disobedience, Adam was stripped of the garment of heavenly grace and of a heavenly command that would have protected him from the devil’s deception had he used the grace rightly (the command in question is likely the order not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). In addition to losing protection from Satan’s deceptions and the gift of immortality, Adam lost “the garment of faith”—Ambrose’s assumption being either that faith was among the constitutive features of Adam’s nature or that faith, like immortality, was a gift added to human nature. Either way, his conclusion is the same: faith was lost in the fall, and so is not a constitutive element of our exiled nature, but must be returned to humanity as a gift in baptism. While Ambrose sees that the loss of the grace enjoyed in paradise makes our exiled and fallen nature vulnerable, he also sees corrupt desire further weakening us. In his explanation of the impotence of the old law to redeem humanity, he says that circumcision—that excision of the fleshly covering—on the eighth day symbolizes the cleansing of sin and so prefigures the “future cleansing of all guilt at the resurrection.” Ambrose explains that the cleansing of offenses (that is, our “entanglement in inextricable vices”) can be accomplished fully only by resurrection because entanglement in vice is the result of weaknesses of the body and mind “bent by the longing for sin.”34 Moreover, Ambrose intimates that corrupt desire is related to the manner of human procreation. For in his discussion of Jesus’ circumcision, Ambrose explains that the law prescribed the presentation of the child for circumcision in order that every male circumcised of vices may be righteous and judged worthy of God’s favor. But Christ was the fulfillment of prophetic law (“every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) since he alone was “truly holy, because undefiled. . .  . For no union with a husband unlocked the secrets of [Mary’s] maidenhead, but the Holy Spirit poured unstained seed into her inviolate womb.”35 What is the cause of the stain upon the seed of all others conceived by the normal means? Is it that the seed carries the stain of the corrupt nature passed on from the father or does the stain come in the act of coitus? Ambrose is inconclusive, saying, “[B]y the strangeness of [Jesus’] undefiled birth [he] has not suffered the pollutions of earthly corruption, but dispelled them by heavenly majesty.”36 The reference to the “undefiled birth” clearly refers not to Jesus’ delivery but to his conception by the Holy Spirit. If this is the case, it means either that his conception was not defiled by the passion of intercourse or that the birth was undefiled by the transmission of a corrupt nature. In either case, Jesus’ supernatural conception distinguishes him from the rest of Adam’s race: he was not born with a mind overpowered by the fever of corrupt concupiscence and unable to control the body.

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Ambrose also sees the fall as resulting in the loss of man’s innate knowledge of God’s law. In his account of how the body under the dominion of the pure mind can be raised from base lust to become the temple of God, Ambrose says that when the body is subject to the moderating will of the soul, “the flesh returns to its nature” as “when it received the secret place of paradise for an habitation” prior to its corruption “by the poison of the serpent.”37 In other words, the fall disrupts the proper relationship of soul and body. When the body is not rightly ordered by the soul, it is subject to decay and death, infected by the poison of Satan’s deception that aroused the fever of concupiscence. Ambrose thus describes life in paradise as a time before we “knew sacrilegious hunger” and “gluttony,” which in the case of Adam and Eve refers to their longing for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and “lost the memory of the Divine precepts.”38 Thus this sacrilegious hunger, instead of seeking God—the proper object of human desire and appetite—yearns for any lesser good, thereby resulting in a gluttonous desire for bodily food—the improper object of a disordered and excessive appetite. Consequently, we become like Eve and Adam, disregarding God’s prohibition against partaking of the forbidden fruit. The divine precepts “innate in the senses of the soul” are the natural law to which all have access. When the soul apprehends that the natural law governs and orders the body according to it, then the soul and body conform to human nature as God intended it. Yet, Ambrose says, when our misdirected desires, like gluttony, direct our thoughts to base pleasures of the flesh, we ignore the natural law and become more receptive to Satan’s beguiling and misleading speech that panders to these desires. Thus the condition of fallen humanity is in a vicious cycle that began with Adam and Eve. The devil’s deception of Adam and Eve aroused a desire, which like a fever so weakened the mind that it could not discern the truth and make proper moral judgments. The corrupt desire then made them—and us—forget the divine command. By following these sacrilegious desires we become more attached to fleshly pleasure and more forgetful of God’s law. Consequently, the more we are entangled by the desire for earthly delights, which make the mind forgetful of God’s law, the more easily we believe the devil’s lies. Forgetful of God’s law, the mind cannot govern the body and so cannot prevent the body’s decay. Similarly, humanity’s capacity for justice has been compromised by the greed of our first parents. In De officiis, Ambrose describes justice as that “citadel of virtue” in which one’s life is directed toward the needs of others rather than self-indulgence. So justice, for a social animal like man, is a virtue necessary for living together in community and sustaining the social fabric.39 However, although humanity was endowed with an innate sense of justice, we have lost this sensibility both by our own avarice and by primeval greed (prima

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avaritia): “For the fact is, in our desire . . . to outdo others in the wealth that we have, we have removed the character of justice, and we have lost the principle of showing kindness to all in common.”40 Most serious of all the consequences of the fall is the loss of the grace of fellowship with God. In his explanation of the bride’s complaint in Song of Songs—“Do not gaze at me, for I have been made dark. . . . They set me up to be a guard in the vineyards. I did not guard my vineyard” (1:6)—Ambrose says that the voice of the bride is fallen humanity that is lamenting. As “she began to be in want when the fullness of the divine presence was denied to her . . . so she was treated as if she were a hireling who had previously claimed for herself the favor of a richer union.”41 Therefore, instead of enjoying union with God, the rational soul has been darkened by its union with the body and the bodily passions fighting against it, and because of the soul’s association with these passions, it has become a mere hireling exiled to a vineyard that it must guard. Thus the soul no longer enjoys the abundance of grace that comes from being in God’s presence and so experiences the poverty of alienation from God.

Slavery to Sin The consequence of Adam’s sin and the ensuing exile of our nature from paradise is that we have become enslaved to the devil. Such slavery, though entailing the loss of true libertas, is not the result of an absence of choice (voluntas) but reflects the impact of the fall on our power to choose. We do not lose the capacity to choose, but that capacity has been infected by concupiscence or by our inclination to sin. During his discussion of the law in On Jacob, Ambrose exhorts his catechumens to the study of and obedience to the law and the Gospel.42 Obedience brings grace, while disobedience brings guilt. Adam’s disobedience brought death just as Christ’s obedience brought life. Then, as if to disabuse his catechumens of any thought of blaming Adam for our state of sin, Ambrose immediately adds: “It is not that we can attribute our troubles to anything but our own will [nostrae voluntati]. No one is held to guilt unless he has gone astray by his own will. Actions which are imposed on those who resist contain no fault; the malevolence of sin follows upon actions perpetrated voluntarily.”43 The guilt of sin lies not in the action itself but in the will to sin; we are not guilty of coerced actions that are contrary to our will and which we resist with our will. Ambrose does not explain what sort of actions might be imposed upon us against our will, but what is interesting here is that these actions can be distinguished from voluntas. Culpability, therefore, arises when our actions proceed from a voluntas that is contrary to the will of God. The question of guilt

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is not whether one could have acted otherwise but whether one acted according to one’s voluntas. In this context, voluntas does not simply denote a choice to act but a disposition or intention. When we consent to sin—when our voluntas is contrary to God’s will—and we disobey, as did Adam, we find ourselves slaves of sin. Pressing his point that sin lies in the will, Ambrose writes, “Christ chooses for himself the volunteer soldier; the devil buys for himself at auction the volunteer slave [voluntarium servum]. He holds no man bound to the yoke of slavery unless such a one has first sold himself to him at the purchase price of his sins. Why do we blame the flesh [carnem], as if it were weak? Our members are the tools of wrong and the tools of right. . . . And so passion [affectus], not the flesh [caro] is the author of guilt; for the flesh is the servant of the will [voluntatis]. Therefore, let not our will sell us into slavery.”44 Ambrose’s paradoxical description of the human condition as that of a “volunteer slave” of the devil is telling. Our slavery to the devil is voluntary in that it is the result of our will. We will the very sin by which we come under the devil’s power. The result of our voluntary disobedience is that we have lost the autonomy of our will and so now bear the yoke of slavery. Ambrose is not saying that we are slaves to the devil as long as we willfully disobey—as if we could gain our liberty simply by willing rightly. Rather, he is saying that we have by our will—by our choice of disobedience—sold ourselves to sin and to the devil, to whom we are now bound captives. The image of the yoke of slavery conveys a double sense. First, the yoke is a symbol of a burden, specifically, of the passions and death. Second, the yoke conveys loss of freedom; for the slaves under the yoke are not free to go anywhere but where their master herds them. Ambrose expresses this sense of our bondage to sin when he describes in On the Good of Death the dangers of indulging in sensual pleasures. He compares the soul of the sensualist enslaved by bodily pleasure to a tottering and staggering drunk. The sensualist who is intoxicated by sensual pleasure has lost complete self-control or autonomy in choosing the good. The habitual orientation to the pleasures of the flesh thus compromises the judgment and power of the rational soul to govern our desires and impulses. Ambrose offers an account of how the rational soul becomes a slave to sin in his discussion of Romans 7:13–14—“I am carnal and sold under sin.” The exegetical problem that confronts Ambrose is how the law, which is spiritual and beautiful, works death in him (7:13). His answer is, “Because ‘I am carnal and sold under sin,’ I am drawn into guilt against my will. Sin indeed dominates, as if over a slave. Accordingly, I hate sin—and I commit it. The mind hates it, the flesh desires it, but I am in both; with my mind I consent to the law and with my flesh I do that which I do not want.”45 Here our participation in sin and our slavery to sin do not appear to be voluntary, but seem to be contrary to

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our will. Sin is against our will in that the will, Ambrose implies, is an extension of the intellect that grasps the good of the law and hates sin. The key, however, is that in this passage Ambrose is not describing how we become slaves of sin, but what it means for us to be already in slavery “under sin.” So how are human beings in slavery to sin dragged to sin against their will? The answer lies in the effect of concupiscence upon the intellect. “The commandment to which I consent is good, and the mind which chooses what is good, is good. [It is] good for judging [ad judicandum] but is often weak for making resistance, because the body’s desire [corporis appetentia] opposes it [the mind] and leads it captive to the enticements of error.”46 The problem does not lie with a failure to know the moral good. That, Ambrose says, the mind can do. Moreover, it chooses the good prescribed by the law in the sense that it acknowledges that we should act according to the moral good. The problem is that the bodily appetites—our addiction to the sensually pleasing—weaken the power of the rational faculty to govern the nonrational affectus that are oriented to the body. Thus, we are slaves of sin because sinful concupiscence renders the mind too infirm to rule the body and its impulses and so order our action according to the moral good taught by the law.47 In this context, the mind is not master of the body, but a slave of bodily desires. The mind and, by extension, the will are not autonomous but under the yoke of concupiscence that leads into error. Ambrose’s account of how concupiscence’s domination of the mind causes our slavery to sin is consistent with his explanation of Adam and Eve’s fall into sin that we have already examined.48 Before the fall the mind was sovereign. So absolute was its dominion that the rational soul “would never be conquered by the body, unless it was first tempted by the devil . . . unless it was bound by the fetters of a mightier power.” The devil’s deception thus arouses a desire that inflames the spirit and body and so perverts the judgment of the intellect that the mind follows the impulse of desire rather than restraining it.49 Ambrose illustrates this point by recounting the anecdote of a man who was warned by his physician not to have sexual intercourse with his wife lest he go blind: “[I]mpatient with desire and seized by eagerness of lust, [the man] could not be restrained. Fully aware [sciens enim prudensque] that he would lose his sight, in the very heat of burning desire and in his preparation for intercourse, before he lay with his wife, he said, ‘Farewell, friendly light.’ Thus, lust is hotter than fever, and casts down, and inflames more strongly.”50 The critical point here is that the man’s intellect is not rendered wholly blind to the good that he should do or to the negative consequences of his impending action. Of these he is “fully aware.” Yet this knowledge lacks any power. The force of concupiscence is that it makes the lesser good of the momentary and immediate pleasure

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appear the greater good and thereby overpowers the intellect’s judgment of the greater, long-term good. When we are seized with the fever of concupiscence, we do not do the good that we know and approve, but we do the very thing we know to be wrong or harmful. From this perspective, the intellect still knows the moral good. Yet it must be remembered that Ambrose’s purpose in using the anecdote is to illustrate how the force of Satan’s deception managed to overthrow the intellect. Deception entails the confusion of the intellect by making a thing appear more desirable because it is more immediate and so more easily enjoyed. Consequently, the person is conflicted about the competing goods and so is vulnerable to the unholy desire. In the case of Eve, the serpent’s description of the forbidden fruit and the promise that she would be like God distorted her intellect’s judgment of the good and so awakened a desire for the fruit that made her forget God’s prohibition. In the case of the man who would go blind by sleeping with his wife, the desire for his wife obscured the moral judgment of his intellect. Although cognizant of the consequences, in the moment of passion when sinful concupiscence rules, the desire made the immediate but insubstantial good appear the greater good. Thus our moral failings are the result of both a failure of the intellect to govern and of the affections to desire what they should. It is only when the desire is satisfied that the frenzy and fever of concupiscence wear off and the “vision of the inner conscience”— that is, the moral judgment of the intellect—is restored to clarity. Free from the impatient desire that distorts the intellect’s vision, we look back and are ashamed of our actions.51 The intellect is overpowered and made a slave to sin both in the moment of temptation by the desire for an immediate pleasure and over the course of our lives by a habitual desire for pleasure. Thus, even though the immediate sensual temptation no longer exerts its feverish power, the soul has become so habituated to pleasure that the intellect now orders our life and actions to satisfy that desire. Our lives become ordered according to the devil’s lie that has deceived us. In this way, the intellect is under the yoke of sin; for now its analytical skills become tools for the satisfaction of concupiscence. To free us from the yoke of sin, God must, within Ambrose’s account of the human condition and the divine economy, liberate the intellect from the devil’s deception and from the force of sinful concupiscence. Only then can the mind be restored to its proper place of sovereignty and our lives be characterized by the harmonious union of the rational and the nonrational, the soul and the body. In sum, understanding Ambrose’s account of the fall and its consequences is necessary for understanding his anthropology and his moral theory. He repeatedly distinguishes between humanity’s condition in paradise and humanity’s present predicament. In Eden, reason governed the body according

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to its innate knowledge of the divine law, so there was harmonic unity between soul and body, and humanity enjoyed the grace of fellowship with God. After the fall, humanity lacks the integrity of soul and body that Adam and Eve enjoyed and so is more vulnerable to Satan’s deception. The intellect no longer rules with ease. Satan’s deception arouses corrupt desire that obscures the intellect’s recollection of the moral law of nature and so perverts its judgments and weakens its control of the body. Together with mortality, concupiscence is a consequence of the fall. The grace of baptism, however, allows humanity to resist concupiscence. Yet even after baptism, the Christian endures a struggle between the intellect and concupiscence that Paul in Romans 7 describes as a contest of the mind, which grasps the law of God, against the law of the flesh, which resists the good that God wills. In this narrative, Ambrose maintains the classical maxim that to know the good is to do the good and that sin is a failure to judge the good rightly. Yet he adds to the narrative the role of desire or concupiscence that corrupts the intellect’s perception of the good. As long as human beings experience the fever of concupiscence, the intellect will struggle both to discern the good of God’s will and to resist the force of fleshly desire. When the rational soul under slavery to sin cannot control its nonrational impulses and the body, the soul’s relationship with the body changes. The body ceases to be the instrument and ally of the soul and becomes “the body of death” that is at war with the law of the mind. Consequently, the body becomes, for Ambrose, the locus of temptation. The real cause of sin is the mind’s inability to resist concupiscence. But since sinful concupiscence is often aroused by the bodily sensation of pleasure, Ambrose understandably focuses his warnings to his catechumens on the dangers of the body and sensual pleasure.

The Passions, the Senses, and Bodily Pleasures While Ambrose is explicit that the body itself is neither bad nor the chief cause of sin, the soul’s life in the body—especially the body of the fallen humanity— is fraught with temptations. As Marcia Colish has shown, Ambrose’s account of the passions mirrors that of the Stoic distinction between passions that arise from the body (e.g., gluttony), passions that arise from the soul (e.g., pride, avarice, strife), and passions that arise from both soul and body (e.g., pain, pleasure, fear, and desire). To these Ambrose adds joy, sadness, and mental agitation.52 Although, as we have seen, Ambrose speaks of a person’s internal struggle between the soul and the body, the contest properly understood is between the soul’s higher rational faculty and the soul’s nonrational faculties, or affectiones (e.g., the concupiscibilis and the impetibilis), from which arise the

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emotions or impulses of desire (concupiscentia) and anger or gumption (iracundia). Under reason’s control, concupiscentia becomes the virtue of holy amor, and iracundia becomes courage.53 Uncontrolled by the reins of reason, the emotions are prone to excess. Concupiscentia goes beyond what is natural and takes the form of lust or greed. Likewise, iracundia becomes hatred and wrath. Such undirected and intemperate impulses are contrary to the moral law and prone to self-destruction. It would be inaccurate, however, to separate the nonrational impulses from the body because it is in the body, specifically in the bodily senses, that we experience the sensations of pleasure and pain that trigger the emotions of desire or fear. Therefore, to understand how the rational soul controls the nonrational faculties, we need to examine Ambrose’s conception of the psychosomatic dynamic of reason, the emotions, and the senses. The senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell are, he says, like five sparrows. If they feed in “wild and foul places,” they are apt to become ensnared, indulging in “the dirt of earthly meanness” (that is, worldly pleasures and luxuries), so that they “cannot fly back up to the fruits of loftier works on which spirits feast.”54 How can the bodily senses that apprehend only material phenomena “fly up” to the immaterial, spiritual realities that the rational soul alone is capable of grasping? Some physical phenomena can function as signs of the spiritual realities. For example, the sights and sounds and other physical sensations of the sacraments are the sensible signs by which the Christian participates in the holy realities or mysteries of the Church. Intercourse with the sensual pleasures, however, can ensnare the senses and the soul through “the perception of earthly matter [which] has dulled the fiery vigour and purity of nature,” and thus we become “an addict to the increase of vices.” Here Ambrose employs Origen’s imagery to describe human nature as made of “fiery vigour” or love for God by which humanity is kept aloft and united to God in the fellowship of love.55 Yet when we find satisfaction in the pleasures afforded us by the physical sensation of “earthly matter,” our zeal is “dulled.” We become complacent and do not burn with a desire for the spiritual pleasures of divine fellowship. Ambrose employs the common metaphor of glue to describe the soul’s inclination to bodily pleasures.56 Indeed, the addiction to sensual pleasure is like an adhesive that fixes the mind to the senses: as its thoughts are stuck upon the earthly preoccupation with the things of the body, it cannot unglue itself to give proper attention to the things of God. The chief cause, for Ambrose, of the soul’s enslavement to passion is the luxurious life of wealth. The enjoyment of the sensual pleasures of worldly comforts naturally leads to the excesses of vice. For when Ambrose says that worldly luxuries “make [the senses] an addict to the increase of vice,” he means that because of our enjoyment of the physical delights we experience in the

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senses, we desire an increase in physical pleasure. Thus the downward spiral begins. The more we desire the sensual goods of the body, the less we desire the spiritual goods of God that are beyond the grasp of the senses. At stake is the individual’s very salvation. Even as Ulysses and his lotuseating sailors were hampered in their attempts to return home to Ithaca because they were often overcome with desire for sensual pleasures, so too Christians are impeded in their spiritual odyssey to their heavenly home by the diversions of the senses. The irresistibly sweet song of the sirens is the paradigmatic instance of the power of the senses to lure the soul away from God and toward its destruction.57 As the sirens’ song draws the ship onto the rocks and shallows hidden below the surface of the water, the sweetness of sensual pleasure both draws the soul to the carnal and disguises the spiritual dangers of the flesh. Thus the mind’s judgment of the true nature of the material world is compromised by pleasure in two ways: first, the pleasures arouse desire that draws the soul on; and second, the mind, once it is diverted from its proper course to the divine, focuses on the pleasure itself such that it does not consider the dangers of its sensual pursuits. Once bodily pleasures arouse desire, the soul risks being so dominated by its appetitive impulses that its rational faculties lose the critical distance necessary to make a sound moral judgment and order our actions accordingly. Only by maintaining that critical distance can the intellect survey the whole situation so as to distinguish between the apparent good of physical pleasure and the real good proper to the life of virtue and of obedience to God. The sensation of pleasure prejudices the mind’s judgment. Interestingly enough, Ambrose does not describe sensual pleasure, represented by the sirens’ song, as inflaming the soul with an ardor that impels the soul to hasten toward its object.58 Rather, pleasure “soothes the soul,” lulling it gently into a state of uncritical enjoyment. Pleasure’s gentle soothing puts the soul off its guard so that it sees no need to be vigilant and attentive to the demands of virtue. In this state of complacency, the mind that is not watchful for carnal dangers is surprised to find itself run aground or, worse, dashed against “corporeal rocks.” The logic of Ambrose’s view is that the mind’s capacity to apprehend the divine and greater goods of God enables it to be firm in its resistance of bodily pleasure. As long as it is centered upon God and thus cleaves to the one whose grace strengthens it, the mind can assume its role as sovereign and just ruler of the body. Yet Ambrose stresses that the mind’s firmness is easily lost and becomes submissive to bodily desires if it is too intimately joined to sensual pleasures. Early in Isaac, he remarks that Isaac embodies the Christlike qualities of mildness, humility, gentleness, and the contemplative temperament. Isaac withdraws from “fleshly pleasures” and waits in patience for the coming

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of his bride, Rebekah.59 From Isaac’s contemplative patience, Ambrose concludes that the wise man, who places his hope in and cleaves to God, experiences the transport of one who “does not live upon the earth.” Likewise, Rebekah, who fills her water jar from the well, represents the soul that drinks from the fountain of divine wisdom and washes away “the blood of foolishness with watering of spiritual streams.” The blood washed away by the water of divine wisdom Ambrose links with the Levitical prohibition against intercourse with a woman during periods of menstruation (20:18). Ambrose interprets this prohibition as an injunction, not against illicit love, but against the soul’s loss of control through partaking of carnal pleasures: A woman is a delight, an allurement of the body. And so watch out that the firmness of your mind not be bent and softened by the bodily pleasure of intercourse and thus dissolve into all her embraces and open up her fountain, that ought to have been shut and closed in by zealous intent and reasoned consideration. . . . For once the firmness of the mind is dissolved, thoughts of bodily pleasure pour forth; they are very harmful and flare up into an unrestrained longing for grave danger.60 Although Ambrose does not suggest that sexual intercourse is prohibited, he exhorts his catechumens to be conscious of the threat it poses to the mind’s firm resistance to the seductive force of sensual pleasure, which seizes the mind like a lover’s embrace. The flow of menstrual fluid—“her fountain that ought to have been shut up”—symbolizes the pleasurable sensation that passes from the body of the woman to the soul of the man. Although Ambrose is not concerned with the Levitical prohibition of sex with a menstruating woman per se, it is for him a symbol of how the mind becomes unclean through inappropriate contact with the sensible phenomena. What Ambrose does not make clear is how, apart from abstinence, “zealous intent and reasoned consideration” could prevent the mind’s corruption. Most striking is his insistence that once the mind has experienced such carnal pleasures, the soul becomes subject to “flare-ups of unrestrained longing.” Within the context of his interpretation of the Genesis narrative and of his instruction of catechumens who would soon go to the fountain of God (that is, the baptismal font) to be washed of sin, Ambrose exhorts his catechumens to make ready for their bridegroom, Christ, by washing themselves of the “flow of blood” or the longing for bodily pleasures of sexual intercourse that are likely to compromise the soul’s ability to be firm in cleaving to God and in resisting the desires of the body. At the same time that Ambrose maintains that the sensual pleasures soothe the spirited faculty, rendering it impotent to resist fleshly longings, he

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also argues that the same passions inflame the spirit, turning the irascible faculty to the service of the appetites in the form of anger that will exercise violent force to obtain the object of the appetite’s desire. The passions of lust (or avarice) and anger, which are the corrupted forms of the desire and spirit, so turn the mind from God that we ultimately fall into apostasy. The Antichrist, though the extreme case, is an example of one whose passions compromise fidelity to God. “For the abomination of desolation is the coming of the accursed Antichrist, insofar as he pollutes the inner mind with unpropitious sacrilege. . .  . Thus, he will . . . deny Christ, in a Temple not inviolate, but subject to corruption, which is either surrounded by the ruin of unbelief, or undermined by the violence of anger, or burned by the fire of desires.”61 Here the blasphemous teachings of the Antichrist, not sensual pleasure, are the cause of passion. The result, however, is the same: the fire of unholy anger and desire corrupts the mind. Ambrose repeatedly speaks of the “effeminate delights” that rob the soul of its manly constancy by holding the mind captive.62 Together the mind and spirit preserve constancy in devotion to God, whereas the feminine caprice (feminea levitate) of desire flits from one form of pleasure to the next and so makes the spirit soft (mollitur) and inconstant.63 When the mind is not set upon God—but has been distracted by consorting with the things of the body—then the individual fails to know and be conformed to God’s justice, and devotion to God begins to flag. Commenting on the paradoxical verse from Song of Songs 1:6, “I am of a dark complexion, because the sun has not looked on me,” Ambrose identifies the passions as the cause of the dark complexion, and the sunlight from which the bride is cut off as the light of justice. So “bereft of [the light of justice’s] protection, I have not been able to maintain my devotion and full obedience. This is the meaning of ‘My own vineyard I have not kept.’”64 Beyond the effect of sensual pleasures that arouse passions that fix the mind upon the sensible creation rather than the Creator, the senses are a problem because they are the source of deception and misunderstanding. This is different from Ambrose’s earlier claim that the soul that is oriented to the pleasures of the senses is more susceptible to Satan’s deceptions. Rather, his concern here is epistemological. He deploys what at first glance is the stock twofold Platonic critique of the senses. First, the data provided by the senses are often inaccurate and could, if not subjected to reason, give a misleading or distorted picture of the world. The straight stick that appears bent in a glass of water and the mirage in the desert are classic examples. Second, since the senses apprehend phenomena in the material world that is in a state of constant fluctuation, the senses do not tell what is permanent, and therefore what is real and true. The purple iris appears beautiful to the eye, but such instances of beauty are fading and so should not be mistaken for beauty itself. Ambrose offers this

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critique of the senses in On the Good of Death with the same purpose that Plato does in Phaedo, namely to argue that the lover of wisdom is not afraid of death because death liberates the soul from the senses so that it may contemplate the true and the real.65 Ambrose’s lover of wisdom is Paul, who by “divesting himself of [bodily] pleasures” made heaven the dwelling place of his thoughts.66 Paul freed his soul from the body by setting his thoughts upon the transcendent and invisible realities of God rather than the visible things of creation. Ambrose explains that the wise man, like Paul, must free himself of the body in order to seek the divine: [The wise man] is dealing with knowledge of the truth, of such a kind that he longs for it to be revealed to him naked and clear, and so he seeks to divest himself of certain snares and obscurities of the body. And we cannot comprehend such heavenly truth with hands or eyes or ears, because what is seen is temporal, but what is not seen is eternal. Indeed we are often deceived by sight and we see things for the most part other than they really are; we are deceived by hearing too, and so, if we do not wish to be deceived, let us contemplate, not what is seen, but what is unseen.67 Although Ambrose’s language echoes Platonic themes, his critique of the senses rests upon his integration of material from Paul’s epistles, specifically 2 Corinthians 4:16–18 and 12:2, and Colossians 2:21–22. The knowledge of the truth that the wise man seeks is knowledge of God, and the knowledge he desires is the immediate experience of God like the revelation of God that Paul received when he was raised up into the third heaven. The revelation of God is “naked and clear” in the sense that it carries a vision of God free from bodily and material images alien to the nonmaterial and incorporeal God. Likewise, the wise man desires to know God directly rather than through the mediation of material creation. This is consistent with Ambrose’s account of Paul’s mystical ascent in which he plays upon Paul’s description of his radical transcendence of the body—a transcendence in which he lacked all consciousness of the body, and therefore consciousness of material things. Such knowledge of God can be obtained only by transcendence of the body because (here Ambrose quotes 2 Cor. 4:18) the senses apprehend only matter that is transitory. By contrast, the God who is eternal is unseen (that is, beyond the body’s powers of perception). Indeed, the senses cannot apprehend in other people, embodied creatures though they be, the virtues that bear our moral likeness to God. “Who then could see the splendor of the virtues with his eyes, could lay hold of justice with his hands, could gaze upon wisdom with the sight of his eyes?”68 The goodness of God, even as reflected in rational creatures, is beyond the scope of

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the senses. Ambrose reformulates Plato’s critique of the senses in the language of Paul’s description of the fallen creation that is corrupted and thus subject to decay: the senses are inherently unreliable because they belong to our “outer nature that is wasting away” (2 Cor. 4:16), and their objects of perception are material things, “which all must perish” (Col. 2:21–22). If we rely solely upon the senses we are deceived: they reveal only one plane of reality, the material plane, which we believe alone to be real; they show us only the transitory and corruptible things of earth, the external form of beauty, and thereby withhold from sight what is truly good and lovely. Thus the scope of our affections becomes limited and we come to love what is not worthy of our love. Instead, Ambrose says, we must become like Paul, transcending the world that is seen and setting our minds upon the unseen things of God. Ambrose tells his catechumens that they must withdraw from the distorted impressions of the senses through the inward turn. “And so [the wise man] would seek there [in heaven] what is true, what exists and endures, and would gather himself into himself.  .  .  . He would not entrust himself to others or believe them but would know and understand himself and know that he must follow what he thought to be true.”69 In this context, the inward turn is not just the mind turning its focus from the data of the senses, but also from the social conventions of the world. To modern ears, Ambrose’s language may evoke images of a solitary, contemplative Descartes, who grounds all knowledge of God and the world in his knowledge of his own existence as a rational creature. Yet when Ambrose says that the wise man, by turning within himself, comes to “know and understand himself” and so shuns the world of the body, he means that the wise man, like Paul, understands his life to be hidden with Christ in heaven and that the body that is dissolved in death is a body subject to base passions and corruption. When the wise man turns within and comes to know himself as one whose life is in heaven, then “he would know that what he had thought desirable out of carnal pleasure is false and [so he] would retreat and fly from it, because it is full of deceit. Therefore he rightly devalued and dishonored this body, and called it ‘the body of death.’”70 To turn within oneself, for Ambrose, is thus both a turn from the transient and corrupt realm of the senses and of society at large and an ascent to heaven where our true life is. He understands Paul’s reference to “our life . . . in heaven” in a double sense. First, our life is in heaven in that through union with Christ in baptism our lives are united with God who is our end. Second, given his repeated appeals to Romans 7:23, Ambrose may also have in mind that, while the senses perceive only the outer nature of this body of death that is wasting away, the soul grasps the spiritual reality that the inner nature is being renewed. The soul hopes for the unseen reality that awaits the soul at death, which Ambrose, paraphrasing 2

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Corinthians 4:10–12, refers to as “the good life after the victory, the good life once the contest has been completed.”71 While Ambrose is clear that sense perceptions, even seemingly innocuous bits of sensation, can interfere with the soul’s meditation, ultimately the far greater problem comes not from the senses themselves but from their corruption by the passions. The relation between the passions and the senses is rather circular in Ambrose’s thinking. Initially, he says expressly that the passions are aroused by our perception of some physical source of pleasure. “For the spirit does not desire a woman’s beauty before the eye of the body does. So you will not love what you have not seen.”72 Yet at the same time, the passions can misdirect the senses and distort the mind’s judgment of what is perceived. In On the Good of Death, Ambrose, having asserted that even one who is still in the body may “dwell in the good things of God,” explains that such is possible so long as the body is submissive to the rule of the mind and the soul is not “glued” to the body by a love of bodily pleasure.73 Therefore, he repeats his earlier warning about the deception, error, and fraud that come through the senses. He illustrates how this deception is perpetrated on the soul using the example of a man looking upon a prostitute—an example not dissimilar from that cited in his Exposition on Luke: You have seen the harlot; you have been taken by her countenance and have considered her features beautiful. Your eyes have gone astray; they have seen evil but declared otherwise. For if they had seen truly, they would have seen the harlot’s ugly condition, her bristling impudence and unsightly impurity, her withering lusts and foul pollution, the wounds of the spirit, the scars of conscience. . . . You see that the man who did not seek after truth but after adultery sought falsehood. For he sought to see in order to lust, not in order to learn the truth. And so his eye goes astray where his passion goes astray. Thus passion is a deception, and sight is a deception.74 Ambrose identifies two causes of deception. First, since the senses by themselves can apprehend only the qualities of material substance, they tell us only whether something is pleasing or painful and so are incapable of apprehending something as good or evil. Thus the eyes deceive us when we look at the prostitute because they can apprehend only her physical comeliness, not her moral degradation. To “see truly,” Ambrose assumes, means seeing both the physical and moral condition together. Second, and more important for understanding Ambrose’s account of the corruption of the natural goodness of the body, the passions can be and often are prior to the senses in the causal order of deception. The passion of lust leads the eye astray and causes one to look at

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the prostitute and contemplate her body. Thus, the senses are merely the tools that serve the corrupt desire of passion. Although Ambrose’s example of the prostitute focuses upon the passion of lust and the sense of vision, this dynamic of passion and sense can easily be imagined in the glutton’s use of smell and taste or the gossipmonger’s use of hearing. In these cases, the senses are not merely passive receivers of sense data: they are in a sense programmed by our passionate predisposition to seek that sense data that will satisfy the passion. The implication of this relation between the passions and the senses is that one’s deception by the senses is a self-deception for which the individual is culpable. For, Ambrose says, the man who looked upon the prostitute’s body did not desire to “see truly,” that is, to see her degenerate condition. He saw what he wanted to see, namely, a mere body that would satisfy his lust. The logical conclusion of Ambrose’s argument is that soul should withdraw from anything that distracts the mind and turns it from contemplation of heavenly things or obedience to God’s commands. Therefore, he recommends the example of those who pray at night or with their eyes closed so that they may use the darkness to free their minds from visual images that hold the mind fixed upon the transitory things that are seen rather than the eternal things that are unseen.75 Night is also a good time for contemplation because one can be free from the intrusion or distraction of social intercourse. “Often too we search after solitude, so that no one’s conversation may be whispered into our ears and, like a kind of bypath, lead the soul away from the truth while it is deeply engaged in thought or turn it aside from concentration.”76 Since the soul under sin cannot easily control the body or resist the fever of sinful concupiscence aroused by the sensation of pleasure, the rational soul can resist the force of concupiscence by preemptive action. That is, the soul must separate from the sensual pleasures of the body that stimulate the passion of illicit desire. This separation, as we shall see, lies on a continuum between moderate exposure to the senses (for example, eating parsimoniously, having sex for procreation only) and deprivation of certain sensations periodically or permanently (for example, fasting, praying in the dark, abstaining from sex). Ultimately, it is only through the grace of baptism that we can resist the desires of our carnal nature and redirect them toward God.

Conclusion Ambrose’s identification of the soul with the self should not be misconstrued as a denial of the psychosomatic unity of the person. Nor is it a rejection of the

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biblical claim of the goodness of material creation. Rather, it is a classic instance of Ambrose’s invoking Platonic and Plotinian language to serve the purposes of Christian catechesis. Specifically, the claim reflects two Pauline themes to which he refers repeatedly. First, Paul’s cry to be free “from this body of death” (Rom. 7:24) suggests to Ambrose the painful opposition between Paul’s true self and the body that bears the marks of fallen human nature. Paul’s true self is his rational soul or mind, which consents to the law of God, while “this body of death” is his unruly desire or the concupiscence of his body that resists the rule of his mind. Since such desires are aroused by sense stimuli, the body that experiences pain and pleasure becomes less a tool of the rational soul and more the locus of temptation. Thus the mind’s moderation and ultimate domestication of desire entails discipline of the body by the elimination of luxury and the pursuit of a life of austere simplicity that together minimize our exposure to sensual pleasure. Second, the Pauline theme involves Ambrose’s conflation of Colossians 3:3, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God,” and Philippians 3:20, “Our commonwealth is in heaven,” in his repeated expression “your life is in heaven.” He uses these verses to declare our eschatological hope and to sum up his relational anthropology. The soul’s capacity to transcend the body, ascend to heaven, and come into the presence of God allows it to experience the fellowship with God for which we were made. The soul should, Ambrose insists, be thought of as the self since it is as our soul that we can attain our telos. It is the soul’s capacity to transcend the body and be joined with God that is key to the soul’s immortality. Ambrose makes no philosophical argument for the immortality of the soul. Rather, he grounds the claim in Jesus’ admonition not to fear the one who can destroy only the body. From this passage he draws a conclusion fully consonant with the Platonic tradition: the soul in which our consciousness is preserved after death is the self. Ambrose’s assertion that the soul is the self must be read within the rhetorical context of catechesis. His audience is not comprised of Manichees who disparage the body and the material world and so need to be trained to see the goodness of creation. The audience is catechumens, many of whom, given Ambrose’s warnings about wealth and luxury, are affluent Milanese whose former lives were oriented to the pursuit of worldly comfort and pleasure. Therefore, Ambrose’s pedagogical task in preparing them for baptism is to reorient the catechumens’ conception of self from its prior relation with the world to its new relationship with God in Christ’s Church. They must be trained to see that the transitory goods of the body, which are so easily destroyed, are not what they must care for and protect. Rather, it is the soul that must be safeguarded against the snares and the deceptions of this world. For, if the

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Christian succumbs to the temptation to flee the bodily pain and death of persecution—specifically the persecution of Nicene Christians at the hands of Justina and the Homoians—the soul will die the eternal death of separation from God. By reorienting the catechumens’ sense of self from the body to the soul, Ambrose seeks to reorder their priorities from bodily comforts to their proper end: contemplative fellowship with God in the community of the faithful. It is no coincidence that Ambrose begins his catechesis by describing Abraham’s departure from Ur as a flight of the soul from the body and its pleasures, and then begins his account of the soul in On Isaac with the scene of Isaac meditating in the field as he waits in patience for the coming of his beloved. No account of Ambrose’s anthropology is adequate that focuses on the ideal relation of body and soul without also attending to his account of the human condition. The new life of the Christian who seeks contemplative fellowship with God is not, for Ambrose, divorced from the active, civic life and the life in the body. It is precisely because the life of virtue and of service to God is lived out in the world that the soul must learn to master the nonrational impulses and emotions by means of moderation. Such moderation enables the soul to direct its desires toward God and to act with justice, courage, and prudence in fulfilling public duties. Yet the mind’s moderating control of the body and its desires is compromised by the corruption of human desire, a corruption which humanity has inherited from its fallen progenitors. As a reality of the fall of Adam and of the commission of our own sins, we have lost the freedom of the rational soul to rule the body and the nonrational soul in a harmonious unity. Although the intellect is not wholly impotent in governing and restraining the body and its appetites, Ambrose depicts the human condition as one of slavery to sin and to the drives of concupiscence. The only way that the ideal of the harmonious unity of soul and body under the moderating rule of reason can be advanced is by Christ’s liberation of humanity from our yoke of slavery to sinful concupiscence and by our entry into this renewed liberty through baptism. Indeed, we cannot understand Ambrose’s conception of true humanity (or God’s will for it) and the life of virtue that is characteristic of it until we examine his view of the liberating work of baptism in which the catechumen becomes a new creation.

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PART II

Raised to New Life Ambrose’s Theology of Baptism

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4 Baptism Sacrament of Justification

[W]e are not justified by works but by faith [non operibus justificamur, sed fide], because the weakness of the flesh is a hindrance to works but the brightness of faith puts the error that is in man’s deeds in the shadow and merits [meretur] for him the forgiveness of sins.1 Ambrose describes the human condition after sin—Adam’s first sin and our subsequent sins—as one of slavery to a perverted desire that is not properly controlled by the mind, but that overpowers the judgment of the intellect so that the mind becomes the tool of bodily desires. This is a total inversion of the natural order of the relationship of rational soul and the body that God intended for human nature. The proper task of the mind is to moderate the nonrational appetites and actions of the body so that we may pursue the virtuous life of contemplative fellowship with God and service to the larger human family. Moderation is not, for Ambrose, the highest of the virtues, but is the moral prerequisite for all other virtues. When the nonrational appetites do not conform to the moral good grasped by the mind, neither our appetites nor our actions are temperate, and these intemperate impulses become too strong and quick for reason’s governance. We act before we think. Then the natural harmony of soul and body is replaced with the struggle between the law of the mind and the law of the flesh that Paul describes in Romans 7. The problem, for Ambrose, is thus not simply that the intellect must

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battle the pull of fleshly desires, but that it must struggle against corrupt concupiscence so that we may become able to do the good we know. Therefore, humanity faces a double bondage. First is our bondage under the debt of sin and with it our bondage to death. Second is the bondage of our voluntas to the force of sinful concupiscence. Our slavery to sin and death is foundational to Ambrose’s soteriology. If God is to liberate man from bondage to sin, he must free us from both the debt of sin and the domination of corrupt concupiscentia. This liberation begins for the Christian with the twofold work in baptism of, first, justification through faith in Jesus’ salvific death; and second, regeneration through rebirth in the Spirit. It is the first of these steps in the ordo salutis that is the focus of this chapter. The immediate question for any modern interpreter of Ambrose is how to construe his use of the Pauline language of iustificari fide without being unduly anachronistic. That is, how do we avoid reading sixteenth-century theories of justification into Ambrose’s fourth-century homilies? At the same time, it would be wrong to rule out a priori any possible affinity between Ambrose’s understanding of iustificari and the understandings of later reformers, Catholic or Protestant. So I leave open the possibility that being justified, for Ambrose, may mean an imputation of righteousness or an infusion of righteousness or both. However, the best way to allow Ambrose’s voice to be heard over the more recent and, at times, shriller theological voices is to center on four key issues connected with Ambrose’s use of iustificari: first, the relation of faith and law (Why must faith supplant the law as the source of righteousness?); second, the object of justifying faith (What work of God is the hope of Christian salvation?); third, the source of faith (Is faith a natural capacity or entirely a gift of grace or a case of a natural capacity healed by grace?); and fourth, the character or merit of faith (What gives faith its salvific potency?). The place to begin, however, is Ambrose’s account of why the law that God gave Israel is unable to overcome the force of sinful concupiscence and restore the mind’s right rule over the body.

The Impotence of the Law Ambrose claims that God gave humanity the law—both natural and revealed— to teach the virtue of temperance. He does not assume that prior to God’s giving the Decalogue to Moses humanity was wholly ignorant of what is morally right. On the contrary, through the natural law “each person was a law for himself and had the book of the law written in his heart.”2 Torah was added because humanity did not follow the natural law. Indeed, the Mosaic law merely makes explicit the way to achieve moderation, of which we have a natural knowledge.

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Ambrose uses the story of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, who slaughtered Shechem and the Hivites in retaliation for the rape of their sister (Gen. 34) to illustrate the importance of temperance. He explains that Jacob censured his sons’ actions because the massacre was an abandonment of moderation. While Jacob could not condone the rape, he would have preferred his sons’ wrath to have been moderated by reason, which “cuts off desires.”3 Temperance was even part of the very first prohibition God gave man—the command not to eat the forbidden fruit. While Ambrose’s statement that “the Law teaches temperance and pours it into the hearts of all men” may refer to the first restrictions handed down to our primal parents, the command may be a figure of the natural law since he says that this law instills a notion of temperance in “all men.”4 Since the virtue of moderation is taught by natural law, whose moral instruction is made explicit in Torah, then law contained in Scripture teaches temperance as well.5 When Ambrose likens the law to John the Baptist as the forerunner of Christ and grace, he says that the law not only recalls humanity from the sins and errors of their pagan lifestyle to repentance, but also “restrains them from offense.”6 Yet in On Jacob and the Happy Life, Ambrose contradicts this more confident view of the law. “He gave the law; he added grace. The law denounced sin but in a hazardous situation could not entirely restrain it.”7 The immediate solution to this obvious contradiction is to say that Ambrose does not say that the law is wholly impotent to restrain sin, but that it proves insufficient in moments of extreme temptation. Perhaps the reason for the law’s insufficiency is that the law does not correct the deep cause of the sin, that is, the soul’s inappropriate desire. One might also suggest that while the law may restrain the outward sin, it does not change the corrupt inner disposition that is the source of sin. Nonetheless, Ambrose explains in his paraphrase of Romans 7 why the law is insufficient without the aid of grace for freeing us from the habit of sin: For I became aware of sin that I did not know; I became aware that concupiscence was sin, and from that opportunity afforded by this knowledge the wages of sin have piled up [cumulata sunt]. Sin, which before seemed dead by reason of my ignorance, gained a new life in me [in me revixit]; but I died under the wound of sin [peccati vulnere], because the very knowledge of guilt [cognitio culpae] that would help me, so it seemed, did me harm—I knew sin, but could not avoid it. For the knowledge revealed the sin, and, through the good which was proclaimed, it multiplied the malevolence of sin itself [peccati ipsius acerbavit invidiam]. And so I committed sin beyond measure, because it was multiplied by the proclamation of the commandment; guilt grows when it is revealed and precautions are not taken against it.8

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Here Ambrose imitates Paul’s shift in Romans 7:5ff. to the first person speaking of how the law caused his guilt to increase. Having declared at the end of Romans 6 that we have been set free from sin and death by being made slaves of God, who offers the gifts of sanctification and eternal life, Paul explains that in being raised with Christ, we “have died to the law,” which aroused passions in us while we were living in the flesh (7:4–5). Anticipating the antinomian rejection of the law altogether, Paul immediately counters that the law is not the cause of sin; rather “sin finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness . . . [thus] sin revived and I died” (7:8–9). Here is the paradox. The law exposes our sin. Yet such knowledge, rather than freeing us from sin, actually becomes the occasion for the multiplication of sins. The problem is not with the law itself, which is of God and therefore spiritual, but with the person who is carnal and so resists the rule of God’s law (7:14). Thus there is the internal conflict between the mind that delights in the law of God and the impulse of sin in one’s members that resists God’s law (7:22–23). Ambrose concurs with the Pauline position, asserting that knowledge of the law revealed the sinfulness of his disordered desire (concupiscentia) but both proved impotent in enabling him to avoid sin and burdened him with guilt (culpa). Ambrose concludes that to sin in ignorance is a lesser offense than to sin knowingly. To be sure, humanity is not wholly ignorant of the good that God wills prior to the giving of Torah, for God gave man the natural law. However, since sin corrupted the judgment of the mind with disordered concupiscence, man became forgetful of the natural law and came to assume that the sinful desires were natural and good. Once, however, the positive law of Torah has made us cognizant of the sinful character of desire, our indulgence of those desires adds to our culpability. Although Ambrose says that with the knowledge of sin provided by the law the wages of sin (peccati aera) multiplied, it is not clear whether he means simply that the guilt (culpa) increased because he now sinned knowingly or that his sins increased in defiance of the law. By sinning in conscious disobedience to the law, his guilt before God his judge increased. The hidden sin before the law had “worked death” in him, “but with knowledge it piled up, took on an increment of error, so to speak.”9 That is, even in ignorance, he was guilty and under a death sentence, but now knowledge of his sinful desire has compounded his guilt. Yet Ambrose may be suggesting something more: with the knowledge of sin, further sin was provoked as a direct act of insubordination, for sin had become attractive as sin per se. In other words, before the law he desired the forbidden fruit because the fruit itself was attractive, the object of his corrupt concupiscence. By contrast, once his ignorance of the sinful nature of his desires was revealed and he understood the law that forbids sin, he desired the

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forbidden fruit because it was forbidden, taking pleasure in the forbiddenness of the desire itself. In this sense the law gave sin “new life.” Thus he says that the knowledge of the law “multiplied the malevolence of sin itself.” In other words, “malevolence” (invidiam) describes the spirit of defiance and disobedience that characterizes deliberate and knowing sin. That Ambrose views the law as arousing a spirit of resistance and direct disobedience is not surprising given his characterization of the law in his interpretation of Paul’s typology of Hagar and Sarah (Gal. 4:21–26). Hagar as a slave woman represents the synagogue that is under the law, while Sarah as a free woman represents the Church that is living according to grace rather than the law. As Hagar was driven out so that Sarah’s son Isaac might establish the line through which God’s promises would be fulfilled, now the synagogue has been replaced by the Church. But in a curious move that breaks with the metaphor of Sarah the free woman, Ambrose says, almost paradoxically, that while “the yoke of slavery is removed which constrained the necks of our soul, lest we should be able to look beyond the wall of the former life,” we now “have a good and light yoke, which with reins of peace and fetters of grace guides, rather than restrains.”10 The yoke of slavery that Christ has lifted is the law, for the law is burdensome, demanding what we cannot do, and coercive, compelling obedience. By contrast, the yoke of the Gospel is different because it guides us rather than compels. The Gospel, Ambrose implies, is an easy yoke precisely because it is one we bear willingly, while the law, at best, restrains by imposing upon us a demand that is contrary to our will. The reaction of sinful humanity to the law’s imposition of constraint and coercion is defiance and malice, which compounds the guilt of sin. In a sense, because the law elicits defiance, the law makes our sin more virulent. Ambrose also follows Paul in seeking to avoid any suggestion that the law, though it makes sin more malicious, is itself evil or that God, its author, is responsible for sin. Anticipating this objection to the law, Ambrose makes two arguments. First, he says that we should not be surprised to see that which is intended for redemption become the occasion for death. So, for example, Christ came to bring salvation, but to those who rejected him, new life was denied: “For a man who does not believe seeks death for himself from [law containing] grace, but the grace of the commandment remains.”11 Far from setting law and grace in opposition, Ambrose sees the commandments as naturally gracious in that God intended the revelation of sin through the law to bring about repentance. Thus while the forgiving grace of Christ’s atoning death is superior to the law because it is able to bring about our salvation in a way that the law cannot, nevertheless, both are forms of grace that have a common goal, the redemption of humanity.

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Ambrose employs a medical metaphor to illustrate the paradoxical character of the law that is an expression of God’s grace and yet works death in us. In the hands of a wise physician, an antidote has the potential to counteract a poison and heal, but in the hands of the unwise, an immoderate dose can kill us. So too the law can be the cause of opposite consequences depending on the virtuous state of one’s soul. To the moderate man the commandment is “a good through the nature of its salvific precept” but it is death to the one who is intemperate.12 Continuing with his medical metaphor, Ambrose points out that even as a wicked man’s knowledge of poisons is more likely to result in the misuse of the knowledge, so too the knowledge of sin provided by the law may arouse in the sinner a desire for “forbidden fruit”—a desire that did not exist or would not have existed so strongly apart from the law. The expert in the law can use his knowledge of it to do what is perhaps contrary to the spirit of the law without technically breaking the letter. In either case, such was not the purpose of the law, nor is this the necessary result of the law. Therefore, Ambrose insists, the harm attributed to the law is not proper to the law, but is traceable to the moral deficiency of the one who hears the law. Although the sinner is not made righteous by the works of the law, Torah nonetheless proves salutary by preparing the sinner for grace, and it does so by revealing our sin to us, and thus showing us the need for repentance. Ambrose describes the law as the forerunner of grace. Even as John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming of the Incarnate Word by calling Israel to repent of her sin, so too the law calls us from error to penitence that we may obtain the grace of Christ offered by the Church.13 Ambrose goes so far as to credit the disposition of contrition inspired by the law with bringing down grace upon the contrite prodigal. The woman who washes Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee proves Paul’s claim in Romans (5:20) that where sin abounds, grace abounds more. Without the law this woman’s sin “would have lain hidden.” Grace abounded for her only because the law exposed her sin and showed her need for grace. Thus the law is the preparatory cause of grace. “By acknowledging sin, I seek pardon. Therefore, through the Law I recognize kinds of sins and the offense of prevarication; I run to penitence, I pursue grace. Thus, the Law is the author of good which sends grace.”14 In Jacob and the Happy Life, Ambrose explains the irony of the law’s role in human salvation. Having described the sinner’s enslavement to sin and the dominion of concupiscence, a slavery from which the law cannot deliver us,15 he comments: In this danger the one remedy is that the grace of God should free the man whom the law cannot. . . . [T]hus it comes to pass that the

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sin which was hidden—I mean my concupiscence, which I did not suppose to be sin—worked death for me, until it was revealed . . . for it was sin, even though it was not known to be so, but with knowledge it piled up . . . and, by the wording of the commandment, fell into the order of a crime. Yet for me it is not death, for I readily flee to Christ, through whom we are freed from every danger of death.16 Although the law trains us in moderation, it cannot free us from slavery to concupiscence, that fever that overpowers the mind’s ability to will the good of the law that it knows. Such is the predicament Paul describes in Romans 7:14. Yet Paul is confident that “the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord” will deliver him from “the body of this death.” The ironic role of the law in our salvation is that the law can only expose sin to be sin, and yet in giving us our sin and revealing the sentence of death that we are under because of our sin, we see the need to “flee to Christ,” whose grace pardons our sin and lifts the condemnation. Ambrose does not use the later Lutheran language that speaks of the law as teaching us to despair of our own righteousness and so cling to grace. Nonetheless, the law for Ambrose provides the knowledge of our sin and condemnation that creates the crisis of self-loathing and helplessness expressed in Paul’s cry, “O wretch that I am, who will deliver me?” The crisis of consequence created by the law sends the sinner fleeing to Christ. Such salutary consequences are not surprising since Torah contains the Divine Word that shines within those who can understand the meaning of the law.17 The law can be viewed as an instrument of grace because it calls the sinner to enter into God’s righteousness. Commenting on Jesus’ words, “I do not come to call the righteous but the sinners to repentance,” Ambrose says that the so-called righteous are not called by Christ because they are content “to establish their own righteousness” rather than submitting to God’s righteousness. Commenting on Jesus’ prophecy of his passion that “the Bridegroom shall be taken from them” (Luke 5:35), Ambrose assures his readers that they are not left orphans or abandoned by Christ, who has promised to be with us to the close of the age. For were he to abandon us, all hope of salvation would be lost. Yet, he warns that we can remove ourselves from Christ18 if we, like the self-righteous whom Jesus does not call, “presume from the law and do not require grace of the gospel .  .  . [since] none is justified by the law, but is redeemed by grace.”19 Such people are “usurpers of righteousness” who glory in their own righteousness and the law.20 Rather we should be like Paul, who renounced the justice and glory of the law; “for the justice of the law is empty without Christ, because Christ is the fullness of the law.”21 By his death, Christ

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has fulfilled all justice in the sense that Christ’s death has satisfied the debt of sin. Ambrose says that apart from Christ the justice of the law is “empty” in that it brings only condemnation of sin and so cannot fulfill the gracious end of God’s justice, the restoration of humanity to righteousness and life.22 Therefore, our only hope is to confess our guilt and trust the grace of Christ, who by his death restored us to justice. Only by repentance can we know God and participate in his righteousness. But there is no participation in the righteousness of God and the reception of grace without penitence.23 Thus the law that brings us to repentance opens the grace of God’s righteousness. Once the sinner sees herself under the just condemnation of the law, she is disabused of the confidence and complacency of self-righteousness. Under the sentence of the law, the law has liberated the sinner from sin’s most pernicious potency, self-deception. The light of the law has made the sinner humble enough to seek Christ’s grace. The law’s disclosure of sin and injustice not only leads us to the confession of sin, but it leaves us no room to glory in ourselves: Nevertheless, the law was of help to me. I began to confess what I used to deny, I began to know my sin and not to cover over my injustice. . . . Thus I do not have the wherewithal to enable me to glory in my own works, I do not have the wherewithal to boast of myself, and so I will glory in Christ. I will not glory because I am just, but because I have been redeemed. I will not glory because I am free of sins, but because sins have been forgiven me. I will not glory because I am profitable or because anyone is profitable to me, but because Christ is an advocate in my behalf with the Father, because the blood of Christ has been poured out in my behalf.24 Ambrose shows that the law and grace work in tandem to humble the soul. The law humbles us by exposing sin and our inability to be virtuous apart from grace, while grace humbles the soul by turning it in thanksgiving to the source of its redemption. Thus we are delivered from self-delusion and no longer glory in our own righteousness or moral capacity. Ambrose refocuses our rejoicing from the state of holiness to which we have been delivered, to the work of Christ by which we have been redeemed. Having argued that the law contains the grace and goodness of Christ, he nevertheless insists that knowledge of the law cannot by itself bring us to belief in Christ. Ambrose plays on Genesis’s description of Leah as having “weak eyes” to say that Leah is a figure of both the law and the synagogue that “could not see Christ from blindness of spirit.”25 The Jews as a people still under the law are unable to see Christ through the law. In his Exposition on Luke, Ambrose

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addresses the sticky exegetical problem of why John the Baptist, whom Jesus calls the greatest of prophets and who himself identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God who “takes away the sins of the world,” appears unsure of Jesus’ identity and so sends his disciples to Jesus to ask if he is “the one who is to come,” that is, the Son of God.26 Unable to come up with a suitable explanation for this exegetical quandary, Ambrose concludes that if the literal sense of the passage is “contentious,” the plain sense of the text may be grasped if we see John as a figure for the law. Ambrose writes: “John is the type of the law which was the foreteller of Christ, the law, which was held confined in the hearts of the unbelievers as if in prisons devoid of eternal light, which the fruitful bowels of punishment and the doors of malice restrained, the law rightly cannot achieve an outcome full of evidence of the divine dispensation without the assent of the Gospel.”27 Ambrose here repeats his general point that the problem lies not with some defect or evil in the law, but in the character of the one who hears the law. In this case, the heart of the unbeliever may possess the law, but the unbelief, like the walls of John’s prison cell, block out the “Eternal Light” necessary for a right understanding of the meaning of the law as a reflection of the grace of the Divine Word. The law’s prophetic witness to the dispensation at the Incarnation cannot be seen unless the witness in the law is illuminated by the Eternal Light. The soul that is capable of receiving the Divine Light is the one that believes the Gospel. Only once one has accepted the Gospel does one possess the hermeneutical key to the meaning of the law. Then the grace of the law can achieve its end. One can recognize the spiritual meaning of the law through faith in the Gospel because faith is the eternal light of the Divine Word in the mind. Commenting on Jesus saying, “No man lights a candle and puts it in a hidden place” (Luke 11:33), Ambrose identifies the light with the Word of God that Psalm 119 calls “a lamp unto our feet.” The Word is the content of faith. “For the Word of God is our faith, the Word of God is the light, and the faith is the lamp. ‘That was the True Light, which enlightens every man that comes into the world.’ But the lamp cannot shine, unless it has received the light from elsewhere. This is the lamp which is lit, viz., the virtue and perception of the mind.”28 The faith of the Church is belief in Christ as the Father’s coeternal Word. Thus Christ as the Word is the content of the faith that we receive from the Church.29 The faith of the Church that bears the Word of God into the world is analogous with the lamp that carries the flame that gives light. In receiving the faith that the Church proclaims, we receive the Divine Word that casts the light of eternal wisdom into the mind so that we may see the salvific character of the law. In other words, when the Christian receives the faith of the Church and believes in Christ, her mind is conformed

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to the Church’s faith in Christ and so is illuminated by the divine light of the Word. Once she accepts the Word in faith, the light of the Word enables the Christian to read the spiritual meaning of the law. Although the law is an expression of God’s redeeming grace, Ambrose is explicit that the law, like the bushel, casts a dark shadow on the mind rather than illuminating the mind as does faith. Thus Ambrose here treats faith not as a natural capacity but as the result of divine illumination mediated by the Church “in which shines the sevenfold grace of the Spirit which the Chief Priest enlightens with the radiance of the supernatural Godhead lest any shadow of the law extinguish it.”30 In his exposition of Luke’s account of Jesus’ healing of the paralytic (Luke 7:17–26) and his calling of the tax collector Levi (Luke 7:27–32), Ambrose illustrates how following the law in unbelief leaves one blind to the common grace of Christ and the law. The Pharisees, who questioned Jesus’ forgiving the sins of the paralytic, accused him of blasphemy “because they did not love” but had “leprosy in [their] hearts.”31 Their lack of love is characteristic of those who also lack belief. Their unbelief stands in striking contrast to the faith of both the paralytic’s friends, who break through the tile roof so that Jesus may heal him, and Levi, who exchanged the profit of his greed for fellowship with Christ. Levi, Ambrose explains, “followed after the Lord with the whole footprint of his mind.”32 Ambrose’s language of following with the “footprint of his mind” suggests that the mind retains impressions left by its activities. Thus Levi’s following Jesus was not a mere cognitive assent to the truth of Jesus’ teachings and identity, but an active assent of imitating Jesus, an active belief that leaves its impression on the disposition of the mind. Moreover, his belief allows Levi to enter into a fellowship with Christ that anticipates Christ’s eschatological banquet: “He also makes preparation for a great feast; for he who receives Christ in his inner habitation feeds on the greatest delights of abundant pleasures.”33 It is significant for Ambrose that Levi invites Jesus for a meal immediately after answering the call to be a disciple, as it illustrates figuratively how belief allows the soul to be open to Christ’s indwelling and all the spiritual pleasures his company affords, whereas unbelief—of the Pharisees—prevents minds from being molded in conformity with Christ or feasting with and upon Christ. Not surprisingly, Ambrose notes, Luke describes the Pharisees as “grumbling” about Jesus—a grumbling that reflects the discontent and hunger of a mind not filled with and fed by Christ. The drastic contrast between the believing soul represented by Levi and the soul of the unbelieving represented by the Pharisees prefigures the eschatological divide between those in paradise and those sentenced to eternal perdition. He writes:

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[W]hen the faithful feast and recline in that Kingdom of the Heavens, hungry unbelief will be tormented. At the same time, it is shown how great an abyss there is between the enemies of the Law and Grace, because those who follow the law suffer the eternal hunger of a barren mind, but those who have received the word in the inner part of the soul, refreshed by the richness of heavenly food and drink, cannot hunger or thirst.34 Here Ambrose illustrates clearly how the disposition of the soul is determinative of whether the law produces harm or brings salvation. First, the Pharisees sentenced to perdition are identified as “enemies of the law and grace.” There is no dichotomy between the law and grace. To be an enemy of one is to be an enemy of the other. Thus, paradoxically, the Pharisees are the followers of the law and yet suffer the deprivations of a mind devoid of grace. How can the Pharisees be followers of the law and at the same time its enemies? Ambrose’s answer is that because they, unlike Levi, lack belief, they do not enjoy the indwelling of the Word who shapes the inner part of the soul by his indwelling. Since the law and Incarnation of the Divine Word are expressions of the same grace, the rejection of the Word entails the rejection of the grace that is the substance of both law and Gospel. The description of the Word dwelling in the “inner part of the soul” is curious since the soul itself is inner and invisible while the body is external and visible. Here Ambrose may be employing the Pauline language of the inner and outer man. Thus whereas Levi is an inner man—a “new man” by virtue of following the call of Jesus—the Pharisees are “outer men”—men who follow the law in the external form but not the spirit because they lack belief and thus lack love as well.

Justification and Atonement Much of Ambrose’s account of baptism is conventional and unsurprising. He deploys the Pauline imagery from Romans 6 that in the waters of baptism the sinner is united with Christ in his death and resurrection, and obtains forgiveness of her sins, and is made a new creation. Ambrose was hardly the first Latin theologian who discussed justification by faith,35 but what is interesting is Ambrose’s identification of the mystery of baptism as the occasion of justification. Ambrose compares the baptismal font with the pool of Siloam where Jesus restored the sight of a man born blind by covering his eyes with mud and then commanding him to wash in the pool (John 9:1–12). When the catechumen “gives her name” to the bishop as one seeking baptism, Ambrose

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explains, she is making a confession of her sin, both corporate and personal. This confession is analogous to caking the eyes with mud, for it is recognition of the humble substance of human origins and the need for grace. By this confession, she “seeks to be baptized so as to be justified, that is, so as to pass from fault to grace.”36 Here is Ambrose’s clearest identification of baptism with justification and his most succinct definition of justification as the forgiveness of an individual’s sins. The movement “from fault to grace,” as we shall see, is not reducible to the remission of sins. But this entry into the state of righteousness and grace before God begins with the reception of pardon through Christ’s Passion. Ambrose proceeds to equate the font with the cross of Christ. Like the man born blind bathing in the pool of Siloam, the catechumen, by going to the font, participates in the Passion of Christ by which he “redeemed the errors of all.”37 Ambrose emphasizes the centrality of the cross by insisting that the bishop must interpret for the catechumens the salvific significance of baptism in the light of the redemptive work of the crucifixion.38 He compares the conjunction of preaching and baptism to Moses’s placing his wooden staff in the bitter waters of Marah (Exod. 15:23): “Marah was a bitter fountain. Moses cast the wood in it, and it became sweet. For water without preaching of the cross [sine crucis] of the Lord is to no advantage for future salvation; but when it has been consecrated by the mystery of the saving cross, then it is for the use of the spiritual laver and the cup of salvation. . . . Into this fountain the priest casts the message of the cross of the Lord, and the water becomes sweet for grace.”39 When the bishop consecrates the water of the baptismal font with the invocation of the Trinity and the touching of the water with a stick of olive wood, he symbolically identifies the water of the font with the grace of Christ’s death. Baptism, for Ambrose, is a “sacrament of that cross” in that it has a symbolic likeness to Christ’s crucifixion and burial: just as Christ’s body was nailed to the cross, so too the one being baptized clings to Christ and is united with him as if by nails.40 Ambrose exhorts the neophytes, “Behold where you are baptized; whence would the baptism be, if not from the cross of Christ, from the death of Christ? There is all the mystery, because he suffered for you. In him you are redeemed; in him you are saved.”41 Thus, the baptized are crucified with Christ. Ambrose’s conception of baptism as both a participation in Christ’s death and the moment of justification—passing from sin into grace—rests on his understanding of the salvific character of Christ’s death, which has put to death our passions and forgiven our sins. “In his death we have been justified, so that the whole world might be cleansed by his blood. Indeed, in his death we have been baptized.”42 The cross is the primary moment of justification of the

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human race, as through Jesus’ death the debt of our sin is forgiven. Baptism is the secondary moment of justification, in which the justifying work of Christ becomes efficacious for the individual, and her particular sins are forgiven. But how, exactly, does Ambrose understand the salvific work of the cross? And what is his theory of atonement? Although the crucifixion and resurrection are the consummation of the work of the Incarnation, it is, for Ambrose, the Son’s self-emptying condescension and union with human nature in the Incarnation as a whole that proves redemptive. The God-man is the perfection of all the virtues represented by the patriarchs.43 For example, in Ambrose’s typological reading of the Joseph saga, he interprets Jacob’s preferential love of Joseph as symbolic of Jacob’s prophetic foreknowledge of Christ’s virtues foreshadowed in Joseph’s virtues.44 Thus, all these theological themes coalesce in Ambrose’s understanding of the incarnate Lord, fully human and fully divine. Through his perfect virtue, the incarnate Christ makes the perfection of God again visible for humanity. Ambrose explains that because of sin humanity was no longer able to see God and so was unable to imitate the divine virtues necessary to bear the image of God. The Word, therefore, became incarnate “so that the Godhead which is above us may be united with us.”45 Thus, Jesus becomes for corporeal humanity the bodily image of God so that we may know, receive, and imitate him. Presumably when Ambrose says that humanity “could not see the image of God,” he means that we could not see the divine image in humanity because sin had distorted humanity’s natural likeness to God. Ambrose sets up an outline of history based on the various hours of the day that the workers are hired in Jesus’ parable. He describes the period of Israel after David as the ninth hour, “[W]hen the age is now setting and the light of virtue is, as it were, fading, the Law and the Prophets censured the tarnished conduct of men.”46 As we shall see, Ambrose maintains that the virtues of the soul determine a person’s ability to receive God’s revelation; thus, as virtue fades, mankind reflects the divine image less and his ability to discern it also diminishes. However, Jesus, as the perfect Divine Word made flesh, becomes for corporeal humanity the bodily image of God through whom we might know, receive, and imitate divine perfection. It is impossible to separate Ambrose’s thought about the Word’s revelation in the Incarnation, the assumption of our nature, and the pardon of our debt of sin through death as he rarely speaks of Christ’s condescension in the Incarnation without also talking about his assumption of the debt of sin. For example, in his typological interpretation of Moses’s staff, Ambrose unites the themes of Incarnation and expiation: “He [Moses] threw down his staff, and it became a serpent, which devoured all the serpents of the Egyptians. This was signifying

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that the Word would become flesh, and would rid us of the poisons instilled in us by the dread serpent, by granting us the remission and forgiveness of sins.”47 Having identified Moses’s staff with the divine authority proper to the Word, Ambrose explains that the staff is a type of the Divine Word that in the Incarnation took on the likeness of human sin even as Moses’s staff took on the likeness of the Egyptians’ serpents in order to devour them. Similarly, the Word used the alien form of sinful flesh as the disguise by which he could defeat the devil and devour death. By virtue of coming in the form of sinful humanity, his divine and life-giving power is able to free humanity. Ambrose is sure to qualify the Word’s assumption of human sin lest anyone erroneously conclude that Christ’s humanity was under the burden of sin: So, was the Lord turned into sin? Not so, but, since he assumed our sins [peccata suscepit], he is called sin. For the Lord is also called an accursed thing [maledictum], not because the Lord was turned into an accursed thing, but because he himself took on [suscepit] our curse. . . . “The Word was made flesh,” since flesh was assumed [assumpta sit] by the Word of God, though he did not have sin, it is written that he was made sin, that is, not only by the nature and operation of sin, but made into the likeness of sin of the flesh that he might crucify our sin in his flesh, he assumed for us the burden of the infirmities of the body already guilty of carnal sin.48 The Incarnation, he insists, did not entail either assuming a corrupt human nature or falling into corruption. Rather, Paul’s simile, “he was made to be sin,” should be understood to refer both to Christ’s assumption of the debt of sin and his being “made into the likeness of sin of the flesh.” Christ has the “likeness” (similitudo) of sinful flesh in that he took on the “infirmities of the body” that are the result not of sin’s corruption, but of our natural finitude and mortality. Such infirmities have the “likeness” of sin because they become for us the occasion or cause of sin. Taking on “the likeness of sin” means for Ambrose sympathy for the existential situation of fallen humanity. He interprets Jesus’ cry of dereliction as the cry of sinful humanity whose sin has been condemned. In other words, Christ assumed our nature and so identified himself with our sinful condition without relinquishing divine condemnation of sin. Consequently, he voices humanity’s sense of abandonment and alienation as the result of sin.49 Ambrose then links the story of Moses’s staff becoming a serpent with the account of the serpent that Moses lifted up in the wilderness to give healing to the Hebrews bitten by the serpents.50 By drawing together these two episodes from Exodus, Ambrose uses the figure of the serpent to express both the character of the Incarnation and its healing purpose. Because he

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comes in the form of sinful humanity, Christ’s divine and life-giving power swallows up sin, freeing humanity from the poison of corrupted human nature. As we shall see, the serpents’ poison need not be solely a type of the guilt of sin; Ambrose also uses it to refer to the corrupt human desires or passions, which are the cause of sin.51 By assuming the likeness of sinful flesh, Christ’s death satisfies the debt of sin. Building upon the connection between the Joseph saga and Philippians 2, Ambrose claims that Joseph’s being sold into slavery refers both to Christ’s self-emptying in the Incarnation and to his betrayal and passion.52 Through his passion in mortal human flesh, he assumes the penalty or debt of sin: Christ was sold because he took our condition [conditionis susceptione] upon himself, not our fault; he is not held to the price of sin, because he himself did not commit sin. And so he made a contract at a price for our debt, not for money himself; he took away the debtor’s bond [chirographum], set aside the moneylender, freed the debtor [exuit debitorem]. He alone paid what was owed by all. It was not permitted us to go out from bondage. He undertook this on our behalf, so that he might drive away the slavery of the world [servitutem mundi], restore the liberty of paradise [libertatem restitueret], and grant new grace through the honor we received by his sharing our nature [consortii honore]. This is by way of mystery.53 Ambrose’s identification of death, which Christ endured, with the debt of sin echoes Paul’s contrast between death as “the wages of sin” and the free gift of eternal life in Christ (Rom. 6:23). Ambrose equates the wages of sin with the debt of sin. Developing the economic metaphor, he contends that because of its sins humanity owes a debt that is paid with our death. Though not a highly developed theory of atonement, Ambrose’s view blends Paul’s second Adam Christology in Romans 5 and 6 with Jesus’ description of sin as a debt in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:12) and the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:21–34). Mankind’s debt does not refer to humanity’s general debt or obligation of obedience to God, but specifically to the “price of sin,” that is, death, from which Christ was exempt since he was without sin. His death could become a “contract at a price” that frees humanity of the debt that all owe precisely because he was not under the obligation of the debt. Ambrose follows Paul’s logic (esp. Rom. 5:12–21): as through Adam’s sin came death, which spread to all Adam’s progeny, so too through one man’s righteousness is the free gift of eternal life bestowed on the whole of the human race. Ambrose is explicit on this in his account of Jesus’ baptism, which he treats as a figure of the cross and empty tomb that await him. “[A]t one moment, in one body did

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he abolish the deceit of the ancient error and shed the grace of the heavenly kingdom. For one was immersed, but all are raised; one descended, that all may ascend; one assumed of the sins of all, so that the sins of all were cleansed through him.”54 Ambrose clearly employs the Pauline typology: Christ is the scapegoat of humanity who bears all sins that all people might be forgiven and so raised to the state of grace whence Adam fell. At the same time, his reference to Christ’s freeing humanity from the “debtor’s bond” might imply that Christ’s death is a payment to the devil. In other words, Ambrose may be uniting the images of a substitution view of atonement with a ransom theory.55 This still leaves unexplained, however, how the death of one sinless person sufficiently satisfies the debt to absolve all of Adam’s children of their indebtedness. Since Ambrose lacks the Anselmian language to explain how the death of a righteous man satisfies the debt of many, he instead articulates the redemptive effect of Christ’s death using the logic of the “Great Exchange.” The “new grace” in which humanity now stands—that restoration of “the liberty of paradise”—is due to the Divine Son’s “sharing our nature.” Christ, Ambrose says, took upon himself the frailty of human nature and the sins of Adam’s race and in exchange conferred upon humanity certain qualities and benefits of his divine nature. “The Lord had such mighty zeal for your salvation that he came close to endangering what was his, while he was gaining you. On account of you he took on our losses, to introduce you to things divine, to consecrate you to the things of heaven.”56 Ambrose is clear that Christ does not redeem humanity merely by assuming our debt but also by granting humanity access to that heavenly nature which transcends human frailty. In his exposition on the parable of the Good Samaritan, Ambrose interprets the Samaritan’s putting the wounded Jew upon his own beast as a figure of Christ’s assumption of our bodies that he might “abolish the weakness of our flesh.”57 In the Incarnation, the union of the human and divine natures consecrates and empowers the former for the ascent to heavenly holiness and blessedness. By delivering debtor humanity from his bond of sin, Christ was able to “restore the liberty of paradise, and grant a new grace through the honor we received by his sharing of our nature.”58 The deliverance of humanity from sin implies ultimate liberation from death as well. Here Ambrose echoes the soteriological theme of divinization (theosis) as found classically in Athanasius’s On the Incarnation. Athanasius argues that Adam and Eve were created with the knowledge of God and that, had they persisted in that knowledge, they would have been made incorruptible without the intervention of death. But the first humans turned away from the knowledge of God and so became mortal and physically corrupt and so liable to death. In the Incarnation, the Divine Word became the visible image of God, thereby restoring the knowledge of God and overcoming sin,

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and bestowed the incorruptibility of the resurrection on humanity. It is this scheme that lies behind Ambrose’s view of the saving work of Christ. For example, Ambrose writes: So he received from us what he offered as his own for us, that he might redeem us from our own, and that he might confer upon us what was not our own from his divine liberality. According to our nature, then, he offered himself, that he might do a work beyond our nature. From that which is ours is the sacrifice, from his is the reward; and many things you will find in him both according to nature and beyond nature. For, according to the condition of the body he was in the womb, he was born, he was nursed, he was placed in the crib, but beyond this condition the virgin conceived, the virgin bore him, that you might believe that it was God who renewed nature, and it was man who was born of man according to nature.59 The divinization of humanity in the Incarnation does not result in a confusion of the divine and human natures in Jesus, but in a completion or perfection of humanity.60 Humanity is perfected in Jesus in that Christ equips our common humanity for “a work beyond our nature.” In other words, Christ took from humanity its passible and therefore mortal nature that he sanctified.61 By uniting his divinity to our humanity, he was able to accomplish in us a work that was beyond our natural capacity. What is this “work beyond our nature”? Obviously, all the miracles beginning with Christ’s virtual conception are beyond mankind’s natural power. Ambrose explains Christ’s salvific “work beyond our nature” with the cumbersome comment, “from that which is ours is the sacrifice, from his [is] the reward.” In other words, the redemption of humanity is a work beyond our nature and yet by virtue of Christ’s union of the divine nature with the human nature this is exactly what Christ accomplishes. From our nature, Christ takes his mortal body and offers it up as a sacrifice that pays the debt of sin. From the incorruptible goodness and life-giving power of his divine nature, Christ confers on us the reward of resurrection and the blessings of immortality. Christ’s triumph over death, not only for himself, but also for the whole of humanity, is indeed a “work beyond our nature.” Because of the body, humanity is by nature mortal and is sustained only by its participation in the one who is the source of life. The renewal of human nature begins with Christ’s supernatural conception. For Ambrose is explicit that Jesus’ humanity is the pure humanity of Eden without the corruption of sin.62 The result is that the humanity renewed through Jesus’ unique conception and consecrated by its union with the Divine Word was able to offer to God perfect obedience.63 Indeed, Ambrose does not equate Christ’s redemptive obedience only with his

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“obedience unto death,” though this is the ultimate instance of his submission to the Father’s will. Such obedience was first manifest when he contended with the devil in the wilderness and thereby “set free even the first Adam from exile.”64 Ambrose notes that the liberty of renewed humanity is modeled for our imitation when Christ assumed the servant’s posture of humility and obedience in the washing of his followers’ feet. Indeed, Ambrose’s inclusion of the ritual foot washing in the baptismal ritual grounds the new life of the initiate in the larger narrative of Christ’s life beyond the cross and the empty tomb. Nevertheless, the crucifixion and resurrection are the chief moments of the Incarnation dramatically represented in baptism. For in the ritual lowering and raising of the catechumen in the font, the Christian symbolically participates in Christ’s death and so becomes the recipient of Christ’s payment of humanity’s debt of sin. Christ’s justification of the human race in his cancellation of the debt is actualized in the life of the individual in her baptism; it is the moment of her justification.

Meritorious Faith and Justification So far, we have seen that baptism actualizes in the individual the saving possibility established by Christ in the Incarnation. Ambrose speaks of the Christian’s reception of Christ’s forgiveness as “justification,” but it is necessary to examine more closely Ambrose’s description of the relation of grace and human agency in justification. The key to understanding how the catechumen appropriates to herself the fruit of Christ’s atoning death and so becomes justified before the Father lies in Ambrose’s understanding of faith. When Ambrose explains how the Christian derives the benefits of Christ’s Passion through baptism, he says that she receives the pardon of sin by being united with Christ in faith. Specifically, in the faith of her confession she becomes clothed in the faith of Israel and so stands acquitted of sin before God. In Jacob and the Happy Life, Ambrose explains that we cling to Christ by faith in order to be justified. When commenting on how Jacob tricked his father Isaac into giving him his blessing by putting on his brother Esau’s clothing (Gen. 27:1–29), Ambrose compares the fragrance of Esau’s garments to the faith that justifies the Christian. Following Paul’s identification of Esau with Israel and Jacob with the Church, Ambrose explains the significance of Esau’s clothing that Jacob puts on: “Thus the younger brother took the clothing of the elder because he [Jacob] was conspicuous in the merit of his faith. Rebekah presented this clothing as a symbol of the Church; she gave to the younger son the clothing of the Old Testament, the prophetic and priestly clothing, the royal Davidic

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clothing . . . since the Jews kept it without using it and did not know its proper adornments.”65 As Esau despised his birthright and so sold it for a bowl of stew, so Israel did not understand the true meaning of God’s dispensation of the law in her own history and abandoned the covenant “lying in shadow.”66 For Ambrose, the Jews cannot appreciate the law and the prophets precisely because they lack belief in Christ, who, as the fulfillment of the law, illuminates its true meaning. Because the meaning of the law remains obscure for the Jews, they have misconstrued its value and thus have abandoned it. In contrast with the slow-witted Esau, wise and clever Jacob is a type of the Church. Since the Church, having Christ, possesses the revelation of incarnate Wisdom and so knows the true meaning of Torah, it adheres to the law by fulfilling the law in love. Consequently, the Father blesses the Gentile Church, as Isaac blessed Jacob, because of its acceptance of the covenantal faith of Israel enshrined in Torah: The Christian people put on [the clothing of the Old Testament], and it shone brightly. They made it bright with the splendor of their faith [suae fidei claritate] and the light of their holy works [piorum luce factorum]. Isaac recognized the familiar fragrance that attached to his people, he recognized the clothing of the Old Testament. . . . Isaac “smelled the fragrance of his garments.” And perhaps that means that we are not justified by works but by faith [non operibus justificamur, sed fide], because the weakness of the flesh is a hindrance to works but the brightness of faith puts the error that is in man’s deeds in the shadow and merits [meretur] for him the forgiveness of sins.67 Ambrose here is using the metaphor of clothing from Genesis 27 much as Paul uses the image of the fig tree in Romans 11 to describe the Gentiles’ incorporation into God’s covenant with Israel. For Paul, the Gentiles, like the shoots from a wild fig tree, attain salvation by being “grafted”—by their faith in Christ—onto the covenant God made with Israel. In Paul’s eyes, the Gentiles are an alien people who are now adopted and treated as children of the covenant. Similarly for Ambrose, the Church of the Gentiles, like Jacob, is clothed with an alien garment, the covenant of Israel that they receive through Christ. Because the clothing of the Old Testament “shone brightly” in the Church, God, like Isaac, recognizes in the covenant the “familiar fragrance that attached to his people”—a fragrance that he loves—and so blesses the Gentile Church as he once did Israel. At the same time, the old covenant gains a new brightness from the “splendor of their [the Church’s] faith and . . . holy works.” In other words, through the faith and works of Christians that fulfill the covenant, the Gentile Church is clothed with the sweetness of the Old Testament.

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This passage is significant for understanding Ambrose’s view of justification.68 Here he interprets Genesis 27:15–16 and 27–29 in terms of Paul’s discussion of justification in Romans 5:1 and 10:4. Having just praised the “holy works” of the Christian people, he apparently reverses himself, insisting that faith, not works, merits our justification, which is synonymous with the forgiveness of sins. But how does faith merit forgiveness? To answer this question, it is first necessary to turn to Ambrose’s catechetical treatise On Abraham to understand what he understands faith to be.

The Epistemic and Moral Character of Fides As we have seen, Ambrose combines moral and mystical readings of the lives of Israel’s patriarchs and matriarchs as exemplars of cardinal and theological virtues and as the foundation for his catechetical curriculum. Their journeys are thus models for the catechumens’ own journeys of moral preparation for baptism and subsequent progress in virtue as they live in the new reality begun at baptism. Although the patriarchs possess all the chief virtues—this is not surprising given Ambrose’s belief in the unity of the virtues—each biblical figure is the exemplar of one virtue in particular. Joseph, as prime minister to the pharaoh, naturally embodies justice. Isaac embodies the detachment from worldly pleasures characteristic of moderation. And not surprisingly, Abraham is the exemplar of faith. In his introduction to De Abraham, Ambrose tells his students that they can learn more about virtue from the true life of Abraham than from the fictions of Plato or Xenophon. Then he writes: A great man indeed, distinguished by the signs of many virtues, whom philosophy could not equal, for all its aspirations. So what Xenophon depicted is inferior to what Abraham did, and simple faith in the truth [simplex veritatis fides] is greater than the guile of eloquence. Therefore, let us consider the nature of Abraham’s piety [devotio]. . . . He is tested as brave, he is exhorted as faithful [incitatur fidelis], he is summoned as righteous, and he fittingly went as the Lord spoke to him.69 As the “father of faith, the father of a devout confession,” Abraham’s life illustrates the character of faith by which the catechumen will be justified at baptism.70 Fides, as represented in Abraham’s life, is fundamentally a trusting belief (credere) in God such as Abraham displays when he believes God’s fantastic promise that Sarah, despite her old and barren womb, would indeed give birth to a son.71 This is the epistemic character of faith. Ambrose explains that Abraham’s faith was “counted to him as righteousness” because “he did not

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seek the reason, but believed with prompt faith, lest he seem to exact a reason from the Lord God as from a man.”72 Here fides is praised, not so much for its credulity per se as for the trust in God’s promise of an heir simply because God is God. Unlike the word of a mortal, which must be supported by some reasonable explanation to be believed, the word of God is accepted immediately at face value as true. Abraham’s “prompt faith” justifies him before God precisely because it reveals Abraham’s iustitia, that is, his recognition of God’s authority and trustworthiness. Ambrose takes Abraham’s trust in God’s promise of an heir to be his grasp of the prophetic character of God’s promise. That is, he recognizes that the promised heir is Christ, whose children, the Church, will populate the world. The key proof text for Ambrose is John 8:56: “Abraham saw my day and rejoiced.”73 Naturally, the catechumens should imitate Abraham’s righteous faith through their belief in Christ. Even as Abraham numbered his servants, that is, chose them, so Christ, who numbered the hairs on the heads of his followers, “received those whom he adjudged worthy among the number of the faithful who believed in the passion of our Lord.”74 When Abraham considers the numerous stars, he understands that the stars represent his spiritual heirs who, Ambrose explains, he believes to be the Church: Yet the zeal for an eternal posterity is great for a holy and prophetic mind; for it desires the offspring of wisdom [partus sapientiae] and the inheritance of faith [fidei haereditatem]. . . . He longed for the offspring of the Church, he sought the succession which would not be enslaved but free, not “according to the flesh” but according to grace. . . . “And Abraham believed God and it was reputed to him for righteousness.” What did he believe [credidit]? [He believed] that not only a multitude of peoples believing in Christ, but also the splendor of Heavenly Grace and the resurrection of immortal life [resurrectionem vitae immortalis] would be conferred on the offspring of the Church.75 Ambrose’s description of Abraham’s desire for an “eternal posterity” that is the “offspring of wisdom” is likely an allusion to Plato’s argument in Symposium for the superiority of giving birth to the deathless offspring of wisdom born of the soul to the generation of children born of the body.76 Even as the lover of wisdom gains immortality of sorts by passing on wisdom and virtue to future generations and so lives with great honor in the collective memory of the polis, so Abraham gains an eternal progeny born of his faith. Here Ambrose uses Abraham to illustrate the spiritual character of faith. His “holy and prophetic mind” understood that God’s promise of his becoming the father of many

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nations should not be taken only in its literal sense—to mean that many nations would trace their line back to him through his son—but also in the spiritual and prophetic sense of the promise: he will have an “eternal” or spiritual posterity in “the offspring of the Church” who are his heirs, not according to the flesh but through grace, that is, by a shared belief in Christ. The Church is his heir inasmuch as it receives from Abraham “the inheritance of faith”— both his example of faith and the content of his faith. The “mystery of faith” that Abraham received is by no means confined to foreknowledge of the Incarnation. Abraham’s display of hospitality to the three strangers at the door of his tent (Gen. 18:2) includes belief in and piety toward the Holy Trinity.77 Fides, for Ambrose, has a moral as well as epistemic character. The faith that Abraham models for the Church is piety or service and obedience to God, as well as belief. As we have already seen, Ambrose introduces Abraham to his catechumens by extolling the superiority of his fides to the teachings of Plato and Xenophon. Ambrose then speaks of Abraham’s devotio.78 Here fides and devotio are almost synonymous. Specifically, the devotio of faith is submission to God’s authority before all other obligations, concerns, or desires for oneself or one’s family.79 Ambrose describes fides as our submission to Christ analogous to the body’s submission to the control and direction of the soul.80 This is fides as obedience.81 The devotion of faith, as Abraham exhibited, requires that the mind be free from attachment to anything other than God.82 Devotio, therefore, is characteristic of a mind full of prudence and justice in the worship of God, since it will surrender willingly the offering of the tithe, as the devout mind knows that it “cannot walk straight unless it is sustained by Divine favor.”83 The radical obedience of devotio is a willingness to expose oneself and one’s loved ones to grave danger for the sake of following where God leads. Ambrose tells the catechumens that Abraham’s journeying down into Egypt should inspire devotio among Christians.84 For, by taking Sarah into Egypt, which is often a symbol of carnal temptations, Abraham demonstrated that he was willing to put even his wife at risk for the sake of obeying God’s command. At the same time, there is an element of trust in this act of obedience. Although Abraham places obedience to God ahead of his regard for Sarah’s safety—for the Egyptians pose a real and present danger to her welfare—he trusts that “whoever follows God is secure.” Thus Ambrose tells the catechumens, “Therefore, we must put God before all, and neither love of country, nor obligations to parents and children, nor regard for a wife, should recall us from compliance with the heavenly precepts, because God bestows all these things on us and is well able to preserve what he gives. . . . Since he [Abraham] despised all things for the sake of God, he received from God all things in abundance.”85 Ambrose’s

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point for the catechumens is that although they are expected to place obedience to God before all else—even when obedience entails facing real danger—the promise of God’s protection in the midst of danger should militate against their fear and inspire proper devotion. God’s faithfulness to the believer cultivates the cardinal virtues necessary for a fidelity characteristic of devotio. Commenting on Jesus’ exhortation to be courageous in the midst of persecution, he says: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten by God. . . . Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:6, 7). Also: If the Word provides for worthless birds and faithless men . . . if he gives to all the gift of his mercy, there should be no doubt that the contemplation of the deserving faithful will be of value in his eyes. So he very clearly both plaited faith [fidem acuendo intexuit] in arousing it and laid the foundations [fundamenta subjecit] of the virtues for faith itself. For just as faith is the incentive [incentivum] for courage, so courage is the foundation of faith [fidei firmamentum].86 Ambrose here claims that if God extends mercy to all, he certainly provides for those who set their minds upon things divine. He has provided for those he loves both by establishing the virtues, such as courage, that are necessary to order the soul for faith and by forming faith within the soul, giving them not simply the capacity to believe but belief itself. Ambrose links Jesus’ words about the sparrows to Paul’s assurance “you are bought with a great price” (1 Cor. 6:20) to say that humanity has been bought with Christ’s blood that liberated us from the curse of the law and from “eternal death”; therefore, Christ frees us from the fear of death. Commenting on Isaac’s name, Ambrose explains how Isaac as the child of laughter was a type both of Christ’s passion and of man’s liberation from fear. “[B]y his very name he prefigures grace. For Isaac means laughter, and laughter is the sign of joy. . . . [For] he [Christ] is the joy of all—[Christ] who checked the dread of fearsome death, took away its terror, and became for all men the forgiveness of their sins.”87 By his victory over death, Christ’s resurrection becomes the object of faith that is the foundation of courage. Fides here is being used in two senses. First, faith as the “incentive for courage” refers to belief in Christ’s triumph over death in the resurrection, by which the Christian embraces the hope of her own resurrection. Faith that hopes in a life beyond the grave through resurrection minimizes a mortal’s natural timidity and so enables the Christian to be courageous in the face of persecution. In the context of Ambrose’s standoff during Holy Week of 386 with the Empress Justina over control of the basilicas and the imminent threat

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of imperial troops seizing the basilica, dying in defense of the Nicene faith was in Ambrose’s mind a distinct possibility.88 Second, there is faith that rests on the foundation of courage. Such faith cannot refer to the belief that is itself the cause of courage. Rather, faith in the context of Luke 12 must refer to the Christian’s faithfulness to Christ when pressured by the authorities to apostatize. Although faith apprehends the glory of God veiled in the flesh of Jesus,89 belief for Ambrose is not merely an epistemic category but includes one’s public confession.90 Unlike the disbelief of Zechariah that bound his tongue (Luke 1:22, 62–64), “Faith releases what disbelief has bound” and so enables us to speak our confession.91 Unbelief hinders one’s ability to apprehend the divine truth and consequently to make confession. Once the scales of unbelief fell from Saul of Tarsus’s eyes, the conversion of unbelief to faith conferred upon him “the grace of liberty” to behold the glory of God and to “preach the Gospel with the bare feet of free speech.”92 Returning to Jesus’ words of consolation and admonition to the disciples facing persecution, Ambrose writes, “[S]ince the cause of unbelief is twofold, because it is born either of implanted malice or of incidental fear, lest someone terrified by fear of earthly power be compelled to deny God whom he recognizes in his heart, he fittingly added . . . death is the end of nature, not a penalty—and that therefore death is the disappearance of earthly punishment.”93 Ambrose here does not assume that courage is a precondition for the leap of faith that accepts the supernatural or trusts in forgiveness. Rather, courage is necessary for either bringing belief to maturity as public faith through a confession of that which one already views to be true or persevering in the faith when confronted by the threat of imprisonment or execution. Belief in the resurrection that God “plaited” is the source of courage necessary for the believer to live faithfully. The most obvious example of devotio as obedience that subordinates the bonds of familial devotion to God’s will is Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. Ambrose begins his analysis of the narrative of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22 by explaining that God “tempted” (tentavit) Abraham, not as the devil does with the goal of undermining faith, but in order that his faith might be crowned. Having already proven Abraham’s faith with the promise of a son to a barren and elderly wife,94 God confirmed Abraham’s belief with the fulfillment of the promise but proved it “by greater and sterner commands.” While it is conceivable that Abraham could believe the impossible because he discerned some truth in it, the greater test of his faith was his willingness to obey a command that was antithetical to the truth of the initial promise.95 The command to sacrifice Isaac tested Abraham’s devotio because it pitted his paternal affection (adfectum patris) and fatherly duty (paternae pietatis) against his deference to God’s authority to command.96

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Indeed, the interpretation of Abraham’s reception of the three strangers illustrates Ambrose’s view of the relationship between faith (fides) and piety (devotio). Abraham’s hospitality toward the strangers reflects not only his belief or knowledge of the strangers’ identity, but also his service to the strangers which arises from his recognition that they are the Trinity. The service and obedience of faith (its moral character) are a response to the prior belief of faith (its epistemic character). Moreover, the response of devotio is swift and unhesitating.97 Ambrose is explicit on this point in his interpretation of Abraham’s instruction to Sarah upon the strangers’ arrival to “knead three measures of fine flour and make cakes” (Gen. 18:6). Sarah’s kneading the three measures of flour into a cake is a figure of the “mystery of faith” that is the Church’s profession of faith in the Triune God. Then comparing Sarah to the individual Christian—to his catechumens—he comments: “She it is who nurtures the faith in her inmost spirit [intimo fidem spiritu fovet], affirming the Trinity of the Godhead, worshipping the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with the equal measures and with reverence, and honoring them in the unity of majesty and distinguishing them by quality of Persons; knead your devotion with this affirmation of faith [devotionem tuam fide adsertione consperge].”98 Here devotio and fides again are closely related yet distinguished. Ambrose speaks of faith or belief in the Trinity as a fire that must be continually kindled (fovere) by the piety of public confession and worship. Similarly, the Christian’s devotio is like a lump of dough that becomes a cake to be offered to God only by the confession of one’s belief in the Trinity. The metaphor of kneading (conspergere) devotio that Ambrose takes from Genesis describes not a one-time act, like cutting the bread with a single swipe of the knife’s blade, but a continuous process of massaging the dough until the leaven has permeated the lump.99 So too, the obedience and service of devotio is the result of continuous meditation upon and profession of the Church’s, and so the individual’s, faith in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In sum, faith, as exemplified in Abraham, is for Ambrose a prophetic knowledge of God as Trinity and as Incarnate Deity, whose authority commands the absolute obedience characteristic of devotio. The devotio of faith rests firmly upon the conviction that God must be valued above all lesser goods of which he himself is the author and provider. Thus, faith as devotio is characterized by the deference of piety. Out of this understanding of God’s authority as the source of all things comes a confidence and trust that in our obedience— even when God commands that we risk or sacrifice the highest goods of this life—God grants us security and will preserve us either in this life or, in the case of martyrs, in the resurrection. For Ambrose, faith is more than trust in God’s forgiveness of the individual’s sins. It is trust in God’s promises ratified

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in Christ. Consequently, faith, for Ambrose, is the foundation of the Christian moral life because it is the fundamental disposition toward God that is the source of one’s obedience to God. The faith that begins with trust in God’s pardoning grace at baptism grows throughout our lives as we, like Abraham, trustingly sacrifice our highest worldly goods for the sake of following Christ. Yet this raises the critical question: “Whence comes faith?” Is it for Ambrose a capacity or disposition innate to human nature, as Marcia Colish has argued?100 Or is faith a gift of God, a virtue conferred upon nature with the anointing grace of the Holy Spirit? Or is it virtue that is taught and grows through instruction? To answer the question of whether faith is inherent to man’s natural constitution, we need to examine Ambrose’s portrayal of Abraham’s faith—first, against the larger backdrop of his depiction of the original constitution of human nature in Eden (with particular reference to On Paradise) and the effects of sin upon this nature, and then second, in the context of Ambrose’s understanding of fallen humanity’s regeneration in baptism.

Faith: Innate Disposition or Gift of Grace? De paradiso takes the form of a polemical or apologetic work that responds to the objections of the second-century Gnostic Apelles.101 These objections center on God’s seemingly injudicious decisions in the creation story of Genesis that necessarily resulted in the fall and the proliferation of evil. In his description of the prototypes of the human race, Ambrose offers no extended discussion of faith itself. Yet in response to the objection that since Adam and Eve had not yet eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil they could not know that eating the fruit was evil, he argues that humanity had within its nature a capacity to be faithful, in the sense of being obedient to God’s commands: Man is capable of realizing that utmost deferential obedience [summam obedientiam deferendam] should be given to his maker because of what God had already conferred on him, namely, the fact that God had breathed on him and that he was placed in the garden of delight. . . . It was not a question of technical knowledge [peritia], but of fidelity [fides]. He was certainly aware that God was in a position of preeminence and, as such, heed should be paid to his command. Although he did not understand the precise significance of the commands, he was conscious of the fact that deference [deferendam reverentiam] should be paid to the person of the Commander. This conviction in him stemmed from nature [in natura opinionem].102

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In other words, Adam and Eve had a natural ability to judge that the divine command, as the word of God, carried the force of authority requiring their compliance. Even if they did not know why that which God forbade was evil, they were able to believe that it was evil simply because it was contrary to God’s command. Such recognition of God’s authority comes from their knowledge of God as creator. Thus they were disposed to show deference to God’s command even if its meaning was beyond their comprehension. Moreover, since the command came from their benefactor, they already had some knowledge of the good. For, Ambrose goes on to say, “Not by the ear, but by the mind, do we form a judgment regarding injunction from above. But with the word of God before us we are able to formulate opinions on what is good and what is evil. [Evil] we naturally understand should be . . . avoided, and the other we naturally understand has been recommended to us as good.”103 In their knowledge of God as creator and provider of the goods of life, Adam and Eve were able to believe that what God prohibited was evil because they could trust that God’s prohibition was given for their own good. Adam’s recognition of God’s preeminence and thus of humanity’s deference to God’s commands was, for Ambrose, sufficient (independent of any “technical knowledge” of the nature of good and evil) for their obedience. Such consciousness at the very least must be viewed as foundational for faith, if not the very disposition of faith itself. Ambrose’s conclusion—“This conviction on his part stemmed from nature”—refers to Adam’s sense that God’s creatures should show deference to his commands by unquestioning obedience. What is unclear is how strongly one should take the force of opinio. Does it mean simply that Adam and Eve knew that they should show deference to God? Or does opinio here have the stronger sense that it was indeed their conviction or disposition toward God? If the former is the case, then Adam and Eve simply had the knowledge requisite for faithful obedience. If, however, opinio carries the latter meaning, then it is synonymous with the deferential disposition of devotio and fides. An equally important question concerns Ambrose’s conclusion that this opinion or conviction is in natura. Does he mean that this belief that God should be obeyed is, in some sense, inborn or innate? Ambrose here is asserting that Adam and Eve’s conviction of God’s authority and of their concomitant obligation to obey is the first principle of the natural law inscribed upon the mind. Later, Ambrose discusses the natural law, comparing God’s breathing life into Adam and with it an innate knowledge of the divine law to the inscription of the law by the Holy Spirit described in 2 Corinthians 3:3: The commands of God are impressed in our hearts [Dei autem praeceptum . . . cordibus nostris tenemus impressum] by the Spirit of the

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living God. We do not read these orders as if they were recorded in ink on a tablet of stone. Hence, in our own thought we formulate a law [opinio nostra . . . legem facit]: “For if the gentiles who have no law do by nature what the law prescribes, those having no law of this kind are a law unto themselves. They show the work of the law written upon their hearts.” There is something, therefore, like the law of God that exists in the hearts of men [opinio igitur humana].104 Adam and Eve’s subjection to God’s authority as their maker is the most basic moral demand that the natural law places upon humanity—a law that was with them from their creation. Thus, their capacity for faithful relationship with God arises out of this first principle of natural law. Yet their transgression proves the weakness of their faith and how ineffectual their natural knowledge of God’s authority was in enabling them to see through the devil’s deceptions. It is in Ambrose’s discussion of the Spirit’s work in baptism that we see his account of the adverse consequences of the fall—what humanity lost—and what is restored in the sacrament. Here faith appears less as a connatural disposition or capacity and more as a gift of grace. In his Exposition on the Gospel according to Luke, Ambrose reads the parable of the Good Samaritan as an allegory of salvation history. Jerusalem, whence the Jew was traveling, is an image of paradise or the heavenly Jerusalem. Jericho, by contrast, is a figure of the world to which Adam fell and to which human nature was exiled.105 The thieves who lie in wait to attack the traveler are Satan and his angels. The good Samaritan is, of course, Christ, “who on his journey,” that is, the Incarnation, ministered to Adam—fallen humanity—binding his wounds and clothing him with his own garments. Ambrose uses the image of the thieves to exhort his readers to beware lest Satan and his angels strip them of that nature renewed in baptism as Satan had first stripped Adam of that primal nature: These [thieves] first steal the garments of spiritual grace [indumenta gratiae spiritalis] which we have received and are thus wont to inflict wounds, for if we preserve inviolate the garments [indumenta] which we have donned, we cannot feel the robbers’ blows. Therefore, beware lest you are stripped [ne ante nuderis] as Adam was first stripped of the heavenly command, defrauded of protection, divested of the garment of faith [exutus fidei vestimento], and thus received a mortal wound, whereby the whole human race would have fallen [occidisset] if that Samaritan, on his journey, had not tended his grievous injuries.106

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The “garments of spiritual grace . . . which we have donned” is likely a reference to the white robe with which the newly baptized were covered, and which symbolize for Ambrose putting on Christ, the second Adam, in whom human nature is restored. Although this renewed nature can be stripped from us, as it was from Adam, if we disobey, it grants to us something of the protection against the deceiver’s temptations if it is kept “inviolate” by our obedience. More important, Ambrose sees a parallel between what Adam lost in the fall and what the Christian should lose if the renewed nature is stripped from us by sin. Our disobedience and apostasy cause us to lose what our first parents lost in the original sin. By Satan’s deception, Eve and Adam were stripped of the “heavenly command,” becoming forgetful of the imperative not to eat of the forbidden fruit and thereby losing protection from Satan’s deceit, the gift of immortality, and “the garment of faith.” Ambrose’s assumption is either that faith was among the constitutive features of Adam and Eve’s nature—a nature now corrupted—or that faith was a gift added to human nature but which it forfeited by sin. Ambrose’s repetition of garment language identifies the garment of faith that Adam lost with the garment of grace with which the Christian is sacramentally clothed in baptism. So if Adam and Eve could be stripped of faith—a faith that is restored in the sacrament—it is harder to view faith as inherent to human nature. Has Ambrose contradicted his view of faith articulated in De paradiso? Although Ambrose is not concerned with creating a systematic account of fides, his two positions are in fact reconcilable. Simply because something, like faith, is inherent to human nature does not mean that it cannot be either lost altogether or retained, albeit in a corrupted form. This is most consistent with Ambrose’s analogy of faith and immortality. Like immortality, which was both lost in the fall and restored in baptism, faith, though characteristic of humanity in the beginning, seems to be a grace added to nature. In On Abraham, Ambrose describes faith and immortality in precisely this way: [M]an qua species is said to be immortal; but no man is immortal; no, none does not cease to be. Whoever does not have faith ceases to be. An individual ceases to be, but the condition and the essence of humanity do not. So the sinner is led down from the eternal and the innocent to that which is temporal and dangerous.107 Neither faith nor immortality is a permanent feature of human nature. Where faith is lost, so too is immortality. Even if one concludes that faith, just like rationality, is proper to human nature as God first made man, Ambrose is clear that training is necessary for the maintenance and cultivation of the

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“grace of nature.” Without such training, the beauty of the virtues proper to humanity can be lost.108 Consequently, faith, for Ambrose, is in some sense an innate capacity, in that Adam and Eve were capable of knowing God through the commands they received from their benefactor. At the same time, faith, like rationality or immortality, is dependent upon the gift of grace that allows the actualization of the natural capacity. When sin in some sense cuts off humanity from God, the source of grace, the innate capacity is lost or corrupted. Consequently, the grace of God conferred in baptism is necessary to allow the awakening of faith. When Ambrose speaks of the “garment of faith” put on at baptism, he is describing the Spirit’s anointing of grace that revitalizes the capacity for faith and devotion to God. Whatever innate opinion of God’s authority humanity retains through the natural law and with it the foundation for faith as obedience to God’s authority, sin—which Ambrose often depicts as intemperate behavior or as the “sacrilegious hunger” of gluttony—has so turned the mind from the things of God to the pleasures of the flesh (e.g., luxury, ambition, wealth) that we have forgotten the precepts of God.109 The soul, far from being characterized by the devotio of faith, is hardened to God’s word. Consequently, if humanity is to be redeemed, the residue of primal faith must be reawakened and restored as an active principle in human life. While Ambrose does see a cooperative relationship between God and human beings in the ordo salutis—man repents and God sanctifies— he insists that faith is a work of God in the human soul. In his Exposition on Luke, Ambrose takes John the Baptist’s words, “God is able to raise up from these very stones children to Abraham,” as a prophecy of the calling of the hard-hearted and stony-minded Gentiles: Indeed God prepared to soften the hardness of our minds and from stumblingblocks erect husbandmen of religion. . . . Therefore, faith [fides] is prophesied to be poured out [infundenda] into the stony hearts [saxosis pectoribus] of the Gentiles, and the oracles promise that through faith [per fidem] there will be sons of Abraham in whom through hardness of mind [per duritiam mentis] the stony, insensitive, and irrational practice of nature had set fast [inoleuerat].110 Far from being a capacity of fallen humanity, faith must be poured into (infundere) the stony and unbelieving hearts of Gentiles so that per fidem they might be made sons of Abraham.111 The metaphor of the stony heart Ambrose deploys repeatedly to describe the condition of sinful humanity in (a) its habitual attachment or, alternatively, addiction to the things of flesh and the world (that is, the irrational practice of nature that had “set fast”); and (b) its inability to hear the word of God and obey.

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This outpouring of faith that softens the stony heart comes to the catechumen at baptism. At the beginning of the liturgy, the priest touches the initiate’s ears and nostrils and commands them to be opened—thus imitating Jesus’ healing of the Sidonese man born deaf (Mark 7:33–35)112—so that she may hear and remember what is said to her. The nostrils are “opened” so that she “may receive the good odor of eternal piety . . . and that there may be in [her] the full fragrance of faith and devotion.”113 Thus, the initiate is made ready to receive the faith that is to come later in the sacrament. One way that Ambrose describes the ritual of immersion is as a cleansing of the mind to receive the gift of faith: Learn the grace of salutary baptism: he who had immersed himself as a leper emerged as a believer. Learn that the Sacraments are appointed as spiritual. A cure for the body is sought, a cure for the mind is obtained. The flesh is washed, the disposition is washed. For I see that the leprosy of the mind as much as of the body was cleansed, when purged of the dregs of the old error after baptism.114 Even as Naaman the Syrian, despite his initial doubts, was healed of his leprosy and believed in the power of the God of Israel, the catechumen comes to belief through the holy laver of baptism. As the waters of the font wash away the sin of the old man, the mind is purified so that it is able to believe. Ambrose’s view that baptism frees the mind from the obfuscating cloud of sin and so awakens faith is consistent with his conviction that only after passing through the sacrament is one capable of receiving instruction about its meaning.115 The prebaptismal instruction had taught the catechumen about the moral character of the life of the baptized and had used images that foreshadowed what she would undergo in baptism. Yet Ambrose’s sense is that only after having gone through the sacramental initiation at Easter was the catechumen able to grasp the fuller significance of what she had been taught during her Lenten catechesis. Indeed, the awakening of faith is made ineffectual by the fall and sin; and it is part of baptism’s regenerative work of renewing human nature and restoring to humanity that which it lost in the fall. Ambrose interprets Adam’s awareness of his nakedness to refer to his realization that he had lost the marks of God’s protection, that is, the loss of faith due to transgression.116 Warning against the trial that persecution will bring to test the fruit of our baptism, Ambrose writes, “[T]hrough the multitude of offences, the dew of the holy fountain [sacri fontis] will dry up in us . . . for unbelief renders [the soul] arid, but faith bedews [rorat].”117 Faith that comes from the sacer fons, the baptismal font, makes the soul soft and capable of receiving the seed of divine instruction so that it may yield the fruit of virtue. While Ambrose treats faith in one sense as an innate capacity, corrupted but not lost in the fall, his emphasis is upon the

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necessity of God’s grace in baptism for the renewal of this capacity, which in turn becomes the wellspring of the virtuous life. As we have seen, Ambrose sees the gift of faith as justification or the forgiveness of sins. But he also understands the gift of grace in baptism in its relation to the Christian’s destiny in the resurrection of the dead. In dying to sin, she lives in anticipation of the new life of the resurrection. In his explication of Luke’s account of Jesus with the disciples upon the Mount of Transfiguration, Ambrose furthers his metaphor of “bedewing,” connecting it to the image of the cloud to describe the work of the Spirit: “While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them.” That is the overshadowing of the Divine Spirit, which is not dark with the emotions [affectibus] of men, but unveils secrets [occulta] . . . when the voice of God is heard, saying, “This is my beloved Son.” . . . Ye see that the perfect faith [fidem perfectam] of not only beginners but also the perfect, no, even of heavenly beings, is to know the Son of God. But since we said these things already above, know that the cloud was not a black mist of the cloudy moisture of smoking mountains and compressed air which covers the heaven with the terror of darkness, but a luminous cloud [lucidam nubem] which does not soak us with rainwater or the downpour of storm, but from which dew sprinkles [ros rigavit] the minds of men with faith [fide] sent by the voice of Almighty God.118 Ambrose speaks of the dew of faith as having two chief consequences for the soul. First, faith, like dew that moistens the hard ground, softens the heart that the soul may receive the seeds of the Divine Word. This, of course, involves justification and the forgiveness of sins. Second, the dew of faith cools the fiery and intemperate passions of the soul so that the mind may no longer be fixed upon the things of the flesh but seek the wisdom of God. The bedewing of the soul with faith is, for Ambrose, the Holy Spirit’s regenerative work that restores fallen human nature to paradise. Ambrose sees a parallel between Christ’s baptism in the Jordan with the descent of the Spirit and the baptism of the believer. “He is anointed with spiritual oil and heavenly virtue to bedew [rigaret] the poverty of the human condition with the eternal treasure of the Resurrection, to drive away bondage of mind, to enlighten the blindness of spirits.”119 Ambrose interprets Jesus’ self-identification with the words of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” to refer to the unity of operation of the Father, Son, and Spirit in Jesus’ baptism for his redemptive work.120 He also uses the same language to speak of Christ’s anointing by the Holy Spirit as he uses to speak of the soul’s anointing or being bedewed (rorari) at the font in baptism.121

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Moreover, Ambrose explicitly identifies the bedewing as the conferral of resurrection and illumination. So too in our baptism the Spirit anoints us to receive the treasure of resurrection and the illumination from the mind, enabling its devotio and obedience. From another perspective, the mind so illuminated has been purified by justification and the forgiveness of sins. While Ambrose does not think through how these two perspectives are related, they are held together by the idea that in baptism we die and rise with Christ. Ambrose sees the resurrection as the foundation for the devotio of faith, not merely because it is the cause of true courage, but because it awakens the soul’s desire for God and sets the soul on its quest for communion with God. “For whosoever believes Christ has been restored to life, quickly searches for him, comes to him with devotion, and worships God with his inmost heart. Indeed, he believes that he himself will not die if he has belief in the source of his resurrection.”122 Ambrose’s point is that death and resurrection train the soul to cleave to God. First, death confronts mortals with the reality that we do not subsist by our own power. Then resurrection reveals the power beyond nature that is the ultimate source of life. The resurrection makes vividly explicit what has been implicit but often overlooked in everyday existence: God is the source of life. Once the soul recognizes that the God who raised Jesus is the source of its own being, it is awakened to the proper object of its devotion. By revealing that God is the source of life both in the present and for eternity, the resurrection turns the soul back to God. Thus the faith of the baptized, like that of the woman with the issue of blood, is pleasing to God because it “holds fast” to Christ “so that the power may go out of him and may heal [the] soul.” The initiate’s faith, like that of Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, seizes Christ and will not let him go because she knows that Christ is the tree of life without whose sustaining grace she will fall again into sin and death.123 The resurrection as God’s revelation of his redemptive and vivifying power is the cause of the soul’s seeking God and of our clinging in faith to the one in whom we live. Ambrose explains how baptism—the revelation of resurrection to the catechumen—generates faith by arousing desire for God. After the neophyte has risen from the font, the bishop anoints his head with oil before clothing him with the white baptismal robe. The aroma of the perfumed oil (unguentum) is a figure for the fragrance of the risen Christ. Quoting Song of Songs 1:2–3, “Thy name is as ointment poured out; therefore young maidens have loved thee and drawn thee,” Ambrose comments: “How many souls renewed today have loved Thee Lord Jesus, saying, ‘Draw us after thee; let us run to the odor of thy garments,’ that they may drink in the odor of the resurrection.”124 The oil with which the neophyte is anointed has a double significance. First, in its perfume it carries the fragrance of Christ’s resurrection. Second, in its placement on the

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nostrils, it depicts through the breathing in of the aroma awakening to Christ’s resurrection, arousing desire in the soul, and so drawing the soul to God in the hope of being raised. In sum, Ambrose presents faith both in its epistemic and moral character as a work of God in the heart and mind of the Christian. God implants in the believer trust in the promise of the forgiveness of sins through Christ’s assumption of the debt of sin in his passion, thereby reawakening the faith corrupted by sin. At the same time, faith in the Spirit’s witness to the promise of forgiveness, which justifies the Christian, infuses trust in the promise of new life in the resurrection of the dead. Although faith is primarily the gift of grace, the belief in God’s promise of forgiveness and the resurrection is efficacious only inasmuch as the believer’s trust of God is manifest in fortitude and faithfulness. The salvific value of the gift of faith and the life of faithfulness can be understood in Ambrose’s account of merit in justification.

The Merit of Faith As we have seen, Ambrose interprets Isaac’s conferral of his blessing on Jacob rather than Esau —because Isaac “smelled the fragrance of his [Esau’s] clothes”—as prefiguring the justification of the Gentiles by faith, which Paul describes in Romans 5:1ff. Intriguingly, Ambrose goes on to conclude that in contrast with our feeble works “the brightness of faith puts the error that is in man’s deeds in the shadow and merits [meretur] for him the forgiveness of his sins.”125 In the context of the passage, the Gentiles’ faith is Israel’s faith that, like Esau’s clothing covering Jacob, clothes the Gentiles and so gains them God’s blessing. As we have also seen, for Ambrose, Israel’s and the Church’s common faith—that faith of which Abraham is the paragon and prototype—is belief in and obedience to the Triune God whose Word becomes incarnate to forgive sins and bring salvation to the Gentiles. But in what sense does faith in the incarnate Word merit forgiveness? The value of the Christian’s faith that merits justification is ultimately derived from the merits of Christ, who is both the object of faith and the new model of faithfulness. In his discussion of Christ’s pardoning the sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36–50), Ambrose explains how faith covers the believer with merit: [I]f ye set your soul as faithfully approaching God [fideliter adpropinquantem], not with base and hateful sins, but piously obeying his word, having the confidence of unblemished purity [immaculatae castitatis], ye perceive that it ascends to the very head of Christ, for the

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head of Christ is God, and scatters the savour of his merits [odorem meritorum]. For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ; indeed, the life of the righteous emitting a sweet savour [fragrans odorem], honours God.126 Here Ambrose identifies approaching God in faith with obedient reverence for the word of Scripture. This is faith in its moral character, devotio. It is a form of actual righteousness, in that it is free of base sin, and it allows us to approach the Father who is the head of Christ. The soul bearing the righteousness of faith is acceptable to God because the righteousness of faith “scatters the savour of [Christ’s] merits.” Here faith is meritorious because it is an extension of Christ’s righteousness. Approaching God in faith and piety, the soul is pleasing to God, Ambrose implies, because the faith that God cultivated in the soul possesses the merits of Christ’s righteousness. Ambrose’s explanation of Luke 7 illuminates his interpretation of Isaac’s blessing of Jacob (Gen. 27:1–29): even as Esau’s clothing covers Jacob with the fragrance of Esau and so gains for Jacob his father’s blessing, so too the Christian’s faithfulness is meritorious since it corresponds to the aroma of Christ’s merits. What is Christ’s merit, for Ambrose, but his faithfulness even unto death? The Christian’s faithfulness— a faithfulness emboldened by her belief in Christ’s resurrection—even in the face of persecution is like Christ’s unwavering faithfulness before Pilate and the Sanhedrin. Because the faith of the Christian has the same sweet fragrance as does the faithfulness of Christ, the Christian shares in Christ’s righteousness (iustita) and is thus justified (iustificari) by God. There is, however, a fundamental difference between Christ’s faithful obedience unto death, the devotion of the martyr baptized in his own blood, and the meritorious faith of the ordinary catechumen baptized in the font. It is clear that Christ’s perfect obedience is superior to the merit of the martyr—the martyr’s death being but an imitation of Christ’s obedience—yet the faith of the martyr is faithfulness unto death. The genuineness of the martyr’s faith—of her belief in Christ’s death and resurrection and of her absolute obedience—is proven when her courage is tested on the pyre or in the arena. Indeed, for Ambrose faith is tested by struggle. Having quoted Paul (Rom. 6:4) that we are joint heirs with Christ if we suffer and die with Christ, Ambrose exhorts his catechumens to take on Christ’s passion and through fides and devotio in the face of opposition and hardship to merit the crown of glory. Christ’s faithfulness and the faith of the martyrs is obedience unto death; by contrast, the faith of the newly baptized is relatively untested. Here, Ambrose’s account of how faith merits justification is problematic. Although the faith of the baptized is like Christ’s faithfulness (and that of the martyrs), it is but a

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pledge of obedience. How, therefore, can the faith of the newly baptized possess a merit analogous to the merit of Christ’s faithfulness? How can the faith of the baptized be sufficiently like Christ’s faith to merit justification? If the Christian never faces persecution or endures martyrdom, can she have the fragrance of Christ’s merit? Ambrose would say yes. For Ambrose, baptism is a symbolic martyrdom. In her immersion in the pool, the initiate is united in faith with Christ upon the cross, participating in his passion. Thus, the faith that the catechumen receives at the font is of the same species as the faith that steadies the martyr in the arena: both are imitations of Christ’s faithful obedience unto death. In faith, the baptized has crucified the flesh, repudiated the powers and principalities of the world, rejected sin, and proclaimed her devotion to God. Because the faith of Christ, the martyr, and the catechumen are the same virtue, differing only in the degree of their maturity, the catechumen’s faith, incipient and untried though it may be, nevertheless shares in the merit of Christ. The embryonic faith of the baptized is counted as meritorious for justification because through faith the Christian is united with Christ in his resurrection, and so participates in the eschatological kingdom in the here and now. Commenting on Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed, Ambrose observes that the faith the Lord required of the disciples—faith that could move mountains— was nothing more than the size of a mustard seed. Faith, he explains, is identical with the kingdom of heaven such that for those who have faith—though tiny as a mustard seed—the kingdom is among them.127 Ambrose’s logic is that through the absolute submission to God characteristic of faith, God’s will governs and guides the person of faith even as God’s word shall have sway over the saints in the resurrection. Moreover, Ambrose insists, faith that believes in Christ’s resurrection raises the believer proleptically to eschatological perfection. In his analysis of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ in the garden, Ambrose comments on the striking differences between the resurrection narrative presented in Matthew’s Gospel and that in John’s. He reconciles the accounts by arguing that these stories are of two Marys, each from the town of Magdalene. The two Marys of Magdalene, he explains, are types representing those disciples who have faith in the resurrection and those who do not. The Mary in Matthew’s Easter narrative is “allowed to hold fast to Jesus’ feet” because she believed and worshiped the risen Christ in faith. The Mary of John’s Gospel, however, is commanded not to touch Jesus because her lack of faith prevented her from recognizing him.128 Ambrose praises the Matthean Mary, all but calling her a second Eve.129 The Johannine Mary, because of her doubt, remains a woman. For the Matthean Mary, faith in the resurrection not only enables her to recognize the risen Christ but also elevates her beyond the lowly status of woman into the manly perfection that is characteristic of our

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eschatological maturity in Christ.130 In other words, faith is meritorious because faith, even in its nascent form—like the mustard seed—is the seed of what the believer shall become. Faith, in which the believer attains the fullness of Christ, allows the believer to participate in the eschatological kingdom such that through faith the kingdom is actualized in the believer and in the community. Meriting the grace of baptism, for Ambrose, is simply our response to Christ’s prior merits. The grace of baptism that is the source of both reception of Christ’s merit and participation in Christ’s new creation is represented by the white robe with which the newly baptized is clothed. As a sign of Christ’s resurrection, it denotes that those who are symbolically united with Christ in death through baptism shall be raised in the dazzling brightness of the resurrected body of which Christ’s resurrected body is paradigmatic. Ambrose plays with the double meaning of the white robe: it is a symbol of both the moral purity of the justified and the physical purity of the resurrected body. Even as the glorified body of the resurrection is free from the disfigurement of sin’s corruption, so too the white robe at baptism signifies that the baptized are justified and free from the blemish of sin.131 The baptismal garment is also a figure of the wedding garment of virtue and purity that is required for admission to Christ’s eschatological banquet. Ambrose identifies the veil Rebekah covered herself with as she went to consummate her marriage to Isaac (Gen. 24:65) with the wedding clothing in Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast (Matt. 22:12–13). The diaphanous veil does not conceal sins but reveals the purity of one’s faith and wisdom. “Just so this soul [Rebekah] anticipated the mark of the wedding garment, so that she might not be cast out as one not having a wedding garment. . . . Blessed is the soul in whom he does not find grave sins, or many, but on her he finds the cloak of faith and the rule of wisdom.”132 The wedding garment of faith, Ambrose explains, does not cover up sins (at least not serious or numerous sins); for the Lord, like Isaac, removes the garment to behold “the true beauty of naked virtue . . . [ free from] the remnants of carnal delight and the concupiscence of the body.” While Ambrose does not see freedom from all sin as necessary for reception into the marriage feast or bridal chamber,133 he does view faith and wisdom as the virtues necessary for the soul’s eschatological fellowship with God—virtues with which the soul is clothed in baptism. Thus, the goodness symbolized by the wedding garment is not an alien righteousness by which we are treated as if we were righteous, but the actual righteousness of faith. Unlike the Church at Corinth, which suffered from delusions of an overly realized eschatology, Ambrose is no triumphalist. He is fully cognizant that the Church lives in the tension between the inauguration of the Kingdom and its eschatological consummation, and so his appreciation of this tension is not

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absent from his interpretation of our baptismal participation in the resurrection. As virtuous as the soul becomes through the gift of faith and regeneration in baptism, the tension between the purity and perfection that is hoped for and the purity of the baptized soul in the present age remains. Ambrose applies the words of the bride from Song of Songs, “I am black but beautiful” (1:5), as a description of the Church, the community of the baptized. The blackness denotes human nature weakened by the corruption of sin. Yet the Church is beautiful because the grace in baptism has cleansed her. This paradox should not be read as an anticipation of Luther’s simul iustus et peccator, however: The Church, having assumed these vestments through the laver of regeneration [per lavacrum regenerationis] says in the Canticles: “I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,” black through the frailty of human condition, beautiful through grace; black, because I am made up of sinners, beautiful by the sacrament of faith. Perceiving these vestments, the daughters of Jerusalem in amazement say: “Who is this that cometh up made white?” She was black [Haec nigra]; how was she suddenly made white?134 Here Ambrose presents baptism as effecting a substantial change in the one baptized, for he notes that the daughters of Jerusalem do not recognize the bride: “Who is this woman coming up all whitened?” (8:5). Ambrose’s interpretation maintains an intentional ambiguity. Initially, he takes “I am black and beautiful” to express the paradox that the Church is black in the sense that Christians continue to suffer the physical infirmities resulting from sin, yet at the same time is beautiful because she has been pardoned and renewed through the gift of faith. Commenting on the question of the daughters of Zion, “Who is this woman coming up all whitened?,” Ambrose asks rhetorically, “She was black; how was she suddenly made white?” His reference to the blackness in the past tense suggests that the bride or Church is no longer black in some sense. A plausible explanation is that Ambrose is willing to say that the baptized Christian is black in that she retains the nature rendered weak by sin. Yet she is white and beautiful in the sense that she, being justified, is freed from guilt and is clothed with the glory of Christ’s resurrected humanity.135 Indeed, the beauty of the baptized represented by the white robe is the image of the sanctification of the Holy Spirit who, through the font, has given us the beauty of divine holiness. “Christ, moreover, on seeing his Church in white vestments . . . that is, a soul pure and washed by the laver of regeneration, says: ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair, thy eyes are as a dove’s,’ in whose likeness the Holy Spirit descended from heaven.”136 Ambrose sees the dovelike whiteness of the bride in Song of Songs 4:1 as a prefiguring of the

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Holy Spirit who descended in the form of a dove at Jesus’ baptism. By describing the beauty of bride or Church using a figure of the Holy Spirit, Ambrose is equating the purity of the baptized with the purity of the divine nature. Through the Holy Spirit, the believer’s union with Christ in baptism initiates a process of divinization whereby the believer takes on the holiness of Christ. When Ambrose interprets Song of Songs 1:2–3, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. For your breasts are better than wine and the fragrance of your unguents is better than all spice,” he distinguishes between the Bridegroom’s kiss and the fragrance of his perfume. The kiss, Ambrose explains, represents the Word’s inspiring or pouring his teachings and the wisdom of the law into the mind. He proceeds to identify the fragrance of the ointment with grace that forgives sin and “wip[es] away the heavy dregs of vice among all men.”137 For when the Bridegroom embraced the bride to kiss her and “laid his breast to her,” the fragrance of his ointment rubbed off onto the bride, allowing her to share in the fragrant aroma of the Word. The fragrance of the Bridegroom’s perfume here does not become a metaphor of imputed righteousness—that is, a perfume that covers the stench of sin. Rather, the metaphor of the ointment describes the cleansing of sin by virtue of union with Christ in baptism. Following Paul, Ambrose maintains that Christians are justified by faith. The Christian’s faith in its double sense of trusting belief and submissive devotion merits justification because God treats the believer as one clothed in Christ and bearing the savor of his holiness that shall be ours more fully at the resurrection. Although the Christian, like Jacob, is blessed because she is covered with the merits of Christ, justification, for Ambrose, is not the result of a solely imputed righteousness. Rather, God the Father justifies the Christian as Christ because of the actual righteousness of her faith. Not only does the Christian’s faith recognize and accept the gift of forgiveness and resurrection that Christ’s death and resurrection offer humanity, but faith is a participation in the new creation begun on the first Easter. Through faith given in baptism the Christian begins to live in the new reality of Christ’s kingdom as she awaits its eschatological consummation. Even more, faith has the merit of actual righteousness because of its likeness, albeit an imperfect likeness, to Christ’s own faithfulness, which is supremely meritorious. By virtue of the actual righteousness of faith, God blesses the Christian as an adopted child.

Meriting Grace and Striving for Salvation Ambrose’s deployment of “merit” language to explain how the Christian is justified by faith is no aberration. Elsewhere he claims that the soul’s search for

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Christ is itself meritorious138 and describes salvation as the reward for the Christian athlete’s struggle.139 Ambrose even exhorts his readers to make God their debtor: “Blessed are they to whom Thou are a debtor. Would that we may be satisfactory debtors, would that we can repay what we have received, and the duty of the Priesthood or the ministry not raise us up! How wilt Thou repay, Lord Jesus? Indeed, Thou hast promised that the reward of the good is very great in Heaven.”140 Ambrose even goes so far as to say that God’s conferral of “grace differs according to our merits.”141 Such language is not unproblematic for contemporary students of historical theology reading Ambrose on this side of the Pelagian controversy. However, the challenge is to read Ambrose in his own terms rather than through the lens of the debate between Pelagius and Augustine. Ambrose can employ the language of reward and merit to speak about salvation precisely because he takes as his starting point not events leading up to the decision for baptism, but baptism itself. His commentary on Luke, for instance, is not an occasional piece, nor is it written for a particular group of Christians whose place in the journey influences the content of his exegesis. He writes, “For there are three things which are of benefit for the purpose of human salvation: the Sacrament, the desert, and fasting; for ‘none is crowned except he strive lawfully,’ but none is admitted to the contest of virtue unless he is first cleansed of all blemishes of sins and consecrated by the gift of Heavenly Grace.”142 Christ’s fasting in the wilderness models for the Christian the life that rejects the soft and effeminate pleasures and so is part of the catechumen’s Lenten preparation for baptism.143 Given his use of 2 Timothy 2:5, Ambrose depicts the Christian life as an athletic contest that cannot be won except by striving to throw off fleshly desires. Yet he is explicit that the justifying and regenerative work of baptismal grace is a precondition for entry into the contest, that is, the daily struggle against the temptations of residual concupiscence. Here we see the twofold work of baptism. The cleansing of baptism is its pardoning and justifying work. The consecration of heavenly grace refers to the regenerative work of baptismal grace. Only after one has been justified and renewed can one strive for that virtue that merits salvation. Similarly, Ambrose describes the Christian as an “athlete of Christ” who through baptism is anointed for the contest or struggle against the world (his allusion here being to the practice of anointing athletes with oil before a competition144). Although Ambrose distinguishes the contest from the prize, the struggle from the reward, he also insists that we are able to enjoy the prize in the midst of the contest. Ambrose explains: “He who contends has what he hopes for [Qui luctatur habet quod speret]; where there is a struggle, there is a crown. You contend in the world, but you are crowned by Christ. And for the

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struggles of the world you are crowned, for, although the reward is heaven, the merit for the reward is established here [hic . . . meritum praemii conlocatur].”145 Ambrose here repeats the theme of the anointing of baptism as preparation for the contest, and he is not reluctant to carry this metaphor to its logical conclusion, calling the crown of salvation the reward of our merit. What is curious is his claim, “He who contends has what he hopes for.” After all, according to the conventional understanding, hope, though it is a present reality as a disposition of the soul, can scarcely be equated with its future object.146 Therefore, in what way does one possess in the middle of one’s struggle the crown for which one hopes? The sense of the passage is that in struggling one possesses the crown proleptically. That is, by struggling the Christian knows that she is doing that which merits the crown, so she can find a joy in the merit of her struggle that is itself the basis for her reward. The daily struggle is by no means the only source of enjoyment; for union with Christ in baptism brings also the present enjoyment of fellowship with Christ. Commenting on Jesus’ words, “No man pours new wine into old vessels,” Ambrose explains that “old vessels” refers to the frail humanity that must be made anew in order to receive the new wine of Christ. He illustrates this point by turning to Christ’s sixth miracle, the calling of Levi (Luke 5:27–29) and writes, “by the sixth work of Christ, already not the old, but a new creature, even the strange form, is restored. And, therefore, the new creature, as it were, prepares a feast for Christ, inasmuch as Christ delighted in him, and he deserved to share with Christ in the delight.”147 When through Christ we are made a new creature (through the renewing grace of baptism), Christ takes delight in the new creature and the new creature takes delight in Christ and in his pleasure. This joy in Christ is the mark of the creature’s renewed nature, in contrast with the old creature’s delight in sensual pleasure. Ultimately, delight in Christ merits the Christian’s fellowship in Christ. This new capacity that merits fellowship is itself the work of Christ’s grace. If the grace of baptismal regeneration is implied in Ambrose’s interpretation of Levi’s call, it is explicit in On the Mysteries. Commenting on Song of Songs 8:1–2, Ambrose says that the bride seeks the Bridegroom, Christ, and desires to arouse him to greater love. The zeal of her love, which brings Christ to her, is a manifestation of the faith born in baptism.148 In the cleansing grace of baptism that removes the filth of sin and orients the soul to God in faith, God arouses a holy passion that makes the Christian worthy to receive Christ as our Bridegroom. It is the change in desire born of faith that proves meritorious and enables the merit of our own right use of the gift of baptism. Although grace and merit exist in a dialectic, grace creates the context in which the Christian makes choices and tries to live the life of virtue.

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Ambrose repeats the theme of meritorious desire in his account of the soul’s ascent to God. In Isaac or the Soul, Ambrose says that the soul’s search for God merits mercy: “Today also, if any soul seeks after him much, she will merit much mercy, because very much is owed to the man who seeks much.”149 The search Ambrose has in mind is plumbing the text of Scripture and searching through its riddles. Only by such intellectual diligence will we be able to hear the word of God. The prophets are “the windows of heaven” through which we see God. Christ responds to our desire by coming to us and speaking to us because we are desirous of hearing him. By contrast, Ambrose describes Christ as “leaping over those who cannot receive his strength from weakness of heart.” The mercy that is merited is not forgiveness of sin; it is the mercy of revealing to the bride the Bridegroom she yearns to see. God has mercy in that he does not deny us what we truly want when what we want is God himself. God takes pity on the Christian by breaking down the “wall of separation” that denies one access to God.150 The wall is symbolic of the epistemic distance between God and us, which the disharmony between soul and body aggravated by sin only exacerbates. That is, when the mind is preoccupied with the sensual things of the body and its desire is consumed by the pursuit of the mundane, the soul does not have sufficient desire to enable it to seek and know God. But to the soul that has put to death the desires of the flesh and so now can yearn for God, Christ makes himself known through images of the prophet’s words. Here is the critical point for understanding Ambrose’s view of merit: desire and zeal merit God’s merciful self-disclosure because desire and zeal are qualities intrinsically necessary for receiving God’s revelation in the Scriptures. Although Ambrose describes Christ as the one who takes the initiative in seeking humanity, he assumes that the effectiveness of grace is dependent upon our response. He interprets the bride’s words from Songs of Songs 8:2, “I will take you up and lead you in,” in light of Jesus’ words from Revelation 3:20, “Behold I stand at the door and knock.” He writes: “It is right to take up the Word of God and lead him in, because he knocks at the soul, that the door may be opened to him, and, unless he finds the door opened to him, he does not enter. But if anyone opens the door, he enters and dines.”151 Ambrose assumes that Christ is the one who comes to us; thus the bride’s words, “I will take you up and lead you in,” cannot be read to imply that the initiative lies with us. Yet Ambrose also indicates that grace is not irristible to the soul. It does not force itself upon the individual. Christ knocks but we must be receptive to his approach and admit him. Ambrose goes on to explain that when we open the door to Christ, he himself teaches us how we ought properly receive him. “The bride takes up the Word in such a way that she is taught in the taking up. On this account it is not without reason that the soul is still rising to the mansions

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that are above and is always undergoing an advance.”152 Once the soul takes up the Word, the Word in some sense takes up the soul, carrying on unending advance in knowledge and enjoyment of God.153 Ambrose also speaks of our spiritual merit attaining spiritual benefits for others. Although he describes healing as a “divine gift” in the sense that it is not ours “by natural right,” he does say that the gift of healing is God’s response to prayers154—signs of humility that merit healing. Commenting on Jesus’ healing of the paralytic, Ambrose says that Christ sets an example for all who are sin-sick: “each sick person must in seeking salvation summon intercessors through whom . . . [he is] reshaped by the cure of the heavenly word. . . . With their help, let him be placed before Jesus, willing to both raise and humble himself, and be seen as worthy of the Lord’s grace.”155 The intercession of the friends and the willingness of the paralytic to submit to God’s power actually merit grace. Here we see the repetition of Ambrose’s understanding of meritorious virtue as that condition or quality of the soul necessary to receive grace. Humility merits grace because it is a disposition of openness to God’s gift as gift, not as right. Indeed, such humility is inherent to the faith that believes and accepts the pardon of sin. When Ambrose comments on Jesus’ enigmatic remark about himself and John the Baptist—“Wisdom is justified by all her children” (Luke 7:35)—he links God’s being justified (shown right in his Providence) with our being justified (forgiven of sin) in baptism. He writes: [God] is justified in as much as the gift of God is not rejected through obstinacy, but acknowledged through righteousness. For “the Lord is righteous and hath loved righteousness.” Therefore the justification of God is in him [the sinner] if he [God] is seen to have bestowed his gifts not on the unworthy and guilty, but on those made guiltless by baptism. Then, let us justify the Lord, that we may be justified by the Lord.156 God is justified in his decision to give his gifts to those who receive and make good use of the gift of grace. Even as Ambrose says that putting on Christ in faith merits forgiveness, similarly he asserts that we are righteous before God when we accept the divine gifts rather than “reject them through obstinacy.” The penance of baptism justifies God; for in our yielding to God who pardons us, God shows that his gifts have overcome the obstinacy of sin and produced the fruit of righteous submission. Thus, Ambrose concludes that we are justified by God when we justify God’s gift of grace that brings about contrition. God’s decision to offer the gift of pardoning grace is justified when we receive pardon in the penitential spirit of baptism. So too the humility of prayer on behalf of others merits grace precisely because it renounces its claim to

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God’s blessing and does not presume that the blessing is an entitlement. Only by humbling herself before God’s power is the Christian suitably disposed to receive God’s benefaction for herself or others. Perhaps the passage that most provocatively illuminates how Ambrose views merit as the right disposition for receiving grace and then acting on it is his exegesis of the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:4–7). Ambrose explains that the trilogy of the parables of the sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son represent an ordo salutis that corresponds to the work of the Incarnate Christ, the Church, and God the Father: Christ carries you on his body, he who took your sins upon himself, the Church seeks, the Father receives. Just as the shepherd carries, just as the mother searches, just as the father clothes. First mercy, second intercession, third reconciliation. Each complements each: The Saviour rescues, the Church intercedes, the Creator reconciles. The mercy of the Divine act is the same, but the grace differs according to our merits.157 The layers of meaning Ambrose sees in the text make this passage difficult to understand. Initially, there is the order of salvific operations: Christ (like the shepherd carrying the lamb on his shoulders) takes upon himself the debt of human sin. Then the Church (like the widow searching for the lost coin) seeks out sinners by preaching the Gospel and mediates grace through the sacraments. Finally, God the Father (like the father who clothes the repentant prodigal) reconciles the sinner to himself by clothing him in grace. Given the unity of operations of the persons of the Trinity, Ambrose naturally insists that the three steps are really but a single act of God’s mercy. What is confusing is his conclusion that “the grace differs according to our merits.” The second layer of meaning is that the order of the parables moves from a thing of lesser value to a thing of greater value, that is, from the lamb, to the silver coin, to the son. This progression depicts the sinner at different stages of her return and ascent to God. It is not clear, however, why the sinner for whom the Church seeks and makes intercession has greater merit than the one whose sins Christ assumed on the cross. What is most troubling, from an Augustinian point of view, is Ambrose’s distinction between grace and mercy, and his insistence that grace is somehow contingent on human merit. In the context of the threefold structure of the parable cycle, there is but one act of mercy: the shepherd, the woman, and the father each work to restore what was lost to its proper place. The works of the Son, the Church, and the Father are but three successive expressions of God’s redemptive mercy. Yet grace is different in each stage based on the status or condition of the sinner. Ambrose sees

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the lamb’s being carried on the shepherd’s shoulders and the prodigal’s receiving a new robe and ring for his finger as representing different levels of grace. In this context, grace, as distinct from mercy, corresponds to God’s conferral of a gift or blessing that, as we have seen, depends upon the disposition and purity of the soul on whom the gift is bestowed. In other words, our merit—our capacity to receive the gift of divine fellowship—determines the gift of grace that God will give. In no sense, therefore, is Ambrose arguing that God’s saving mercy is merited by human initiative or effort. Rather, his understanding of the soul’s reconciliation and ascent to God rests upon his use of the language of merit to describe human receptivity of divine blessing. Indeed, the blessing that the Christian most desires—a blessing that is sufficient reward and repayment for the hardships of obedient service—is the greeting of divine approbation: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”158

Freedom of the Debtor Ambrose’s language of merit, as we have seen, is in no way intended to imply that the repentant sinner merits justification by her works of virtue. Rather it is simply Ambrose’s way of expressing the classic patristic principle, traceable at least back to Origen, that the extent of one’s progress in holiness determines one’s capacity to receive the illumination of grace. Equally problematic, at first hearing, is Ambrose’s description of the devotio of faith as the repayment of a debt to Christ. Yet within his treatments of Paul’s account of the Christian as simultaneously slave and freedman (1 Cor. 7:22–23) and Jesus’ parable of the two debtors (Luke 7:41–43), Ambrose describes, not only the obligation and expectation of fidelity under which the Christian stands by virtue of her justification, but also the limits of the Christian’s ability to ever repay the debt. Indeed, the language of repaying our debt to Christ serves a key rhetorical purpose in Ambrose’s catechetical and moral exhortation. In Jacob and the Happy Life, he marshals Paul’s paradoxical description of the Christian as simultaneously slave and freedman (1 Cor. 7:22) to exhort his catechumens to moral excellence and humility. In his first letter to the Church at Corinth, Paul admonishes Christians that since the form of this world is passing away they ought to remain in their preconversion status: married or single, slave or free (1 Cor. 7:17), but having told slaves that they should continue in their state of servitude, Paul comforts them with the reminder that Christ has manumitted the slave, making him a freedman (apeleutheros or libertinus). For the slave (doulos or servus) is no longer in bondage to sin but set at liberty by Christ. At the same time, the Christian freeman (eleutheros or liber) is

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now a slave of Christ’s because he has been bought by Christ (7:22–23). Here Paul is playing with the distinction between freemen who had been free all their lives and freedmen who had gained manumission either by buying their freedom or being manumitted in a will upon their owner’s death. Ambrose then comments: Either status [that of the freedman or that of the slave of Christ] is excellent, that of being subject to Christ, for under his rule servitude is precious [pretiosa servitus] and freedom is glorious [gloriosa libertas]. The servitude is precious, for it was bought at the price of blood of such worth; while the freedom is glorious, for no servitude to guilt, no bonds of sin restrain it, and no burden of guilty deeds, no traffic with crimes delivers it to the bondage of a servitude that is base [degeneris servitutis].159 The libertas of the Christian as freedman and the servitude of the Christian as slave of Christ are but two sides of the same coin. For the one who was a slave to sin has become a freedman by being bought at the price of Christ’s death. At the same time, in becoming a freedman with respect to sin, the Christian is also the slave of Christ, who paradoxically paid the price of manumission. Yet the libertas enjoyed by the Christian is the glory of service to Christ unhindered by the impediment of sin. Within the context of the social order of the later empire, Ambrose could intelligibly speak of the slave of Christ as being raised from ignominious servitude to sin to a glorious servitude under a new master, for there was a clear hierarchy among slaves determined by the slave’s duties and the status of the household in which the slave served. Those slaves who endured the drudgery of working in the field or the kitchen were of lower status than those who were administrative assistants or tutors and had high positions within the household. Indeed, the hierarchy of slaves based on their skill was reflected in a corresponding difference in price at market. The more valuable the services a slave could render, the higher the price the new master would have to pay. An educated and skilled slave might be invested with the responsibilities of an oikonomos who managed the household or of a pragmateutēs, who was an agent representing his master’s business interests. This conferred on him a higher social standing than freemen of low birth. From such a position, slave agents gained the means to buy their manumission and at times extend largess to freemen.160 Moreover, the status of a slave was derived from the social status of her owner.161 It was better to be a slave in a noble household than to be the property of a household of negligible social standing. To be sold to a master of higher position enhanced the position of the slave. The former slave and Stoic

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philosopher Epictetus relates that his master sold off a particularly incompetent cobbler, who ultimately was sold into Nero’s household and then lorded his newly acquired distinction over his former master.162 Thus for Ambrose, the Pauline rhetoric of being “a slave of Christ” confers upon the catechumen the lofty status that comes from being the servant of a master whose dignitas is unsurpassable. Such service can even be thought of as glorious freedom in contrast with the debasing work of being under the yoke of sin. Moreover, because the Christian was purchased at great price, her service, like that of the skilled slave for whom a master would pay far more than an unskilled laborer, is precious to Christ and thus ennobling for the slave. Ambrose uses the Pauline metaphors of the slave and the freedman to qualify the character of Christian libertas as carrying a binding duty to Christ as patron. He recognizes that when Paul wrote of Christians as freedmen he did so cognizant of the legal obligations that came with manumission.163 Ambrose tells his catechumens, “You have received your freedom in such a way that you ought to remember your liberator, so as to realize that lawful obedience is due to him, your patron; else freedom may be taken back from you on the grounds of ingratitude [ne ab ingrato revocetur libertas]. What is more fortunate than you are? You rule under the Lord and do service with him as your patron [sub patrono militas].”164 According to Roman law dating back to the Republic, the freedman, whether released by will or by purchasing his freedom, was bound to his former master or his former master’s heirs as a son to his father or a client to his patron.165 The filial piety required of the freedman as a client to his former master took the form of obsequia and officia. The obsequium was the negative obligation of the freedman not to bring a lawsuit in civil court or make a criminal accusation against his patron. The freedman’s officia were the positive responsibilities of the client that included escorting the patron to the forum, procuring goods the patron needed, and caring for the patron’s family. In return, the patron had duties or tutelae, such as offering letters of recommendation or advocacy in court, owed to the freedman. Manumission, common practice though it was, was not a right of the slave but a purely voluntary gesture of indulgentia by the master. It was the conferment of a beneficium upon the slave that merited obligatory displays of gratitude by the freedman.166 Moreover, as Ambrose indicates, a freedman’s failure to fulfill his officia was a sign of ingratitude or impiety that was punishable by law. Under Claudius, freedmen charged with ingratitude could even be stripped of their liberty and returned to the status of slave without hope of future manumission.167 Should a freedman raise his hand against his former master, turn informant, or conspire against his master, the freedman would be subject to forced labor in the mines for life.168

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The Pauline metaphor of the Christian as freedman allows Ambrose to limit the character of Christian freedom by presenting it in the context of the freedman’s obligations to his patron. The Christian’s freedom is not the relative autonomy of the freeman who need not be anyone’s client,169 but is a liberty dependent upon the Christian freedman’s fulfillment of those duties that bind him to Christ. Even as the master voluntarily manumits his slave and so becomes his patron, so too Christ’s freeing the sinner from the debt of sin establishes Christ as the gracious patron to whom the liberated sinner is now obligated. This too is the obligation of the catechumen when she gains the liberty of her justification in baptism. Ambrose uses the image of the freedman to stress to his catechumens that their freedom from sin is dependent upon their ongoing obligation of fealty to Christ. Even as the ungrateful freedman is stripped of freedom and returned to slavery, so too the complacent or disobedient Christian can forfeit the liberty of her baptism and again be a slave of the passions. Moreover, as the (freedman) client’s safety, prosperity, and acquittal in a court of law depend upon the influence and advocacy of his patron, so too the Christian’s sustained freedom from sin depends upon Christ’s continued patronage. This patronage is the sustaining and sanctifying grace extended to the Christian in the Eucharist. Thus, as is discussed below, the libertas of the Christian freedman is retained by cleaving to God her patron. Only by cleaving to God can the Christian be sustained by the grace and fellowship of the Holy Spirit necessary to curb the passions. As freedmen of Christ, Christians enjoy the liberty of grateful service to the One in whose service the Christian is exalted. That is, the Christian is set at liberty from sin and the passions in order to serve Christ. Thus for Ambrose, Tamar, Sarah’s manumitted slave girl, is a type of the baptized sinner who, though lowborn, has received “the symbol of royal freedom.”170 Such service Ambrose describes as “ruling under the Lord.” Here he is depicting the Christian freedman as one who exercises power that is an extension of the authority of the client. The most famous instance of this can be found during the reign of Claudius, who turned over the highest levels of the empire’s administration to his former slaves, Narcissus and Pallas. As Claudius’s ministers, their word carried all the weight of the emperor himself. Much to the objection of many freemen of the day, they used their proxy authority to acquire large estates and make themselves two of the richest men in the empire.171 In the context of the Pauline discussion of the Christian as freedman, Ambrose views “ruling under the Lord” as referring not to the exercising of authority in the world, but to the power of divine grace to control the passions. Even as Christ controlled his own body that he might make it submissive to his will, the Christian freedman exercises the grace of Christ to assert such

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authority over his body that he might order it according to the judgments of reason. Although the Christian freedmen of Christ have been exalted by their service to Christ, Ambrose reminds them that they are still freedmen and so should comport themselves with suitable humility. Quoting 1 Corinthians 7:22, he concludes: “For the man who has been redeemed as a slave [quasi servus] has his freedom, and as for the man who has been called as a free man [quasi liber], it is good for him to know that he is a slave of Christ, under whom servitude is safe and freedom secure. . . . For in truth we are all freedmen of Christ [omnes Christi liberti], but no one is a free man [nemo liber]; we have all been procreated in servitude.”172 Regardless of the actual power exercised or the dignity achieved, the freedman always retained something of the stigma of having been a slave. So although the libertus was allowed to wear the toga, indicating Roman citizenship, he must also wear a pilleus, a close-fitting cap that denoted his status as freedman, as part of ceremonial dress or when escorting his patron in public, and although he had the right to the toga praetexta, his children did not.173 So too the Christian freedman must always remember that he was a slave to sin.174 Rhetorically, Ambrose asks: “Why do you adopt for your servile status the pride that comes from freedom? Why do you lay false claim to titles of nobility, when your inheritance is a slave’s? Don’t you know that the guilt of Adam and Eve sold you into servitude? Don’t you know that Christ did not buy you, but bought you back?”175 Thus for Ambrose, the catechumens must live in the tension that characterized the life of a powerful freedman serving a patron of great dignitas: the tension between his elevation in dignity by virtue of his service of his patron and the memory of the lowly status from which he was raised. Out of this tension emerges humility in recognition of the former life of enslavement to sin and a profound sense of the obligation of devotion that the freedman Christian is expected to show Christ. Ambrose amplifies his discussion of the Christian freedman’s obligation to Christ, the patron, by speaking of Christians as debtors bound to pay a tremendous debt that we can never repay. He employs the language of debt, debtor, and creditor to describe the Christian as both creature and redeemed sinner in relationship to God. Commenting on the parable of the two debtors that Jesus told to Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:41–43), Ambrose explains that the debt the servants owed to their master, God, is virtue and the appearance of righteousness. Then he issues a warning: “Woe is me if I do not have what I have received, truly, because only with difficulty can anyone pay off the whole debt to his Creditor; woe is me if I do not ask, ‘Remit my debt.’”176 He concludes by explaining that Christ taught us to ask for the forgiveness of sin precisely because he knew that “some would only with difficulty be worthy debtors.”

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This last comment implies that sin is a debt in that it is the failure to give what is owed. And what is owed is “What I have received,” that is, all that God has given to humanity. Moreover, the indebtedness arising from our creation is so total that all must pray that the debt be pardoned precisely because few make good use of the capacity for virtue with which God has endowed human nature. Thus, on account of our capacity for virtue, creatures are all debtors to God but few will be “worthy debtors.” Sin arises when we fail to be worthy debtors. Once sin enters the picture, the character of humanity’s debt changes. If the totality of our debt as gifted creatures were not difficult enough to pay, the debt of sin cannot be paid apart from Christ’s death. Now humanity is indebted to Christ, who took upon himself humanity’s debt of sin. Yet, Ambrose insists, we must pay the added debt of our redemption: For he who paid the price of his blood for us did not ask a price from us, because he redeemed us not with gold or silver but with his precious blood. Therefore you owe that price with which you have been bought. Even though he does not always demand it, you still owe it. Buy Christ for yourself, then, not with what few men possess, but with what all men possess by nature. . . . What Christ claims from you is his own. He gave his life for all men.177 Ambrose’s rhetorical move is curious. He admits that Christ’s sacrifice is a price greater than can be repaid and so Christ himself does not “always” ask it. But then Ambrose says Christ claims what is his own. Ambrose’s point remains obscure unless we read his words in the context of his notion of baptismal regeneration and the great exchange of the Incarnation. First, we owe what is ours “by nature.” That is, when human nature has been healed and liberated from death through baptism, then we are free to offer to Christ that virtue which is within the capacity of nature uncompromised by sin. But second, Ambrose goes on to say that Christ claims his own. In the context of his death that has conferred life upon humanity, Christ claims from us the very life he has given back to us, the very life he has redeemed. Ambrose links repayment of debt to the filial obedience of an adopted child. Commenting on Paul’s assertion that God has adopted us and so made us joint heirs with Christ in his glory, Ambrose says that we make our repayment of debt through obedience. Yet here he softens the rhetoric of indebtedness: “Count these blessings, and associate them not so much with the bondage of debt as with the maintenance of the gift you have received. . . . Take on his passion, so that you may deserve to be with him above the passions.”178 The debt of obedience we owe Christ should not be viewed, Ambrose explains, as a burdensome obligation but merely as the condition necessary to continue

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to enjoy the gift of liberty. The juxtaposition of the language of debt and gift has the rhetorical effect of synthesizing the notion of binding obligation with blessedness. Ambrose is both acknowledging that no gift is wholly without strings and suggesting that what is received surpasses the obligation. In other words, the blessedness that Christ offers us requires that we make a sacrifice of our own to receive the inheritance. Yet because the inheritance is a gift, the corresponding obligation is not intended to secure a benefit for God. It is merely a natural and necessary requirement for maintenance of the relationship. If one desires to be free from the burden of the passions, one must be willing to die to self and the world. Moreover, the inheritance is a gift in that its benefits far exceed the demands of the obligation. The highest form of obedience by which the Christian might try to fulfill her debt is the martyr’s obedience unto death—the literal union with Christ in a death like his. Yet pointing to the examples of Peter and Paul’s martyrdoms, Ambrose says that even they were unable to repay Christ. Paul, he explains, “indeed repaid death for death, but did not repay other debts, because he owed much. . . . Even if we were to repay cross for cross, death for death, do we repay what we have from Him, by Him, and in Him—that is, everything?”179 The point of the illustration is to explain why the sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet loves him with extravagant devotion, in contrast with Simon the Pharisee’s subdued reception. Ambrose, however, stresses that since neither debtor could pay the debt, regardless of the different degrees of indebtedness, both debtors should love God. Even were one, like Peter, able to give all he had, such a sacrifice would be insufficient to pay the debt in full. Thus, even as Peter and Paul’s deaths were inadequate repayment, so we cannot presume that we can ever be free from our obligation of obedience. It is precisely because of this inability to repay our debt to Christ that the blessings of the inheritance become a gift. Moreover, Peter and Paul’s sacrifice becomes viewed not as the repayment of a debt but, like the filial obedience of a freedman, as a reciprocal gift of gratitude. Ambrose quotes Romans 11:35 to illustrate the hubris of presuming that we can offer a satisfactory repayment.180 Since all things belong to God, there is nothing we in fact possess that can be given to God. To the extent that we possess anything, we do so only inasmuch as we are in God from whom all things come and in whom all things exist. Thus, God’s gift, his desire for our return, becomes the cause of our love. “Therefore, let us repay love for our debt [amorem pro debito], charity for the gift [caritatem pro munere], grace for the value of blood [gratiam pro sanguinis pretio]; for he to whom more is given loves more.”181 Thus, the Christian loves God more when she realizes that the debt of her sin and the gift that is her inheritance surpasses any act or gesture of repayment.

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Ambrose’s union of the language of gift and of debt functions rhetorically to shatter our temptation to abdicate moral agency by viewing salvation as wholly a gift and at the same time undercuts our temptation to moral self-sufficiency, that is, trusting solely in human merits. In fact, Ambrose is able to retain the language of merit precisely because of his description of the organic relationship of grace and virtue. He writes, “[P]erhaps he who owed more offended more, but through the Lord’s mercy, the case is changed, so that he who owed more loves more, if he nevertheless attains grace. For he who gives it back possesses grace [gratiam qui reddit habet], and he who possesses it repays, insofar as he possesses, for the possession consists in the repayment and the repayment in the possession [nam et reddendo habetur, et habendo redditur].”182 Ambrose here is making two important points. First, Christ’s offer of pardon makes the indebtedness not a sign of our guilt but, as we have said, the cause of greater love. Second, the pardoning grace that engenders love is the gift that simultaneously pays the debt of our sin and is repayment for the debt we owe to Christ our creditor and redeemer. Therefore, the possession of grace is the repayment that God expects because from grace is born the love that cleaves to God. It is precisely because virtue—love chief among all virtues—is the fruit of grace that virtue always remains a debtor of grace. Ambrose explains the logic of the reciprocity implied in the Golden Rule (Luke 6:31): “For virtue does not know the measure of grace, nor is it content to give back what it has received, but seeks to accumulate what it has acquired, lest it be inferior in blessing, although it is equal in duty.”183 Ambrose is saying that virtue is by nature magnanimous. It is not to be outdone, but strives to match the blessing conferred. Virtue does not know the measure of grace—God’s grace—in that for the virtuous person there is no limit of her reciprocation. Moreover, Ambrose sees the impulse of virtue to repay the blessing from God by conferring such blessings on others. Even more important, he recognizes that grace cannot be repaid by a corresponding act of kindness. “[H]e who has repaid the money has not dissolved the grace and remains a debtor of grace, albeit not now of money. Why should we think we can be freed by repaying grace, when the payment is evidence of grace received, rather than grace dissolved?”184 Even if a financial debt is repaid, Ambrose argues, the grace is not. Meaning that the grace or goodwill or kindness out of which the benefactor issues the loan transcends the monetary value of the loan and so the debtor is bound to the creditor’s grace. Even when the money is repaid, the debtor is bound to the creditor out of gratitude for the offer of the loan. Then shifting from the financial analogy of humanity’s indebtedness to God’s grace, he says that the repayment of one’s debt to God through loving obedience is the result of the grace given.

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One’s obedience does not satisfy the obligation to grace; for that we must always be grateful. But the virtues by which the debt is repaid, so to speak, depend on the grace itself. Virtue, far from lifting the debt to grace, is evidence that liberty from sin is eternally indebted to grace. Ambrose is describing the life of virtue as a cycle of dependency upon grace. By God’s gift of grace, humanity is liberated from sin and so is able to live virtuously. In gratitude, the Christian is under a debt to God that must be repaid. Yet the obligation of repaying the debt to grace through a life of virtue and service to others is itself dependent upon more grace. The love for God that finds delight and honor in being able to repay one’s debt to grace begins with a love for those who do not reciprocate such affection or benevolence. The implication of such love Ambrose explains: “[T]hus you should love the virtue in him who does not love you, so that when you love virtue, you begin to love him whom ye did not love, since the reward of the lover is rare and fleeting, but that of virtue is eternal [sempiterna virtutis].”185 Ambrose is saying that the love of God and of his grace, which is the cause of virtue, necessarily leads to a love of virtue. It is a love of the virtue with which grace has endowed us and a love of virtue which grace engenders in others. Thus, even though an individual may not have a particular affection toward us, we nevertheless love her virtues. That is, we love the fruit of grace in her. Ambrose concludes that the love of virtue is a basis for loving others that is preferable to reciprocity of affection, which is the transitory “reward of the lover.”186 Virtue as a reflection of God’s own excellence is eternal. Therefore, the love of virtue becomes the foundation for loving others even if there is no personal affinity between individuals. Even if an individual ceases to be virtuous, the memory of his virtue remains a cause for loving him. As we have seen, Ambrose explains our justification in baptism in terms of the merits of faith that the Holy Spirit generates within the soul as we are washed and regenerated by being united with Christ’s death and resurrection. Thus, the merit of faith itself is primarily the work of God, who infuses the soul with the gift of faith. To put it another way, God creates within us the quality or virtue by which we are made just and righteous before him. By the merits of faith’s devotion, the Christian is made capable of receiving greater and greater revelations of grace. Yet Ambrose qualifies his description of meritorious faith by invoking the Pauline trope of the freedman and the Lucan metaphor of the sinner as debtor. For by this faith we receive forgiveness through Christ’s payment of the debt of sin. Yet, liberated from the debt of sin, humanity is now confronted with a new and greater debt to Christ who is our patron, not only as our creator but also as the one who freed us from the debasing slavery to sin. Thus for Ambrose, the tropes of the freedman

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and the debt function rhetorically to combat moral complacency or pride. The libertas of justification is neither personal autonomy nor a gift without strings. It carries an obligation of grateful service that seeks to pay the debt owed to our patron. No gift, no sacrifice is ever enough. The debt is greater than can ever be repaid. In Christ’s service the Christian is, like the imperial freedmen, exalted and given greater power and dignity because of her master’s dignitas. Although exalted to higher and higher states of grace, the Christian freedman, as one who bears the stigma of having been a slave to sin, has no room for pride or a sense of moral self-sufficiency.

Conclusion Ambrose describes baptism as simultaneously the sacrament of justification and of regeneration. The baptized, like Jacob, are justified because they are clothed with Christ such that they have “the fragrance” of Christ’s righteousness. Yet clothing oneself in Christ is not understood by Ambrose as vicarious participation in Christ’s righteousness, the merits of which are imputed to the baptized. Rather, being clothed with Christ is putting on the new humanity of the resurrection, of which Christ is the firstborn. Being clothed in Christ, as Jacob was clothed in Esau’s garments, is having the image of the Creator renewed through God’s gift of faith. Ambrose’s account of justification thus integrates the divinization soteriology dominant in Alexandrian and Cappadocian thought with the Pauline language of justification by faith. Thus justification, for Ambrose, is not being treated as if one were righteous, but being made righteous. The grace that we receive in baptism, which cultivates faith within the soul, is not ours. It is always alien. It is always from outside of us. Yet as long as we cling to God, who is the source of grace and thus our righteousness, we retain the fragrance of Christ, for we retain the likeness to Christ. Figuratively speaking, God, like blind Isaac, does not see our sins that have receded into the shadows of the past, but perceives only the fragrance of our faith by which we participate in Christ’s death. Because God “smells” in us the fragrance of the Son he loves, he treats us as his sons and daughters by conferring upon us the blessing of forgiveness. Thus, the merit by which we are justified comes from the actual change that God has wrought in the believer through the cultivation of faith. We smell like Christ because in faith we have actually become like Christ. To be sure, there is an asymmetry between the virtue of Christ and that of the newly baptized—as there always will be. Indeed, the figure of Esau’s clothing—whether referring to the faith of the Jew or the faithfulness of

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Christ—carries the sense that we are justified before God because of something alien, something other than what we are. Yet that which is alien becomes part of us and restores us to what God intended us to be in the beginning. Thus, far from a works-righteousness soteriology, Ambrose’s account of justification hinges upon God’s work within humanity to make us worthy and capable of receiving beatific fellowship. Against the larger context of Ambrose’s views of human nature in paradise and of the fall, Abraham’s faith, which Ambrose holds to be paradigmatic for the faith of his catechumens, cannot be viewed as merely an inborn capacity or disposition.187 Rather Abraham’s faith represents the faith of the new convert. Even as Abraham turns from the worship of the gods of the Chaldaeans, so Ambrose’s catechumens turn from paganism to Christianity. As Abraham left the land of his parents to follow God’s call, so too in her baptism the catechumen renounces Satan and the world in order that she may be raised with Christ and put on the purity of his resurrection. Thus, the devotio of Abraham’s faith is an example of the renewed and graced human nature that the catechumen receives in her conversion at baptism. Indeed, Ambrose’s patriarchs do not model the virtues required for the catechumen’s initiation—as if the cardinal and theological virtues could be cultivated in the mere six weeks of Lenten instruction—but they illustrate the virtues proper to the life of the convert. The devotio of the catechumen, for Ambrose, is now grounded not primarily in the conviction of God’s authority derived from the natural law, but in the belief in Christ and his promises of forgiveness and resurrection with which the Spirit bedews the soul and clothes the mind at baptism.

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5 Resurrection and Regeneration

So, what is resurrection other than we rise from death unto life? Thus, then, even in baptism, since it is a likeness of death, undoubtedly, when you dip and rise again, it becomes a likeness of resurrection. Thus, according to the interpretation of the Apostle, just as that resurrection was a regeneration, so that resurrection from the font is a regeneration.1 In his postbaptismal instruction of the neophytes recorded in De sacramentis III.1.1, Ambrose provides the neophytes an explanation of the ritual chrismation when the myrrh is poured on the head immediately after the initiate has risen from the font. Here Ambrose makes the transition from the previous day’s discussion of baptism as a symbolic death—most vividly represented by the similarity of style between the baptismal font and a sepulcher—to the theme of baptism as sacramental rebirth and resurrection. Rising from the water represents a “resuscitation” (resuscitatio). Anointing the head with myrrh signifies the perfection of the mind’s vision of the wisdom of God. For without grace, he says, the intellect grows cold. The perfection of human wisdom with the grace of God is the regenerative (regeneratio) work of the sacrament.2 Here, Ambrose links the sacramental significance of immersion and chrismation. The regeneration of anointing qualifies the symbolic resuscitation represented by the neophytes’ rising from the font. That is, the grace

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of God in baptism, which raises the sinner who has died with Christ, restores life by way of regeneration or rebirth. He goes on to equate resurrection with regeneration by interpreting Paul’s use of Psalm 2:7, “Thou art my son, this day I have begotten thee” (Acts 13:33), in light of his description of Jesus in Colossians 1:18 as “the first-born from the dead.” Here, Paul declares that Christ is “begotten” in the sense that he is “born” from the dead. Following the logic of Paul’s argument in Romans 6, therefore, Christ’s death and resurrection are paradigmatic for the baptized—the initiate experiences in baptism the likeness of Christ’s death and resurrection—and as Paul also describes Christ’s resurrection as regeneration, the initiate undergoes regeneration as well.3 With this exegetical move, Ambrose here effectively conjoins the themes of resurrection and rebirth in his interpretation of baptism, so it is not surprising that Ambrose extends his earlier exposition on the significance of the font. The water of the font he compares with the waters of chaos in the beginning that, at God’s command, brought forth “creatures having life.” As the first fish were given life in the waters of the primordial seas, the initiate is given new life in the waters of baptism. “They [the waters of chaos] indeed were in the beginning of creation, but for you it was reserved for water to regenerate you unto grace, just as water generated other creatures unto life.”4 Baptism interprets Christ’s resurrection as God’s re-creation of humanity subject to the mortality and corruption of “this body of death” and is the sacrament whereby the fallen catechumen becomes a participant in Christ’s new creation. The regenerative work of baptism accomplishes the redemption of humanity in two ways. First, as we have already seen, Ambrose views baptism as the occasion of the sinner’s justification before God. Through faith the catechumen submits to the ministry of Christ and so receives the forgiveness of sin that Christ’s passion accomplished for the human race. As we have also seen, the logic of justification, for Ambrose, entails that the catechumen receives the benefit of Christ’s death because her faith is counted as meritorious. However, the faith by which the catechumen merits justification is itself the work of the Holy Spirit, and its awakening is a sign of the regenerative work of grace, restoring humanity so far as possible to the relationship that we had with God before the fall. Yet faith is but the first part of our regeneration. In other words, baptism as dying and rising with Christ both foreshadows our actual death and resurrection and marks our present death to sin and resurrection to a new life worthy of Christ. This newness of life in which sin is overcome prepares us for the resurrection when death is finally overcome. Although Ambrose mentions no other virtue than faith as the condition by which we share in the benefits of Christ’s death, our regeneration is nevertheless not complete without the virtue of love by which the soul cleaves to God, the source of eternal life and all eternal

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goods. In this chapter I examine the character of the new life to which the Christian is born in baptism by examining Ambrose’s depiction of death and resurrection, that is, the death to sin through a repentance characterized by a renunciation of the world and its pleasures (the life of moderation). At the same time, the new life into which the Christian is born through baptism cannot be understood for Ambrose apart from his conception of the general resurrection, of which Christ’s resurrection is the prototype. For through the sacramental grace of baptism, the Christian proleptically participates in the healing and holiness that will come to the saints at the consummation of Christ’s kingdom.

Resurrection: Redemption of the Whole Person [D]eath intervening makes an end to sin. For when we die, surely we have ceased to sin. The satisfaction of the sentence [of death] seemed to be that man, who had been made to live, if he had not sinned, began to die. But that the perpetual grace of God might persevere, man died, but Christ found resurrection, that is, to restore the heavenly benefit which had been lost by the deceit of the serpent. Both, then, are for our good, for death is the end of sin and resurrection is the reformation of nature.5 For modern readers, one of the more problematic elements of Ambrose’s thought is his depiction of the body in his account of death, especially in On the Good of Death. For he presents death as the blessed liberation of the soul from the body, which, following Plato’s language from Phaedo, he calls the prison of the soul.6 Even in his second funeral oration for his brother Satyrus, he says that the soul’s natural desire is to be free from the body. “If our flesh shuns a prison, if it loathes everything which denies it the power of free movement . . . how much more is our soul filled with eager desire to escape from its bodily prison. When it is free, it has a motion like the air, and we know not whither it goes or whence it comes.”7 Similarly, he interprets God’s instructions to Moses to take off his sandals to mean that we must free the mind from the fetters and restraints of the “corporeal mind.”8 Therefore, far from fearing death, he tells the catechumens, they should live a life that prefigures death: Now through death the soul is freed, while it separates itself from the dwelling-place of the body and divests itself of the wrappings of disquiet. And so let us too, while we are in the body, following the

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way of death, raise up [our soul] from this fleshly couch [ex istius carnis cubili] and arise from the tomb, as it were. Let us withdraw from the bond of the body [corporis nexu], and leave all things whatsoever which are of earth, so that when the adversary comes he may find nothing of his in us.9 Not surprisingly, therefore, he goes on to employ a quasi-Origenist terminology in his account of the soul’s ascent to God. “And so let our soul seek the heights like the eagle, let it fly above the clouds, let it glisten in its new skins [renovatis splendescat exuviis], let it carry its flight to heaven, where it cannot fall into snares.”10 The language of “new skins” is reminiscent of Origen’s contrast between the “dead skins,” or material body with which God clothed Adam and Eve (as a result of the fall), and the airy, spiritual bodies of the resurrection, which are suited to the nous’s existence in the ethereal realm of heaven.11 Ambrose’s use of Platonic and Neoplatonic imagery is problematic because it presents salvation as the liberation of the soul from the body. Such a view seems wholly incompatible with a soteriology of bodily resurrection since, for Plato, resurrection would not bring liberation, but would be tantamount to re-incarceration. For the Platonic soul to attain maximal wisdom, the highest good of a rational being, it must be separated from the distractions, passions, and sensual deceptions of the body. Ambrose’s deployment of Origenist language is problematic for a similar reason. For Origen, the material body is a consequence of the fall. It is punitive in that the coarse material body is the painful desert for the nous’s turning its thoughts away from God. At the same time, it is therapeutic in that the painful life in the body arouses in the soul a desire for God, and out of this, the soul seeks to separate itself from the body through virtue in order to return to the blessed contemplative life of the heavenly classroom.12 Within this paradigm of creation and salvation, the material world, including our material bodies, is not intrinsically good; it is but an epiphenomenon that is good only inasmuch as it contributes to the soul’s rehabilitation and so passes away once it has served its purpose. John Cavadini has gone so far as to say that Ambrose’s use of Origen in On the Good of Death is in fact more Platonic and less Christian than Origen: Ambrose was no Origen. The debased Origenism present in his work has none of the rich theological, and in particular christological, nuance that textured the Alexandrian’s view of the body and qualified its Platonism. The Origenism present in Ambrose’s De bono mortis is swamped by such a flood of Neoplatonic anthropology that there seems finally to be no room for Scripture’s teaching regarding either the goodness of creation or the need for redemption in Christ.13

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Cavadini acknowledges that Ambrose does refer to the resurrection once in On the Good of Death but says that this was a mere “afterthought.”14 To be sure, few, if any, would suggest that Ambrose ever matched Origen’s brilliance as a speculative theologian or exegete. Yet Origen’s view of the material body as an epiphenomenon can be judged theologically rich and nuanced only when it is read in the context of Origen’s larger theological vision of De principiis and his massive corpus. So, too, Ambrose’s discussion of death and the body can be fairly judged only when read in the larger context of his exegesis of Paul in his catechetical treatises and his two orations at the death of Satyrus. In the second oration on Satyrus’s passion, Ambrose develops his view of resurrection, which provides for the eschatological redemption of the material body. Moreover, in this text Ambrose clearly recognizes the material body as essential to human nature, in a way that Origen and Plotinus simply do not, and so it must be redeemed together with the soul. As we have already seen, Ambrose’s exhortation of his catechumens to flee from the body must be heard through his exegesis of Romans 7 and his hylomorphic theory of the psychosomatic unity of the person. The body from which they must flee is not the body per se nor the body God created in the beginning, but the corrupt, fallen body whose perception of sensual pleasure enflames desires that overpower the mind. So, too, Ambrose’s account of the resurrection, upon which his whole understanding of baptismal regeneration rests, reflects the overall coherence of his anthropology and his soteriology; for his theology of resurrection is the logical extension of his theory of man’s psychosomatic unity. The fullest account of the resurrection comes in the second of two orations on the occasion of the death of Ambrose’s brother, Satyrus. In 365, following the completion of their legal studies, Ambrose and Satyrus entered into imperial administration, joining the staff of the praetorian prefect of Illyricum, Volcacius Rufinus, before being appointed to posts as consulares or provincial governors. Upon Ambrose’s elevation to the episcopacy, Satyrus gave up his governorship to join his brother in Milan, serving as the executive administrator of both the bishop’s ecclesial and familial business. In the spring of 378, Satyrus was returning from a trip to attend to the family estates in Africa when the vessel on which he was sailing ran aground on a rocky shallow, where battered by waves it began to break up.15 Although he managed to survive the shipwreck and save a number of his fellow passengers, the experience so weakened his constitution that upon returning to Milan he fell gravely ill and died in Ambrose’s arms.16 As was common among Roman patricians, Ambrose himself delivered his brother’s funeral orations. The first oration is the actual eulogy given at Satyrus’s funeral, and in it Ambrose focuses on the theme of his and his sister’s

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personal grief, the public grief of the whole Christian community of Milan, and Satyrus’s virtuous character. In the second oration, delivered at Satyrus’s tomb seven days after the funeral, Ambrose begins by touching briefly on the topic of grief, saying that it is appropriate to find an outlet for the natural emotions of loss through tears of tender affection.17 Yet he explains that it is also appropriate to return to the grave to seek consolation for grief through thankful recollection of loved ones and through the hope of immortality.18 In this way, grief is not repressed, but moderated through reasoned discourse about immortality that teaches us patience in the face of sorrow over loss.19 The character of Christian consolation, he says, is different than that of pagan consolation. Whereas pagan consolation rests upon a Stoic acceptance of death as common to all and as inherent to the universal laws of nature, or upon a Platonic hope in the immortality of the soul, Christian consolation comes from the hope of resurrection.20 Ambrose himself, in the first third of this oration, appealed to variations of both the Stoic argument from nature and Platonic psychology, both of which were common lines of reasoning in Hellenistic consolation literature. Yet, as we shall see, even in his appropriation of stock consolation topoi, Ambrose presents these standard arguments within the context of the Christian narrative of sin, Incarnation, and resurrection.21 From this point on, the oration turns almost entirely from Satyrus to arguments for and about the character of eschatological resurrection. Ambrose’s focus upon the resurrection in this second oration is apropos since, he comments, the second oration comes seven days after Satyrus’s interment. Occurring on the seventh day, the service has the character of the Christian Sabbath, which is the celebration of Christ’s resurrection and of the general resurrection. Christian Sabbaths, he says in his commentary on Luke, represent “the perpetual holidays of the eternal resurrection.”22 By describing Sundays as “holidays,” he depicts the Christian Sabbath as a day of both rest and worship, in contrast with the Jewish Sabbaths characterized by idleness. In other words, the Sabbath rest enjoyed by Christians anticipates the eschatological rest that the resurrection inaugurates.23 Ambrose concludes the oration by establishing the four types of arguments by which Christians demonstrate the truth of their belief in the resurrection: experience, reason, example, and fittingness.24 Belief is simply assumed. It is prior to any rational proof and does not depend on the success of these arguments. For, although he says, “Belief in the resurrection, however, is based most clearly on three main arguments .  .  . [ for example] reason, universal example, and the testimony furnished by the fact that many have risen,” belief is not “based” on sola ratione proofs but proceeds from the biblical witness that Ambrose takes to be fact.25 Belief in the resurrection of the dead originates and

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ultimately rests upon belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Ambrose’s arguments do not seek to establish independent corroboration for belief but simply intend to explain the reason for belief in the resurrection within the context of Church doctrine. “For, since our life as such functions through a union of body and soul, and since resurrection entails the reward of good conduct and the punishment of evil, it is necessary that the body rise again, since its conduct is to be weighed. For how shall the soul be called to judgment without the body, since it must render an account of its companionship with the body?”26 Here Ambrose links his soteriology and his anthropology. If God is to redeem humanity and man is a soul and body, then God must redeem the whole person, body as well as soul. The resurrection of the body is a matter of justice. Although he alternates between ascribing primary praise or guilt to the mind and placing the blame with the flesh that rebels against the mind,27 his conclusion is the same. “Since the mind has not sinned alone, it should not be punished alone; since with the aid of grace it has not fought alone, it should not alone gain glory.”28 Indeed, if the body has suffered torment in this life, justice demands that the body also experience blessedness. The justice of eschatological recompense is essential for patience, and for Ambrose, Job’s patience in the midst of extreme bodily afflictions is paradigmatic: “[H]oly Job, after experiencing the miseries of this life and overcoming every adversity by his virtuous patience, anticipated the compensation for his present evils afforded by resurrection, when he said: ‘You will raise up this body of mine which has suffered many evils’ (Job 19:26 [LXX]).”29 It is precisely the resurrection of the body that illustrates the superiority of Christian eschatology to that of pagan philosophers. Later in the oration, Ambrose asks rhetorically whether the afterlife developed and envisioned in various philosophical schools could possibly be a more pleasurable existence than the blessedness of resurrection. The chief view he has in his sights is the Platonic view of the disembodied life of the immortal soul. “Even those, indeed, who say souls are immortal do not mollify me, since they allow me only partial redemption. For what happiness can that be in which I have not entirely escaped? What life, if the work of God dies out in me?”30 Ambrose here casts eschatological pleasure in the Aristotelian sense of eudaimonia, or flourishing in the fulfillment of one’s nature. Since human nature is the compound of soul and body, man cannot attain the fulfillment or actualization proper to his nature unless the body too is redeemed. For true life for human beings entails the whole work of God within us. Were only the Christian’s soul to enter into paradise, then the “work of God” that is her body would be lost forever. “God’s is a simple nature, [but] man consists of a rational soul and a body. If you take

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away one, you destroy the entire nature of man.”31 Thus, Ambrose maintains that the resurrection as the climax of God’s salvific activity includes the redemption of God’s material creation as well. The resurrection of the body in preserving the integrity of human nature and so redeeming the whole person is, for Ambrose, prefigured in Luke’s account (5:17–26) of Jesus healing the paralytic by pardoning his sin. Responding to the indignant questioning of the Pharisees, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus replies, “Which is easier, to say ‘Your sins are forgiven you’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?” Ambrose comments, “In this passage, he shows the full likeness of the resurrection, he who, having healed the wounds of body and mind, forgives the sins of the spirits and removes the weakness of the flesh; viz., that the whole man is cured. . . . Who also forgives through those to whom he has given the power of forgiveness, yet it is far more divine to give resurrection to bodies, since the Lord himself is the resurrection.”32 Although the point of the pericope in Luke is that Jesus demonstrates his divinity by forgiving sins and healing the paralytic, evidence that the sin that caused the paralysis is removed, Ambrose emphasizes the healing as the sign of his divinity since Jesus in his divine nature is the resurrection. Christ’s healing of the paralytic provides a model of the resurrection in which the mind is healed of the sin that beset it and the body that was unable to walk receives life in its legs. The redemption of the whole person is the logical extension of God’s renewal of the whole material world. Ambrose teaches the connection between resurrection and cosmic redemption to his catechumens early in their Lenten instruction on Abraham. Using Abraham’s departure from the land of his fathers as a type for the catechumens’ departure from the things of the flesh, Ambrose teaches that the life of Abraham’s seed (that is, literally Isaac, but figuratively the catechumen) is the life of a sojourner in a strange land. Quoting Paul’s descriptions of the “fightings without and fears within” (2 Cor. 7:5) characteristic of the Christian condition as a sojourner in the kingdom of the prince of this world, Ambrose explains that the internal fightings refer to the sojourner’s struggle with passions and emotions. “For the substance of the earthly body is a stranger to purity of heart and fights against it, or at least withstands it. Thus, there is a daily war and the battle within the camp is fierce.”33 The catechumens, Ambrose counsels, are wise to flee the enticements of the earthly body. “Therefore, the righteous will depart, so as to leave nothing of theirs on this earth, lest their spoils remain with the inhabitants and possessors of this earth.”34 When he says that the “substance of the earthly body” is an enemy of the pure heart, he means the body corrupted by sin and not the body itself. For Ambrose proceeds to explain that the body, represented by the vessels of silver and gold that the Hebrews took from Egypt, is not to be abandoned by

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the catechumens “because they are sons of the resurrection” and because “all creation is of God and is good.”35 Moreover, the sufferings of the body reflect the groanings of the whole world as described by Paul in Romans 8:22. Yet he explains Paul’s comment that we have “treasure in earthen vessels” to refer to the glory of the resurrection to come. “This [the earthen vessel] is the garment of the Egyptians with which our soul is clothed, so that it may go hence enriched, freed from that whereby it suffered greatly. For not only does all creation groan and labour in travail, but also we until the redemption of our body come to pass. The Lord has a care for his work, has care for nature ready in many respects for reason and benevolence.”36 Therefore, although the sojourn in the body is painful and, due to the devil’s temptations, is at war with the mind, the catechumen must look on the body as a valued vessel containing a treasure because it possesses the inherent goodness of all of God’s creation and because at the resurrection the body will be “enriched” with incorruption and so freed from its present groanings and warrings. In this way Ambrose qualifies for the catechumens the character of fleeing the things of the body. They must not denigrate the body but must flee the temptations of excessive indulgence in the bodily pleasures. Yet, because of the body’s corruption, death is a prerequisite for the ultimate healing and glorification of the body in resurrection, and the soul’s separation from the body is necessary so that the body may be refashioned free of the corruption of sin. Then, at the resurrection, the body will be a suitable vessel for the soul, a vessel that possesses the immortality God intended for it in the beginning. Thus, the renewed body of the resurrection is, for Ambrose, a symbol in miniature of the eschatological renewal and redemption of the whole of creation that is now groaning in travail. Ultimately, resurrection as the redemption of the whole person rests, for Ambrose, upon the precedence of Christ’s Incarnation and resurrection. When through baptism we die with Christ, we become partakers of his grace. That is, we, like the holy man Simeon, see Christ’s triumph over death and thus “the everlasting resurrection of humanity.”37 The grace that the Christian receives in baptism is the grace of God foretold by the prophets and fulfilled in the Incarnation and resurrection.38 The Incarnation itself is paradigmatic of the regeneration of humanity in baptism because, in Christ’s condescension to humanity in human form, God fashions for himself a perfect tabernacle. Ambrose is decidedly anti-Apollinarian; the Word assumed the rational soul as well as the body constitutive of human nature. The human nature that the Word assumed differs from the human nature of the rest of Adam’s race only in that Christ refashioned for himself a perfect humanity, not corrupted by sin. It is a human nature like that of Adam and Eve before the fall, but it is also a human nature that embraces death, their

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penalty for disobedience, and transforms death so that it becomes the birth pangs of resurrection. In On the Sacrament of the Incarnation of Our Lord, Ambrose’s overarching theme is that the Incarnation, that union of the divine and the material, is the prototype of the church’s sacraments. He exhorts the priests to whom he is writing: in applying God’s rebuke of Cain, “If you offer rightly; but do not divide rightly, you have sinned” (Gen. 4:7), to their celebration of the sacraments, Ambrose means that one must “divide” or distinguish rightly between the natures present on the altar. That is, an orthodox opinion must accompany the right words of institution in celebrating the sacrament for it to be efficacious. Therefore, Ambrose must explain how to “divide rightly” with respect to the Incarnation. “Divide what is mine; divide what is his of the Word. I did not have what was his; he did not have what is mine. He assumed what is mine, that he might share what is his. He assumed it not to confuse, but to complete it.”39 When Ambrose says Christ does not “confuse” what is his and what is ours, he rejects Apollinaris’s conflation of the human and divine into mia physis, or one nature. By making the Logos the rational soul or ruling principle of Jesus, Apollinaris has, Ambrose contends, destroyed Christ’s human nature, which is comprised of a rational soul and body.40 Ambrose’s alternative is a proto-Chalcedonian view of the Incarnation as the union of two natures, one divine and the other human. Although Ambrose fumbles around unsuccessfully to find a word to describe the union of the two natures, he nonetheless is emphatic that they have become one.41 Yet in their oneness the two natures are not confused, but remain distinct lest the divine nature be made subject to change.42 In the union of the human and the divine, human nature is not absorbed or lost in the divine, but is renewed. “For, according to the condition of the body he was in the womb, he was born, he was nursed, he was placed in the crib, but beyond this condition the virgin conceived, the virgin bore him, that you might believe that it was God who renewed nature, and it was man who was born according to nature.”43 Although Christ’s bodily nature is to all appearances identical to ours, Ambrose says, Christ was born of a virgin that God might renew the human nature the Word assumed. Ambrose explains the character of the renewed human nature formed in Mary’s womb when he addresses the objection that were the Word truly united to a human nature, the Word would be in danger of being “overcome by the domination of this flesh.”44 Ambrose answers that in the Incarnation, human nature is perfected. “And so, when he took on the flesh of man, it follows that he took on the perfection and fullness of the Incarnation, for there is nothing imperfect in Christ. So he took on flesh that he might raise it up again; he took on a soul, but he took on and received a perfect soul, rational and human.”45 In this anti-Apollinarian polemic, Ambrose makes an argument very similar to

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Gregory of Nazianzus’s critique that unless the Word assumed the rational soul, as well as the body, the rational soul could not be redeemed.46 Ambrose writes: [T]he very Word of God was not made living in his flesh in the place of our soul, but just as he has taken up our flesh, so too he has taken up our perfect soul by the assumption of human nature. He assumed, I say, our soul, that he might bless it with the sacrament of his incarnation; he has taken up my disposition of mind to emend it. But what need was there to take up flesh without a soul, since, surely, insensible flesh and an irrational soul is neither responsible for sin nor worthy of reward?47 Because the failure of the soul is the cause of sin, Christ assumes it to free it from fault and make it perfect through the sacrament of the Incarnation. However, when Ambrose speaks of the Word healing human nature through the Incarnation, he does not think only of the union of the divine Word and humanity in Mary’s womb, but of the resurrection also. The perfect soul of Jesus stands in contrast with the fallen soul of the rest of humanity in whom the mind’s ability to rule the body and the nonrational faculties of the soul is compromised by the corrupt concupiscence that overpowers the mind.48 Ambrose interprets the words of the Psalms, “I will not fear what man can do unto me” (107:6 [LXX]) and “I will not fear what the flesh can do against me” (55:4 [LXX]), to illustrate Christ’s perfection. He puts into Jesus’ mouth a paraphrase of these words: I was unable to fear the fall of human nature, which man himself did not fear. Therefore, I, God before the flesh, God in the flesh, assumed the perfection of human nature, I have taken on the senses of man, but I have not been puffed up by the senses of the flesh. By the senses of man I said that my soul was disturbed; by the senses of man I hungered; by the senses of man I petitioned, who was accustomed to heed petitioners.49 Here Ambrose explains how Christ possesses a renewed and perfect human nature and yet is able to experience the infirmities of the human condition.50 By virtue of his assumption of a body like ours, Christ experienced the bodily sensations of pain that aroused the emotion of fear and the sensation of pleasure that evoked feelings of desire. Yet by virtue of his virginal conception, Jesus’ mind is not so prejudiced by the innate impulses of sinful concupiscence that it is unable to restrain these emotions. In this renewed, perfect human nature of the Incarnation, Christ has torn down the dividing wall that is the animosity

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between the rational and the nonrational, the soul and the body.51 The perfection of human nature that Christ assumed is that his rational soul is able to rule over the nonrational so that soul and body may coexist in harmony. However, because Ambrose sees the renewal of human nature, in effect, as a process, he does not dwell solely on God’s fashioning of a human being in Mary’s womb, but also on Jesus’ resurrection. Thus it is improper to read Ambrose as creating a division between Incarnation and resurrection. Easter, for Ambrose, is simply the climax of the sacrament of the Incarnation, the climax in which we see that the Word has redeemed the whole person, body as well as soul. “So he took on flesh, that he might raise it up again.”52 This is precisely the significance of Christ’s resurrection, which is foundational for understanding the meaning of baptism and for viewing death. In his second oration on Satyrus, Ambrose makes the point that Jesus’ resurrection was for our benefit, not his. Since Christ is eternal and impassible, he did not, in his divine nature, die and so did not need to be raised to life on the third day.53 Rather he assumed our mortal flesh precisely because it could die and because it needed to be raised.54 Jesus’ resurrection alters how we think about Jesus and how we think about the human condition. “Now we no longer know Christ according to the flesh, but we have the grace of his flesh, so that we know him as the first fruits of those who rest, the firstborn from the dead. Unquestionably, the first fruits are of the same species and nature as the rest of the fruits. The first fruits are offered to God to beg a richer increase, as a holy gift for all gifts, and a kind of libation, as it were, from restored nature.”55 Ambrose here speaks of “the grace of his flesh” in the double sense of grace as “beauty” and as that which conveys some divine benefit. Even though the Christian does not experience Christ’s presence in his body as the apostles did, yet the Christian thinks of Christ’s body as the risen and glorified body that has put on incorruption. This is “the grace of his flesh” in the first sense. Because Christ assumed our common humanity, he is not merely a man raised from the dead, as Lazarus was, but he is resurrected humanity. Since we are of the same species and nature as Christ who is raised, we know, Ambrose says, that his resurrection is not unique to him alone, but is simply the prototype of our resurrection. He is the first fruits of the dead; at the general resurrection, the seed that is our corruptible body shall be raised as incorruptible fruit as was Christ’s body. Ambrose points to the opening of the tombs and the rising of the saints of Jerusalem described in Matthew 27:52 as evidence that Christ’s resurrection inaugurates the resurrection of all who share his humanity.56 It is significant that Ambrose speaks of Christ’s body, the firstfruits of the dead, as an offering of our “reformed nature.” At the beginning of the Incarnation, the soul was perfected by the Word; at the resurrection, the body is

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reformed and our mortal nature has become immortal. Commenting on Paul’s claim that in the resurrection the corruptible body puts on incorruption (1 Cor. 15:35–36), Ambrose says: “The blossom of the resurrection is immortality; the blossom of the resurrection is incorruption. What is richer than everlasting rest? What is a source of greater gain and satisfaction than perpetual security? Here is the manifold fruit, the harvest, whereby man’s nature waxes more vigorous and productive after death.”57 Human nature is reformed as when the grain’s husk is replaced with the blossom, and our mortal bodies are regenerated when, no longer susceptible to death and decay, they grow “more vigorous.” As we once saw in ourselves the death we received from Adam, who was the firstfruits of death, now in our flesh we see the hope of resurrection that we receive from Christ, who is the firstfruits of resurrection. In Christ’s obedience unto death, we see that the perfect human soul has been preserved in its faithfulness and we are redeemed entirely.58 For, as Ambrose writes in On the Sacrament of the Incarnation, “what does it profit me, if he has not redeemed me entirely? But he has redeemed me entirely . . . because the faithful one rises again into the perfect man not in part, but entirely.”59 The resurrection of Christ’s body completes the process of fashioning a perfect human nature that began in the virgin’s womb, and the general resurrection completes the process of perfecting our humanity that begins in the waters of baptism. Christ’s resurrection as the paradigm for our resurrection illustrates Ambrose’s concern for God’s material creation. That is, Ambrose’s account of the resurrection differs markedly from that of those, such as Origen, who interpreted the resurrection as a spiritual resurrection. Although Origen speaks of the resurrection of the body, he views resurrection as the transformation of the body of earthly matter, which is neither preserved nor redeemed, into the spiritual, ethereal body. By contrast, Ambrose’s view is that Christ’s resurrection, though it reforms and renews the material body, still preserves the earthly matter of the body God fashioned in Mary’s womb and brings about the redemption of the flesh, not its elimination. Not only does Christ’s resurrection “exemplify the course of the resurrection itself” and show us a pattern of the resurrection to come, but so closely do we see in Christ’s resurrection what our resurrection will be like that Ambrose even backs away from his earlier description of Christ’s resurrection as a pattern.60 “Indeed, it is less a pattern than it is the truth itself.”61 In the resurrection of the saints of Jerusalem following Jesus’ resurrection, Ambrose sees an example of the divine power reanimating the bodies of the dead, who, unlike Christ, were subject to decay and corruption. The saints of Jerusalem are also examples of Ezekiel’s vision of resurrection in the valley of dry bones. Here, too, Ambrose does not interpret the flesh and sinews with which the dead of Ezekiel’s vision are raised symbolically: “Again,

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in minute detail the holy prophet Ezekiel teaches and describes how strength will be restored to our dry bones, feeling return, and motion be added; how, with the return of sinews, the whole structure of the human body will grow strong, and how the driest bones will be clothed with restored flesh, and the openings of the veins and the streams of the blood will be concealed by a veil of skin drawn tautly over them.”62 Ambrose goes beyond Ezekiel’s already detailed description to point out just how complete the reformation of the body will be and illustrate the continuity of the matter and form of the resurrected body to that of our present bodies. Although Ambrose acknowledges that we do not know exactly what the resurrected body will be like or how it will be made,63 nonetheless, the vision of the reassembling of the dry bones illustrates his view of resurrection as a physical reformation of the body, like the creation of the physical universe. God’s Word gave the command and matter took its physical form, “For with God to will is to do.”64 Continuing his discussion of Ezekiel’s vision, he comments: “Nor should it seem improbable that bones, at God’s command, should again enter their bodily structure. Actually, we have countless examples in which physical nature has obeyed the commands of heaven. When the earth was ordered to bring forth vegetation, it did so.”65 Ambrose sees in the risen Christ, not simply reformed human nature, but reformed creation. He observes, “[I]f he did not rise for us, he did not rise at all, because there was no reason why he should rise for himself. The universe rose again in him, the heaven rose again in him, the earth rose again in him. For there shall be a new heaven and a new earth.”66 The resurrection and reformation of the Word’s material body is the promise of the Word’s eschatological re-creation of the material cosmos prophesied in John’s Revelation (21:1). Ambrose is explicit on the key point that the new heaven and new earth of John’s vision are the heaven and earth of God’s original creation, only renewed. To emphasize the continuity between the old creation and the new, between the body buried in the ground and the body of the resurrection, he says: “If heaven and earth are renewed, how can we doubt the possibility of man’s renewal, for whom heaven and earth were made? . . . For the resurrection, as the very form of the word indicates, is this: What has fallen shall rise again, what has died shall live again.”67 Ambrose’s view of resurrection as “renewal” or “reformation” is critical for understanding his view of the role of death within God’s design of human nature. Early in the second oration on Satyrus’s death, he admonishes his audience that excessive mourning displays a type of arrogance that refuses to submit to the law of nature that material flesh must return to the soil whence it came. Such is “tantamount to exalting the mind above the human state, to refusing to accept the universal law, to rejecting the fellowship with nature,

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to having a puffed up and carnal mind, and to being ignorant of the limitation of the flesh itself.”68 We cannot change the transitory character of corporeal nature simply because we have loved the carnal life too much. Such grief is as foolish as a young person who has loved an unworthy lover who turns around and jilts him.69 Far from viewing death as something to fear, we should see it as something to celebrate: By the death of one the world was redeemed. . . . He could not have saved us in a better way than by dying. Hence, his death is the life of all. We sign ourselves with the sign of his death, when we pray we announce his death, when we offer the sacrifice we proclaim his death. His death is a victory, his death is a mystery, his death is an annual feast of the world. . . . Death, then, should not be lamented, since it is the source of salvation for all. Death must not be shunned, for the Son of God neither disdained nor shunned it. The order of nature must not be destroyed. Exceptions cannot be made for individuals in what is common to all.70 Here we see a tension between Ambrose’s appropriation of classical Stoic consolation therapy and Christian eschatology. On the one hand, he argues that Christ’s death on the cross, whereby we are freed from death, changes the way Christians should see death. Ambrose’s rhetoric does not personify death, as does Paul in 1 Corinthians where he taunts death with the words of Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:24, and gloats, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (15:54–55). For Ambrose, death is not the enemy but an instrument in God’s plan of redemption. For Christ’s death is the victory, and so the church’s remembrance is a time of celebration. So, too, should we celebrate the deaths of all saints, especially the martyrs. For, as David declares in Psalm 115:15 (LXX): “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones.” As Christ’s death brought salvation to the human race, the excellent deaths of the saints and martyrs have also brought benefit to the church.71 Therefore, we should not let a fear of death hinder our making the sacrifice for the faith when circumstances impose such a duty upon us.72 On the other hand, Ambrose repeatedly appeals to the Stoic argument that we should not allow ourselves to be emotionally disturbed by death; rather we should simply recognize that death is a part of nature and so accept the reality of our mortality. The classic illustration of Stoic resignation to death—a resignation indicative of a life according to nature—is the story from Cicero of Anaxagoras’s reaction to the news of his son’s death: “I was already aware that I had begotten a mortal.”73 For the Stoic, mortality is inherent to human nature,

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so to order one’s life according to nature necessarily entails an acceptance of our mortality. Similarly, Ambrose reminds his audience: “The order of nature must not be destroyed.” We are all obliged to acknowledge “the rights of nature” (iura naturae) (that is, the finitude and transience proper to all mortal natures),74 and we should hand back to nature what belongs to nature.75 Yet his appeal to the Stoic view of death as lying within the purview of iura naturae appears incompatible with his view of resurrection as the renewal or regeneration of our bodily nature. If human beings are naturally mortal, then resurrection is not a renewing of nature but is the overturning of the iura naturae by the creation of a new nature. Ambrose’s shift at section 50 in the oration—from the Stoic arguments from natural law to an extended defense of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body—indicates that he was aware of this tension.76 The key, however, to understanding both Ambrose’s appropriation of the Stoic natural law argument and his view of resurrection as the renewal of our bodily nature lies in his distinction between nature as God intended it before the fall and corrupt nature after the fall. The mortal condition “common to all” is the result of the common debt of sin shared by all of Adam’s progeny, save Jesus.77 Although our corporeal nature as God fashioned it in Eden was inherently mortal and would have received immortality only through the tree of life, Ambrose is explicit that death was not proper to the nature or condition of humanity in the beginning. “Death, in fact, was not in nature, but it became a part of nature. God did not establish death in the beginning, but gave it as a remedy. . .  . Death was not really necessary to the divine plan, since for those placed in paradise a continual succession of all good things flowed forth.”78 Death, Ambrose explains, was a remedy for sin; and death put a limit on our suffering in this life of pain and temptation.79 However, even here in God’s creation of the punishment of death, there is a trace of divine mercy. For without death humanity would have faced the far worse punishment of being forced to live on without limit in such a corrupt nature. Were we to live in everlasting corruption, our sins would only mount up and with them greater human misery. This is the sense in which Ambrose says, “[D]eath is not an evil, since it is a refuge from all miseries and evils, a safe and secure anchorage, and a haven of rest.”80 Regardless of the degree of holiness attained in this life, holiness does not diminish the sufferings of this life. Because the holy man recognizes how great is the corruption of human nature, as well as its vanity and consequent miseries, he bemoans his birth. Ambrose freely quotes texts of Scripture, such as Ecclesiastes 4:2 (texts intentionally and conveniently passed over by modern theologians for fear of sounding Gnostic): “And I praised all the departed who have already died rather than the living, as many as are living up to now. And happier than

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them both is he that is not yet born, nor hath seen the evil work that is done under the sun.”81 And of David’s dour words in Psalm 143:4 (LXX)—“Man is like to vanity: his days pass away like a shadow”—Ambrose comments: “What, indeed, is more miserable than we human beings, who are cast into this life, as it were, stripped and naked, with fragile bodies, deceitful hearts, and weak minds, anxious with respect to cares, indolent toward work, and prone to pleasure? Not to be born, therefore, is by far the best.”82 Ambrose’s rhetoric here echoes his description of the exile of human nature from paradise after the fall. For to say that the nakedness of our birth was the result of being “stripped” is to say that we once had something that covered us that has now been removed. In Eden, humans were endowed with a strong mind to rule the nonrational impulses of the soul (such as concupiscence) and to make the body the tool of virtue; now, babies are born into a human condition that is weak and vulnerable. Ambrose argues that since corrupt human nature after the fall is the source of sin and suffering, God did not allow it to persist: “Consequently, an end had to be established for evils, so that death might restore what life had lost. For, unless grace should be breathed upon it, immortality would be rather a burden than an advantage.”83 Death, he explains, does not mark the end of nature, only of evil. For death entered the human condition only as a result of the corruption of that nature by sin. Death therefore functions as a remedy for sin in two ways. First, it breaks the self-perpetuating cycle of sin and suffering. Second, by death’s separation of the soul and body and the destruction of the body, death allows our corrupt nature to be remade through resurrection.84 The perfected human nature of the resurrection, like the human nature of the resurrected Jesus, entails the reunion of the purified soul free of sinful concupiscence to a body free from “the burden of the infirmities of [a] body already guilty of carnal sin.”85 Through the renewed human nature of the resurrection and the power of the indwelling grace of God, the soul rules over and animates the body. In interpreting the mystical meaning of the trumpet blast that will awaken the dead and usher in God’s final victory over death and corruption, Ambrose says, “When the grace of the Spirit and the energy of the soul act in unison, then, indeed, is the battle won and the enemy put to flight.”86 Indeed, in his explanation of the raising of Lazarus, Ambrose gives priority to the life-giving power of grace. Having compared Jesus’ command summoning Lazarus from the tomb to the life-giving sound of the divine trumpet at the general resurrection,87 Ambrose details at length how tightly bound was Lazarus’s corpse, such that his covered eyes could not see and his legs could not walk. Yet Lazarus’s eyes did see and his legs brought him out of the tomb: “For, where the power of a divine command was operating, nature had no need of its own functions. . . . It

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was Jesus Christ, the power of God, the life, the light, the resurrection of the dead. The power lifted up a man lying in the grave; the life made him walk; the light dispelled the darkness and restored his sight; the resurrection renewed the gift of life.”88 This passage bears a family resemblance to Gregory of Nyssa’s explanation of Paul’s comment that in the resurrection God shall be “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). Whereas in the present life human beings are dependent upon oxygen, water, food, light, and shelter, in Christ’s eschatological kingdom, God himself takes the places of these. Nyssa writes, “God becomes a place to those who are worthy and a home and a garment and nourishment and drink and light and wealth and a kingdom and every idea and name we have for what makes up the good life. But the one who becomes everything exists in everything.”89 So, too, for Ambrose, the divine power raises Lazarus by becoming his light and animating power. Ambrose draws upon Paul’s horticultural metaphor of the seed to illustrate how the resurrection entails both a continuity of nature between the man buried and the man raised and at the same time a transformation of that nature. Having offered the Stoic argument that death should not be feared because it is “common to all,” Ambrose employs the “common to all” argument again, this time in support of resurrection: “Rising again is a common attribute of all life, but it is difficult to believe this, because it does not result from our merit but is a gift of God.”90 “All life” here refers primarily to stars and planets, which pass through a “series of generations, successive changes and alterations, the rising and setting of constellations.” The natural cycles of dying and rising, however, are most obvious in the dying of the seed sown in the earth, which in rising again provides “the pattern of the resurrection.” The seed is dissolved in the earth yet from the very earth a “generative moisture” gives to the seed a “life-giving heat” that causes the seed to germinate. As the ear of corn develops, nature clothes it to protect it from frost, wind, rain, and birds.91 In the case of the human body, Ambrose initially says that our body, like the seed, has within it “the vital fluid” (blood), that is, the life-giving moisture.92 Later he argues from divine fiat that our bodies are resurrected by the divine power, which is like dew that provides an external source of moisture for the regeneration of the body.93 Paul’s use of the horticultural metaphor is apt, Ambrose says, since resurrection mirrors human generation. As complex an organism as is man, with erect posture, intellect, and upright locomotion, this complex creature came from a seed. So, too, the body becomes “the seed of that which shall rise again.”94 Perhaps most significant about the seed metaphor is that it allows Ambrose to argue for the continuity between the present life and the life of the resurrection. For the seed contains within itself the basic substance of the plant that it will become. The plant is not something else but is the seed

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transformed.95 Unlike pagan myths of men sprouting up from dragon’s teeth, Ambrose says, seeds cannot produce a plant of a different nature.96 Therefore, the regenerated nature of the resurrection is the same nature as the body that was buried, only purified of corruption. Because the body of the resurrection is our same body, our nature is not lost in death. “[O]ur nature remains, but evil dies. That which was rises again, and . . . as it is free from sinning, so it may be without former guilt. But this itself is a proof that there is no death of our nature, namely, that we shall be the same as we were.  .  .  . [T]he same nature will rise again, all the more distinguished for having completed its service to death.”97 Resurrection stands in marked contrast to both the first creation out of nothing and Origen’s vision of a spiritual body composed of an ethereal substance wholly different than the earthly matter characteristic of our present constitution.98 For Ambrose, the Christian view of death “according to nature” holds in tension the twofold character of human nature: the fallen nature that is subject to death and the renewal of nature that is to come. When Ambrose chastises those who fear death for being guilty of the arrogance of seeming “to arrogate to [themselves] some higher and exceptional nature,” he is rebuking them for presuming to have an exceptional nature untouched by Adam’s sin and his punishment of death: Therefore, although through one man’s sin death has passed unto all men, accordingly, him whom we do not refuse to acknowledge as the father of the human race we cannot refuse to acknowledge also as the author of death. And just as we have death through one, so also through one we have the resurrection. Let us not refuse tribulation if we wish to gain the divine reward. . . . In Adam I fell, in Adam I was cast out of paradise, in Adam I died. How shall God call me back except he find me in Adam? For just as in Adam I am guilty of sin and owe a debt to death, so in Christ I am justified. If, then, death is a debt, we ought to endure its payment.99 For Ambrose, living “according to nature” so as not to “give way to deep grief”— a grief that within the Stoic view comes from a failure to see mortality as inherent to our nature—means acknowledging that we received our nature from Adam and that we received from him the “debt of death” as well. It is not enough, however, to say that we inherited mortality from the father of our race. We must, Ambrose insists, recognize that we have a debt of death because we who were in Adam share in Adam’s guilt. To “arrogate to ourselves some higher and exceptional nature” would be to assume that we possessed Christ’s exceptional and perfect nature, which was untouched by sin and so need not have

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died. Yet for Ambrose, the Christian, who, reasoning “according to nature,” recognizes our mortal nature as a result of the guilt of sin, views death differently than does the Stoic who sees his condition “according to reason.” Whereas the Stoic is simply resigned to the reality of his death as he would be to something as ordinary as the setting of the sun or the graying of his hair, the Christian in seeing her nature as being from Adam, with whom she shares guilt and mortality, also sees herself in Christ who assumed Adam’s nature. To be in Adam is also to be in Christ, who pardoned Adam’s sin and the sins of all of Adam’s race and who raised our mortal nature, making it immortal. Ambrose thus transformed the Stoic consolation rhetoric, with its emphasis on viewing death as “according to nature” and “common to all,” by maintaining that resurrection is fundamentally the regeneration and perfection of nature. While the Christian must accept death as the punishment for sin, death nevertheless also ends the sufferings of this life and prepares the body for the transformative healing of resurrection—resurrection that provides consolation far greater than that which pagan philosophy can afford. Therefore, in his first oration for Satyrus, Ambrose personalizes Paul’s injunction from 1 Thessalonians 4:13 not to “grieve as those without hope” like the unbelievers: Let them weep, then, who cannot have hope of the resurrection. And they are deprived of it, not by divine decree, but by the hardness of faith. Let there be a difference between the servants of Christ and the worshipers of idols. . . . As for ourselves, however, death is not the end of our nature, but only of this life. Hence, since our nature indeed is restored in a better way, let the coming of death wipe away all tears. Surely, if certain men found some consolation in thinking that death marks the end of consciousness and the cessation of our nature, how much more should we have, to whom the knowledge of our good deeds gives the promise of better rewards after death?100 Ambrose extols the superiority of Christian consolation to that of pagans, questioning, in fact, if pagans can have any consolation at all. The worshippers of idols should mourn their dead who “perish forever” and are not given new life in the resurrection.101 Likewise, those who hold to endless cycles of death and rebirth into corruptible bodies according to the model of the transmigration of souls, he says, are right to mourn “that there is no rest for the dead” who live only the shadowy existence of shades in the underworld.102 According to this latter view, the individual’s life does not end; rather, the individual is compelled to endure the sufferings of this life over and over, never knowing release from pain and struggles. In the Christian model, however, death and resurrection comprise the mean between the extremes. For the saints, death does not bring

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an end to life but only to its sufferings. The rebirth of resurrection, because it entails the purification and perfection of human nature, provides life beyond death, but a life that brings rest from struggle and suffering.

The Good of Death Reconsidered Ambrose’s various descriptions of death as stripping off the body and liberating the soul from bodily distraction and suffering should, if they are to be rightly understood, be read in the context of his overall eschatology and through the lens of resurrection as the healing of our corrupt nature. In On the Good of Death, as we have seen, he liberally employs Platonic and Origenist language: Now through death the soul is freed, while it separates itself from the dwelling-place of the body and divests itself of the wrappings of disquiet. And so let us too, while we are in the body, follow the way of death, raise up our bodies from this fleshly couch and arise from the tomb, as it were. . . . Let us rise up from here, that is, from the things of the age and those of the world [de saecularibus atque mundanis]. . . . Let us seek the heights like the eagle, let [the soul] fly above the clouds, let it glisten in its renewed skins [renovatis splendescat exuviis].103 Here he repeats Plato’s argument from Phaedo that the philosopher separates herself from the body in this life in preparation for the soul’s separation from the body at death. In light of Ambrose’s earlier discussion of resurrection in On the Passing of His Brother Satyrus, the “fleshly couch” and “tomb” from which our soul must arise is not the body per se but the body that is subject to infirmities resulting from the guilt of sin. The body from which the soul arises he equates with the things “saecularibus atque mundanis.” Therefore, the body from which we flee is the body of this age (in contrast with the body of the age to come), the body that the mind cannot control and through which the mind is subject to temptation. “Following the way of death,” as is discussed further in chapter 6, is the renunciation of worldly excesses (gold, silver, estates, love, and feminine beauty) so that in imitation of Paul we are dead to the world in order that Christ might live in us. Most telling of all is Ambrose’s description of the “new skins” by which the soul ascends to heaven. Here his language is paradoxical, for he does not speak of the flesh (caro) or the body (corpus) explicitly, but refers to the body using the word exuviae—commonly translated “clothes” or “skins” (as of a snake), which are put off or shed. By speaking of the body as a garment that the soul puts off

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at death, his language is undeniably Platonic, but by describing the soul’s garment or skin as renovatis or renewed, Ambrose’s language is Christian. He does not say novatis exuvitiis, or new skins, but renovatis exuviis, or “renewed skins,” stating that the body in which we ascend to heaven is the body that we have put off (exuviae) at death (possibly an allusion to the “earthly tent” of 2 Corinthians 5:1) but put back on again at the resurrection. This body is not a new body, but the old one renewed. The renovatis exuviis thus echoes Ambrose’s view of resurrection as the regeneration (regeneratio) of humanity’s bodily nature. However, that Ambrose can speak of the soul’s heavenly ascent in its “renewed skins” need not imply that the renewed skins are Origen’s ethereal, spiritual body. For the body of the resurrection, which Ambrose expressly says is like Jesus’ resurrected body, does gain added abilities that our present body does not possess, abilities such as rising through the air to meet Christ in the clouds.104 On the other hand, the soul’s ascent in On the Good of Death (5.16) may not refer to the eschatological ascent, but is likely the soul’s separation from the world and ascent to God in the present life. Nevertheless, the soul that ascends to God in this life through obedience and contemplation is proleptically living the life of the resurrection. Indeed, Ambrose’s injunction “let [the soul] glisten in its renewed skins or garment” may be an allusion to the white robes with which the catechumens will be clothed at their baptism— robes that symbolize putting on Christ and putting on the regenerated body of the resurrection. Ambrose uses the image of putting off and then putting back on clothing to describe death and resurrection in the discussion in his Exposition on Luke, book II. There he recognizes the parallel between God’s command to Moses to remove his sandals when he stood on the slopes of Mount Horeb before the burning bush (Exod. 3:5) and Jesus’ instruction to the apostles not to wear sandals when he sent them out to preach (Luke 22:35). As we have seen, he interprets God’s command to remove the sandals as a metaphor for putting off “the fetters of the steps of his spirit and the restraints of his corporeal mind [in order that] he may proceed on his spiritual journey.”105 It is worth noting that the sandals do not refer to the body itself but to the fleshly orientation of the mind. Therefore, removing the sandals refers to the mind’s separation from the body to free itself from its carnal habits and orientation. Nevertheless, he then comments that the disciples put their sandals back on after the resurrection. If removing the sandals is a symbol of the soul’s putting off the things of the body to free itself from its corrupt carnal disposition, then Ambrose is likely extending the metaphor to mean that the apostle could “put on” the sandals (the body) once more at the resurrection when the mind and body were purified of corruption.

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Ambrose explicitly links the good of death to the work of resurrection in chapter 4 of On the Good of Death: Thus we will find that death is the end of sin; else, the longer life was, the more numerous its faults might have become. Therefore, the Lord permitted death to steal in, that guilt might cease. But so that the end set by nature might not also be in death, there was granted a resurrection of the dead, that the guilt might fail through death, but the nature be continued through resurrection.106 This passage comes at the end of his discussion in chapter 4 of how death, as the separation of soul from body, is a good. There he paraphrases Ennead I.7.2–3, in which Plotinus argues that the highest good is attained through the soul. Plotinus contends that in contrast with soulless things, which have an image of being and form, the first Soul is an emanation of the Intellect and so can have access to the Good through the Intellect. By extension, the soul of the individual, which is an emanation from the first Soul, can attain knowledge of the Good through its rational nature or intellect. One that has life and intellect, Plotinus says, has a twofold good (I.7.2). But life in itself is not good. “[I]n the bad, life limps; it is like an eye in one who does not see clear; it is not doing its proper work. But if our life, with its mixture of evil, is good, why is not death an evil?”107 Ambrose follows Plotinus’s twofold answer to the question. First, since the soul is immortal, man is not separated from his highest good by death.108 Therefore, the goodness of life is not found in the mere union of soul and body, but in the life of virtue, which rejects evil and attains those ends proper to the soul.109 Second, death is a good since it releases the soul from its union with the flesh. Ambrose sums up the good of death as follows: “Therefore death is in every way a good, both because it separates elements in conflict, so that they may not fight with one another, and because it is a kind of harbor for those who . . . have been tossed about on the sea of this life.”110 What is particularly significant is how Ambrose deviates from the Plotinian text upon which he models his argument. The climax of Plotinus’s discussion of the relation of death to the highest good is his conclusion that “life in a body is an evil in itself, but the soul comes into good by its virtue, by not living the life of the compound but separating itself even now.”111 His point is that only by the dissolution of the psychosomatic union can the soul be freed from the evil intrinsic to the body and so return to the Good. Ambrose, however, does not say that embodiment is intrinsically evil. Rather, he says that the rational soul is in conflict with the nonrational elements of human nature—a conflict that worsens man’s condition. It is worth noting that Ambrose speaks of death as a “harbor”—not the end of the journey but only a point of shelter

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en route—and of heaven or the resurrection as our “home” or “homeland.”112 Following Ambrose’s metaphor, the soul, like the ship, is in death granted respite from the storm of struggles against temptation and bodily sufferings before resuming its journey of participation in God in the more placid and submissive body of the resurrection. Ambrose does not follow Plotinus’s conclusion that death is good because it eliminates the conflict between soul and body by permanently severing the soul and body; rather, he says that death is a good in that God allows death to tear soul from body and purge human nature of sin and guilt. This view of the divine economy influences his appropriation of Plotinus’s account of the good of death. For Plotinus, death is the moment of redemption, that is, the soul’s redemption or emancipation from the evils inherent in a material body. For Ambrose, death is a good only as an instrumental good.

Sacramental Resurrection The resurrection of the dead is, for Ambrose, the culmination of Christ’s redemptive condescension. For resurrection is the regeneration of humanity, not merely in the sense that the dead are resuscitated, but that they are raised to a human nature purified of the weakness of the soul and body due to sin’s corruption. Thus resurrection and regeneration are central to Ambrose’s description of baptism. As he says in On the Sacraments, being raised from the waters of the font is a likeness (similitudo) of Christ’s resurrection and also of our rising from the grave on the last day. Then he says, “[A]s that resurrection [Christ’s] was a regeneration, so that resurrection from the font is a regeneration.”113 This raises the following question: Since baptism is a likeness of the eschatological resurrection, how is the regeneration of the believer in baptism a likeness of the regeneration at the resurrection? Therefore, before turning in the next chapter to the postbaptismal character of the regenerate believers, we need to say a last word on Ambrose’s view of sacramental regeneration that bears the likeness of the full regeneration that awaits the human race at the resurrection. One of the major themes Ambrose repeats in his postbaptismal instruction is that of the superiority of the Christian sacraments to the signs of the Jewish mysteries. The essential problem Ambrose addresses is that the miracles God performed for Israel in the Old Testament, and even some in the New Testament, were accompanied by sensible signs of God’s power; the sacraments are not. In the exodus, Israel was led by the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.114 The waters of Marah no longer tasted bitter.115 The Israelites

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ate manna and quail in the wilderness.116 Naaman the Syrian’s leprosy was visibly healed after he bathed in the Jordan.117 Even the curing of infirmities in the pool at Siloam was preceded by the disturbance of the water indicating the angel’s presence.118 But the Christian sacraments are accompanied by no tangible evidence that anything miraculous had occurred. The water of the font, unlike the pool at Siloam, was not disturbed by anything other than Ambrose’s entry into the font. The bread and wine at Eucharist did not taste like flesh and blood after Ambrose consecrated them.119 Most striking of all though, unlike Naaman, the catechumens had no physical sense that they were in any way different after passing through the initiatory rite of baptism or feeding on the Eucharist. Therefore, one of Ambrose’s goals in the postbaptismal homilies is to train the neophytes to see the sacrament through the eyes of faith that trust in the divine presence and in the real, though invisible, effects of God’s operations in the sacraments. Following his explanation of the ritual of renunciation of the devil and the world, Ambrose asks the neophytes what they saw when they turned east, facing into the baptistery with the font in the center. Of course, they saw water, as well as the deacons and bishop who consecrated the waters and baptized them. But then, quoting 2 Corinthians 4:18 and Romans 1:20, he impresses upon them the importance of discerning the invisible things of God that are eternal and not merely the temporal things of the senses. “Believe, therefore, that the presence of Divinity is at hand there. Do you believe the operation? Do you not believe the presence? Whence would the operation follow, unless the presence went before?”120 He contrasts, perhaps with a touch of irony, the neophytes’ belief with Naaman the Syrian’s incredulity when Elisha told him that dipping himself seven times in the Jordan would heal him.121 The eyes of the body see only water, but only water consecrated with the grace of Christ under the operation of the Holy Spirit is able to cure and cleanse sin. “You have seen what you were able to see with the eyes of your body, with human perception [humanis conspectibus]; you have not seen those things which are effected but those which are seen. Those which are not seen are much greater than those which are seen.”122 The unseen effects of the Christian sacraments are precisely what establishes the superiority of Christian baptism over the ritual washings of pagans or the baptism of the Jews that wash only the body.123 For the Christian baptism cleanses sin and so is passage from death to life. “Yet the Jews who passed through [the Red Sea], all died in the desert. But he who passes through this font, that is from the earthly to the heavenly—for there is a passage here, thus Easter that is, ‘his passage’ the passage from sin to life, from fault to grace, from defilement to sanctification—he who passes through this font does not die but rises.”124 Therefore, to grasp what really occurred in the font, he tells

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them, they must not concentrate upon the sensible phenomena but upon the imperceptible workings of the invisible and eternal God, which can be discerned only by the spirit and intellect through faith.125 The faith of the Christian is, for Ambrose, a critical difference between the Jewish mysteries accompanied by perceptible signs and the Christian sacraments, which lack signs. Sensible signs were an accommodation of the Jews’ lack of faith. The troubling of the waters in the pool of Siloam was a sign indicating the descent of the healing angel. Ambrose skips over the important detail that the healing happened but once a year and the troubling of the waters was the only way those who came to be healed would know when to go to the pool. Nevertheless, his point is that they could not discern the angel’s healing presence by faith, but had to see the troubling of the water. “The water was moved because of the unbelievers, for them a sign, for you faith; for them an angel came down, for you the Holy Spirit; for them a creature was moved, for you Christ operates, the Lord of the creature.”126 This need for a sensible sign is typical of the Jewish fixation with external things, such as the cleanliness of pots and cups rather than the purity of the soul.127 Yet the signs are remedies for unbelief among Christians. The tongues of fire that accompanied the descent of the Spirit upon the apostles at Pentecost were a corporeal sign given so that unbelievers might believe the Spirit had come.128 The troubling of the waters at Siloam is valuable for the Christian in that it provides a type by which to believe in the invisible work of the Holy Spirit in baptism.129 Once faith comes, however, there is no more need for the sign. Thus, the efficacy of the sacrament is grasped spiritually in faith, not empirically through the senses. What is the basis for believing in an effect unaccompanied by signs? The neophytes, he says, should not be surprised that there are no sensible signs accompanying baptism since baptism is the work of the Spirit. For the invisible Spirit works in unseen ways, just as Paul described in 1 Corinthians 2:9: “What no eye has seen nor ear heard nor the heart of man conceived.” By contrast, the angel that stirred the pool of Siloam was not the invisible God but a creature and so would naturally produce physical signs of its activity. Nevertheless, the Spirit uses the material element of water to represent the unseen reality of the cleansing of sin. The water is the elementum and the opus, but the water is salvific because of the consecration (consecratio) and working (operatio) of the Spirit.130 Thus, baptism is the magnum mysterium characteristic of the Spirit’s salvific movements to which Jesus refers when he tells Nicodemus (John 3:5), “Unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven.”131 Since the Spirit’s activities are inherently mysterious, the newly baptized should not be at all surprised that the Spirit was not visibly present at the baptism.

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The consecration of the element by the Spirit’s operation produces a sacramental effect, giving to the elements new powers not intrinsic to their nature. Specifically, the consecration is the result of the words of benediction (benedictio) that have the power to alter nature.132 Although Ambrose mentions the transformation of Aaron’s rod into a serpent as an Old Testament type of how the priest’s words changed the nature of a thing, most of his examples, not surprisingly, illustrate how the words change the nature of water: turning the Nile into blood, parting the Red Sea, turning back the Jordan, sweetening the waters of Marah, making an ax float on water.133 From these miracles, Ambrose concludes: So we notice that grace of virtue [virtutis gratiam] is capable of accomplishing more than is nature, and yet thus far we have mentioned only the grace of a prophet’s benediction [propheticae benedictionis gratiam]. But if a benediction of a man had such power as to change the nature, what do we say of divine consecration itself in which the very words of our Lord and Savior function? For that sacrament, which you receive, is effected by the words of Christ [sermone Christi]. . . . [W]ill not the words of Christ have power enough to change the nature of the elements? . . . So cannot the words of Christ, which are able to make what was not out of nothing, change those things that are into things that were not? For it is no less to give things new natures than to change natures.134 Here Ambrose expressly identifies gratia with the supernatural power (virtus) God bestows on created things that allows them to produce effects wholly beyond the scope of their natural potency or virtues. However, he distinguishes the grace of a priest or prophet’s benediction from the consecration of Christ himself. The sacramental consecration is a unique form of benediction that employs God’s own words. The superior virtus of the Divine Word is shown in that the Word of God created the world out of nothing, which is more remarkable than simply altering the nature of a thing already existing. If one believes that Moses or Aaron or Elisha could alter the nature of water, one has even greater reason to believe that the consecration by Christ’s grace can fashion a new nature. In the context of the Eucharist, Ambrose means that the words of consecration give or make new natures for the bread and wine (that is, the spiritual nature of Christ’s body and blood).135 Ambrose is even more explicit about the transformation through consecration in On the Sacraments: “[T]hat bread is bread before the words of the sacraments; when consecration has been added, from bread it becomes the flesh of Christ.”136 Such is possible, he explains, because the words of consecration are not the priest’s but Christ’s own.

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Although Ambrose alludes to the Word’s creation of the world ex nihilo to illustrate the extent of Christ’s “operative words” (operatorius sermo), the consecration of the elements generates something new from the substance of the bread (de pane). “If then there is so great a force in the expression of the Lord Jesus, that those things might begin to be which were not, how much a greater operation [magis operatorius] that those things be which were and be changed into something else.”137 Where, in baptism, the Holy Spirit is the agent of consecration, in the Eucharist the words of Christ are operative. Ambrose does not seem to make a distinction between Christ and Christ’s words quoted by the priest. To invoke the sermo of Christ is to invoke the Verbum, who created the world and became flesh. The distinction between the work of the Spirit in baptism and Christ in the Eucharist in no way entails a real difference. Given Ambrose’s insistence upon the unity of operation among the persons of the Trinity, all three persons are active even when one is the ostensible agent.138 Ambrose recognizes that the bread and wine, even after the consecration, possess only the likeness (similitudo) of flesh and blood.139 Nevertheless, he insists that the words of Christ work “to change and transform the established order of nature,” meaning that the nature of the bread and wine change into Christ’s body and blood.140 He explains the soteriological necessity of this transformation, “[b]ecause our same Lord Jesus Christ is a sharer of both divinity and body, and you who receive the flesh participate in that nourishment of his divine substance.”141 When we partake of Christ’s divine substance that is united with human flesh, we are nourished by the grace and virtue proper to the divine nature.142 The true nature upon which we feed is the divine nature, not the natures of the bread and wine, which remain only in likeness. Only the divine nature is salvific since bread and wine are mortal, but the divine is immortal. This is central to Ambrose’s soteriology. For, as I discuss more in chapter 6, by participating in the divine nature through the sacrament, the divine image is regenerated within us. When the image of the eternal God replaces the image of wickedness acquired by our participation in the devil’s works and worldly excesses, then we are made fit for fellowship with God. When we participate in the divine through the sacrament of the Eucharist, the soul is nourished so that God may dwell within it as within an enclosed garden. Thus the soul shines with the image of God restored in baptism.143 Although the divine words change the true nature of the sacrament, God allows the sacrament to retain the likeness of its original nature to accommodate our revulsion at the idea of feeding on human flesh and blood lest some be so repulsed by the visible form that they not receive the grace of the virtue of the true nature.144 Ambrose’s description of the sacraments as a likeness or similitudo has two distinct senses in his accounts of the Eucharist and of baptism. In the context

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of the Eucharist, similitudo refers to the sensible form of the sacrament, in contrast with the true nature that is the body and blood of Christ. At the same time, similitudo refers to the relation between the outward, sensible form of the sacrament and the mystical reality that eludes detection by the senses. Having said as unequivocally as possible that “from bread the body of Christ is made . . . [and wine] is put in the cup, but it becomes blood by heavenly consecration,”145 Ambrose answers the questioning neophyte who does not “see the appearance of blood.” “But it has the likeness. For just as you took on the likeness of death, so, too, you drink the likeness of precious blood, that there may be no horror of blood and yet the price of redemption may be effected.”146 Here he means that the bread and wine in their external, sensible form are a likeness of that invisible nature into which they have been changed. In the context of baptism, similitudo refers to the Old Testament types that are only shadowy likenesses of the true, heavenly reality. The dove released by Noah is a type for the Holy Spirit, which descended at Jesus’ baptism. As a type of the Spirit, the dove merely prefigures the reality of the Spirit that anoints Jesus and those baptized into Christ. Therefore, the type is but a likeness of the reality it foreshadows. Furthermore, because the Holy Spirit is God and therefore eternal Being, the Spirit is True and Real. All created, temporal things, by contrast, are at best a likeness of the real. “[W]hat is so true as the Divinity, which remains always? Moreover, the creature cannot be the truth, but a likeness which is easily changed or destroyed.”147 Ambrose deploys the term similitudo in another way to speak of baptism. Baptism is a likeness of death. That is, the ritual of lowering the catechumen into the water of the font, like a body lowered into the tomb, is a symbolic representation or similitudo of the mystical death of the catechumen. One of the texts Ambrose used for his postbaptismal sermons was Romans 6 in which Paul describes the Christians’ baptism into Christ’s death.148 Focusing on 6:3, he explains baptism as a sacramental participation in Christ’s death: [J]ust as Christ died, so you also taste of death; just as Christ died to sin and lives unto God, so you, too, died to the former allurements of sin through the sacrament of baptism and rose again through the grace of Christ. It is, therefore, a death, but not in the reality of corporeal death [in mortis corporalis veritate] but in likeness [in similitudine]. For when you are dipped, you take on the likeness of death and burial, you receive the sacrament of that cross. . . . You then are crucified with him; you cling to Christ, you cling to the nails . . . lest the Devil be able to take you from him.149

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The lowering and raising of the catechumen’s body in the font is but a likeness of bodily death and resurrection. But this likeness of death and resurrection is contrasted to “realities” represented by the likeness. The first reality is the natural death and supernatural resurrection that will be the soul’s separation from the body in this age and its eventual reunion at the dawning of the eschaton. The second reality is the catechumen’s union with Christ in his crucifixion and resurrection by the renunciation of sin and worldly luxuries and the profession of faith in the Triune God. This is the reality of sacramental regeneration. For Ambrose, baptism is not a mere type of the eschatological regeneration to come at the resurrection; baptism effects an actual change in the nature of the baptized—a change that begins with the symbolic resurrection from the font and is completed at the eschatological resurrection of the body from the grave. Ambrose explains baptismal resurrection by conjoining the language of regeneration with that of washing and that of birth. First, baptismal regeneration is the result of the cleansing of sin. In his interpretation of the white vestments placed on the baptized after their chrismation, Ambrose ascribes the words of the bridegroom from the Song of Songs (4:1) upon seeing his bride, “Behold, thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair, thy eyes are as a dove’s,” to Christ as he looks upon the baptized clothed all in white. As mentioned earlier, the white robe, for Ambrose, signifies both the heavenly, incorruptible glory that the baptized will put on at the resurrection and the purity of humanity cleansed of sin. Ambrose sees that this purity is achieved through the justification of the sinner who in baptism receives the pardon of sin and freedom from the debt of sin (that is, spiritual death). But Ambrose also links the purity of the baptized with the purification of human nature that resulted from Christ’s Incarnation when Christ “put on [our] ‘filthy garment,’” which he raised to perfection.150 For Ambrose, the “filthy garment” of Zechariah 3:3 refers not to the body alone, but to the whole of human nature. For he immediately focuses upon the purity of the soul of the baptized. The white vestments, he says, denote “a soul pure and washed by the laver of regeneration [regenerationis lavacro].” Thus the white robe is a symbol of the purifying effect of the bath of baptism wherein the Christian is reborn. The “pure soul” of the baptized is like the soul of Jesus assumed by the Word—a soul pure and uncorrupted by concupiscence and the corrupt sin of normal human conception. In the baptized, the soul is purified by its rebirth or regeneration through the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Ambrose goes on to interpret the bride’s eyes that are “as a dove’s” to refer to the soul of the baptized who now possesses the holy beauty of the Holy Spirit who has descended on her.151 The baptized undergoes a cleansing both by being washed in the pardoning blood of Christ’s cross and by receiving

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a sanctified soul that bears the likeness of the anointing and indwelling Spirit. There is a parallel, in Ambrose’s mind, between Christ’s fashioning for himself a pure soul for the Incarnation and the Spirit’s sanctifying regeneration of the soul in baptism. Indeed, Ambrose presses the logic of Christ’s supernatural conception and birth, taking it as the model for thinking about the sacramental regeneration of baptism. At the climax of his postbaptismal instruction, Ambrose sums up the significance of the neophytes’ initiation into Christ’s body: “Thus, then, having obtained all things, let us know that we have been regenerated [regeneratos nos esse].”152 Then he returns to the scriptural origin of baptismal regeneration, Jesus’ words to Nicodemus: “Unless a man is born of water and the Spirit he cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven.” For he cautions the neophytes not to imitate Nicodemus’s incredulity by asking, “How were we regenerated? We have not entered into the womb of our mother and been born again? I do not recognize the course of nature.”153 Looking for a natural explanation or a natural model for thinking of baptismal regeneration is misguided since the Christian’s regeneration is according to grace, not nature. After all, he reminds them, the centerpiece of their confession of Christ’s Incarnation is that Jesus was conceived, not according to nature, but took his generation supernaturally from the womb of a virgin.154 Since we believe that Jesus was conceived in purity by the generation of the Holy Spirit, we should not, as Nicodemus does, doubt that we are regenerated through the same Spirit who descended upon us in the baptismal font. Ambrose even speaks of Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit in the virgin’s womb as a mystery (sacramentum).155 Indeed, Christ’s conception is the paradigm for thinking about sacraments because it illustrates God’s power to circumvent the natural order to generate a new humanity. The real transformation of the elements in the Eucharist also is a model for thinking about the regeneration of humanity through baptism. Even as the bread and wine are changed in their nature into the body and blood of Christ by their consecration with Christ’s words, so too in baptism we are changed by our consecration with Christ’s words. Ambrose equates Christ’s words of consecration with the divine creative force of Incarnation: in the Eucharist Christ’s body “was made” and “was created.”156 The same re-creative power is at work in our consecration at baptism. “You yourself were, but you were an old creature; after you were consecrated, you began to be a new creature. Do you wish to know how [you are] a new creature? It says, ‘Everyone in Christ is a new creation.’”157 Even as the bread was one thing before consecration but something else after consecration, so too before our consecration in baptism we were one thing (that is, our nature was of the old creature, the old Adam). But after consecration in baptism, we are remade into a new creature (that is, we

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share in the nature of the new Adam, Christ). To be sure, Ambrose does not think that the regeneration is complete; for he says, “You began [coepisti] to be a new creature.” The perfection of human nature comes only with the body’s purification of infirmity at the resurrection. Nonetheless, this passage is important for understanding Ambrose’s view of the sacramental regeneration of baptism as a real regeneration of human nature and not simply a symbol or type of a wholly future regeneration at the resurrection. For Ambrose is appealing to the example of the consecration of the Christian in baptism to strengthen his claim that the bread has been remade into Christ’s body. Its nature has been changed. It has been changed by consecration. Regardless of external appearances, the bread is not really bread; it is really the body of Christ. The reality of change in his supporting examples must, therefore, be as real as the change in the Eucharist. Ambrose’s emphatic insistence upon the real change in the elements of the Eucharist through consecration suggests the strength of his conviction in the regeneration of the humanity of the believer in baptism. Baptism for Ambrose is the sacrament of regeneration. Through baptism the believer participates in the reality of Christ’s regeneration of the fallen race of Adam through his Incarnation and resurrection. Therefore, baptismal regeneration is inseparable from Christ’s resurrection. The catechumen’s symbolic resurrection from the font points back to Christ’s resurrection and forward to her own resurrection when her soul and body will be reunited and she will put on the heavenly glory of holiness and incorruption proper to Christ’s deified humanity. Yet, for Ambrose, baptism does not point beyond its own location in time to the past and the future. It is the moment of new birth or regeneration that Christ told Nicodemus was a prerequisite for entry into the kingdom. The regeneration of baptism is sacramental resurrection in that the believer undergoes a transformation of her nature by the consecration and sanctification of the Holy Spirit. Although the outward drama of the baptismal liturgy that Ambrose interprets for the neophytes is symbolic, the symbolic actions (for example, immersion in the font, donning the white robe, etc.) are likenesses of an invisible but very real change in the nature of the catechumen. By her sacramental union with Christ in his death and resurrection, she becomes a participant in the reality of new humanity inaugurated by Christ’s Incarnation and resurrection. It marks the liberation of humanity’s fallen nature, which has been held captive under the devil’s deception. It is the healing of human nature weakened by the fever of sinful concupiscence that has set the rational and the irrational, the mind and the body, in conflict. The Christian as a new creature in Christ is enabled to live proleptically in the holiness and freedom of life in the resurrection at the consummation of Christ’s kingdom. But because baptism only begins the transformation of human

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nature that will be completed in the resurrection, the healing of baptismal grace is not complete. Nor is the Christian free from struggles against the temptation of sensual pleasures. Therefore, the newly baptized must continue to cultivate the cardinal, as well as the theological, virtues in order to resist temptations and persevere in the grace of baptism by which she is made the holy and beautiful bride of Christ. As we shall see in the next chapter, Ambrose explains the Christian’s capacity for virtue in terms of a daily dying to the world and rising in Christ that is inaugurated in baptism.

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6 Baptismal Regeneration Participation in the New Humanity

Central to Ambrose’s account of the human condition is Paul’s description of the internal conflict between the inner man who assents to the law of God and the outer man who is subject to the law of the flesh or sin. Not surprisingly, therefore, Ambrose deploys Paul’s language of the “inner man” from Romans 7:22 to describe the Christian who has undergone the sacramental regeneration in the waters of baptism, using “inner man” as a synonym for “new man.” Playing with Paul’s baptismal imagery from Colossians 3:9–10—“You have put off the old man with its practices and have put on the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who is his creator”—Ambrose asserts that the new man is the inner man: “[T]he inner man, which is reborn, should not have the motley appearance of old and new actions, but be the same color as Christ, and with zeal of mind, imitate him for whom he was cleansed by baptism.”1 Ambrose repeats this identification of the baptized Christian with the inner man in his discussion of Jesus’ parable of the fig tree (Luke 13:6–9). The barren fig tree is a type of the Jews who have ceased to bear good fruit because they are focused on external things (for example, the letter and works of the law) due to their “strictness and pride.” But then Ambrose reminds the reader of the hope for the Jews that is implicit in the parable. The point of Jesus’ story is that God, like the gardener, shows forbearance with his fruitless tree, the Jews, and then sends the apostles to till the soil around the fig

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tree. Through their reception of the gospel, the hardened hearts of the Jews shall be dug up, and by the gardener’s application of dung, or the power of God contained in the apostles’ proclamation of the Gospel, the Jews bear good fruit.2 Not surprisingly, Ambrose describes the repentance of the Jews in the same language he uses to depict the conversion of the Gentiles from paganism: “If they [the Jews] were to die and, as it were, perish to this world, so that they were reborn to the inner man through the grace of baptism, they would assuredly be fruitful. But the unbelief of stubborn men rendered the synagogue useless, and, therefore, it is ordered to be cut down as barren.”3 Here again Ambrose employs the Pauline lexicon of the inner man to describe the character of baptismal rebirth, and also makes explicit the contrast between the strictness and pride characteristic of the Jew and the humility of one sanctified by grace in baptism. Ambrose’s point is that the Jew, by his strict adherence to the ritual demands of the Mosaic law, is concerned with externals, the things of the outer man. Thus, the Jew who is focused upon the works of the law is placed in the same category as the hedonistic pagan who is focused upon the external pleasures of the body. This chapter focuses upon the rebirth of the inner man in baptism, which Ambrose understands as participation in the new humanity inaugurated in the Incarnation and Resurrection through the vivifying work of the Holy Spirit who effects regeneration in baptism. It therefore expands upon the theme of sacramental regeneration introduced in chapter 5 by developing Ambrose’s Christology and pneumatology, which are foundational for his theology of baptism. We must begin, then, by considering the character of the new humanity fashioned by Christ in his Incarnation and resurrection and in which the Christian participates via baptism. The work begun in the Incarnation is brought to completion by the Spirit, who not only confers the gift of faith by which Christians receive God’s gracious pardon, but also joins the baptized to the resurrected Christ. Christians share in the new life of the new creation because of the indwelling of the Spirit. Yet how the Spirit enables the baptized to be united with Christ is intelligible only if one understands the relationship between the Son and the Spirit. Upon this relationship hangs the logic of Ambrose’s sacramental piety.

Participation in the New Humanity of Christ The good bridegroom is the Lord Jesus; he inaugurated [initiavit] nature by a new birth, and the flesh espoused to him is freed from corruptions. He does not seek mortal sons—he does not delight in

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the sorrows of Eve, nor the man subject to guilt, nor the heritage of a condemned father. For he saw the wounds of the flesh for which he [Adam] formerly lusted, he perceived that the beauty which has the deformity of vice is not true. So what, woman, is there for you with such a bridegroom? Look carefully and you will find a scar on every body. Learn rather to know another Bridegroom, who is surrounded with light, whose beauty cannot perish. Bear him in your soul, bless him in your temple, bear him in your body. . . . He clothes you with blessing, lest some tear of sin harm you. Then, let us preserve the garment with which the Lord clothed us as we emerged from the Holy Font.4 Ambrose’s view of baptismal regeneration cannot be understood apart from the work of the Incarnation. In his Exposition on Luke, Ambrose comments on Jesus’ metaphor of sewing “a piece of a new garment upon an old” to explain why the Pharisees were indignant that Jesus and his disciples did not fast (Luke 5:33–39). Ambrose says that Jesus’ image of the old garment is a figure for the “old man” that Paul (Col. 3:9) says the Christian puts off in order that she “may don that which is renewed by the sanctification of baptism.”5 The new garment he equates with the “wedding garment” required by the Bridegroom for admission to the wedding feast (Matt. 22:12). Thus this new garment is the inner man (Rom. 7:22) reborn in baptism who bears the renewed likeness of Christ.6 Here, as elsewhere, Ambrose conflates the Pauline antinomies of new man/old man and inner man/outer man: the new man born in baptism is the inner man whose thoughts and affections are reoriented from worldly concerns to the eternal things of God that are the proper object of the rational soul’s pursuit.7 What is critical for understanding how baptism restores the imago Dei is Ambrose’s comparison of the reformation of the believer in the image of Christ through the sanctification of baptism to the sanctification of humanity in the Incarnation. In the above description of Jesus as the “good Bridegroom,” Ambrose applies the image of the wedding feast to describe, not the eschatological consummation of the Kingdom, but the Incarnation. Christ the eternal Word is the Bridegroom who takes human nature for his “espoused” bride with whom he is united. Yet this betrothed, which is the flesh—by which he means our human nature and not just the body—is free from corruption. Does Ambrose’s reference to the “new birth” by which a new human nature is “inaugurated” so as to free humanity from corruption refer to the virginal conception of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit? Or is it the result of the union of the Divine Word with human nature? Ambrose is not clear. Either way, however, his point is that Christ

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consecrated the human nature he assumed so that it might be holy and thus a suitable bride for the Divine Bridegroom. Given his subsequent reference to the garment that the initiate puts on at baptism, Ambrose may well be creating a parallel between the new birth of consecrated humanity in the Incarnation and the new birth of baptism. But then he presses the metaphor. Even as Christ the Bridegroom took our nature as his bride—born anew through the creative power of the Spirit in Mary’s womb—so now Christ desires sons born of his union with his espoused flesh. In contrast with those sons who bear the scars of Eve’s guilt or Adam’s concupiscence, Christ wants sons who bear in their bodies the imperishable light of Christ. Thus Ambrose presents Paul’s New Adam typology: Christ is the progenitor of a new race of people, and from his union with human flesh, human nature is consecrated and freed from corruption. This is further emphasized when Ambrose states that “the sons of the Bridegroom . . . through the regeneration of baptism [are] adopted into the Law of Divine generation,”8 and interprets the Pauline understanding of adoption in terms of the generation of a new race that is part of Christ’s new creation. Through baptism, the Christian shares in the new birth by participation in Christ’s death and resurrection and so sacramentally puts on the consecrated human nature of Jesus. Thus we see how Ambrose interprets baptism, not primarily in the Pauline understanding of a symbolic participation in death and resurrection, but as the metaphor of birth. More specifically, the rebirth of baptism is a sharing in the Incarnation. By the logic of his language, the font is like Mary’s womb and the initiate raised from the waters marks the beginning of a new line of the human race. Ambrose, in his typical fashion of spinning out multiple layers of symbolic meaning rather than sticking to one metaphor, also addresses his readers, the Church, as “women” who should seek not a bridegroom like Adam but the Divine Bridegroom. Following the logic of the Pauline metaphor, Ambrose reasons that since the Church is the body of Christ, it can be compared to the body or human nature that the Word assumed in the Incarnation. Specifically, Christ forms the Church, his mystical body, in a way similar to that in which he formed his physical body in the Incarnation. Even as in the Incarnation Jesus’ body bore the comeliness of divine purity free of sin’s scars, so too through union with Christ in baptism the members of the Church come to bear in their bodies the Bridegroom’s imperishable light. Thus Ambrose exhorts his reader, “Bear him on your spirit, bless him in your temple, bear him in your body as it is written: ‘Bear God in your body.’ Enter his new bridal bed, look upon his strange comeliness, don him, see him at the Father’s right hand, and rejoice that you have such a Bridegroom.”9 Immediately, Ambrose says that Christ the Bridegroom clothes with blessings those who are baptized.

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In other words, Ambrose now presents baptism as the sanctifying union of Bridegroom and bride. The critical point here is that Ambrose cites his Latin text of 1 Corinthians 6:20 (“Bear God in your body”) immediately before his call to “enter the new bridal bed.” Since the text is the conclusion of Paul’s argument against sexual liaisons between Christians and prostitutes, Ambrose is deploying the logic of Paul’s prohibition against sexual unions with prostitutes as a warrant for his view of sanctifying union with Christ in baptism. Even as one who has intercourse with a prostitute becomes one with her and so “sins against his own body,” corrupting it, so too the Christian who is united to Christ in baptism, as a bride to her bridegroom in the marriage bed, “becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:17), sanctifying his body and soul. Thus Ambrose uses the logic of the Pauline argument both to describe baptism as a consecrating union that frees our nature from corruption and to admonish his readers against any intercourse that corrupts the new nature or garment that is put on at baptism.10 In this single passage, Ambrose has developed two metaphors for describing the Christian’s regeneration or rebirth: clothing oneself with a wedding garment and the sexual union of husband and wife. Each metaphor is an image of the Christian’s reception of the new humanity wrought by God in the Incarnation. Through union with the incarnate Christ in baptism, the Christian enters into fellowship with Christ, whose grace sanctifies the baptized as the Word sanctified humanity in the Incarnation. By this sacramental participation in Christ’s humanity, the Christian regains the divine image that had been corrupted by sin. To understand the inner man born in baptism, we need to examine first the sanctified humanity of Christ that the believer “puts on.”

The Incarnation as the Archetype of Baptismal Regeneration It should not be surprising that Ambrose titles his treatise on the Incarnation De incarnationis dominicae sacramento. For Christ Jesus is the archetype, if not also the prototype, of the Church and therefore the mystery (sacramentum) of the Incarnation provides the paradigm by which we understand the efficacy of all other sacraments. He begins the treatise with a comparison between the Christian mysteries and the sacrifices of Abel and Cain, explaining that the sacramenta of the heretics, like the offering of Cain, are not efficacious. For, although heretics may preserve the correct form of the ritual mysteries, they, like Cain, do not “divide rightly.”11 We fail to divide rightly, he says, “if we do not know how to distinguish the things that are characteristic of eternal divinity and the Incarnation, if we confuse the Creator with his works; if we say that the author of time began after time.”12 The heretics’ errant understandings

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of the Triune God and the Word’s Incarnation corrupt the ritual by stripping the traditional words of their right meaning, thereby rendering the ritual invalid and thus the occasion for sin and judgment against the heretics.13 In his discussion of the Apollinarians, Ambrose first refers to the Incarnation as a sacrament: “Badly, then, did they [the Novatians and Donatists] divide the sacrifice by tearing asunder the members of the Church. That opinion also smites those [the Apollinarians] who separate the rational soul from the sacrament of the Lord’s Incarnation [ab Incarnationis Dominicae . . . sacramento] by desiring to separate the nature of man from man.”14 Why Ambrose refers to the Incarnation of the Word as a sacramentum becomes clear when he later resumes his critique of Apollinaris’s Christology in chapter 7. Contra Apollinaris’s claim that the divine Logos took the place of the rational soul or mind of Jesus, Ambrose says, “[The Word of God] has assumed . . . the soul, that he might bless it with the sacrament [sacramento] of his incarnation; he has taken up my disposition of mind to emend it.”15 The blessing of the rational soul as part of the full humanity of Jesus assumed by the Word is the sacramental work of the Incarnation. The rational soul is blessed because its corrupt nature is “emended.” This description is wholly consistent with Ambrose’s account of the work of a sacrament in De mysteriis. Commenting on the transformation of the bread in the Eucharist, he says, “the power of benediction is greater than that of nature, because even nature itself is changed by benediction.”16 So too, in the union of humanity with the Word’s divinity, the nature of humanity is blessed in the sense that the Word heals and sanctifies our humanity. This is the essential character of a sacrament. Although Ambrose insists that the sacraments of the Church prefigured in the sacrifices of Melchizedek predate the sacrifices of the synagogue,17 the sanctifying union of the divine and the human in Christ Jesus is the primary model for our understanding of the sacraments. Since the Incarnation provides Ambrose with the paradigm for thinking about the effects of grace in the Church’s sacrament, it is necessary to say more about his conception of the Incarnation and then how that sanctifying is mirrored in baptism.

Ambrose’s Nicene Theology and Alexandrian Soteriology Ambrose’s Christology stands in a curious relationship to that of other latefourth-century contemporaries such as Gregory of Nazianzus, and to that finally adopted at Chalcedon.18 In some ways his Christology anticipates Chalcedon by maintaining the tension between the two natures and the unitary subject of the Incarnation in a manner that anticipates the formula of 451. Ambrose is concerned with preserving a clear distinction between the

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divinity and humanity and yet insists that Christ is the single subject in whom the two exist in a real union that accomplishes the redemption of humanity. The Word who is without beginning shares with the Father his eternal perfection,19 his power,20 and his ineffable and unknowable nature21 and so rightly shares the single name “God.”22 At the beginning of De virginibus, Ambrose offers the virgins a “summary” of the faith, clearly modeled upon the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, from which he tells them they must draw their faith. Having said that Christ derived his body from his virgin mother, he goes on to say, “in his power [he resembles] his Father. He is only-begotten on earth and only-begotten in heaven, God from God, the offspring of a virgin, the righteousness of his Father, power from power, light from light, not unequal to his begetter, not divided in power, not confused when the word is projected or uttered, as if mixed with the Father, but as distinct from the Father by reason of the law of generation.”23 Ambrose is clearly following the Cappadocian account of the persons or hypostases of the Trinity as equal in divinity by virtue of sharing in the common divine ousia, or nature, derived from the Father, but distinct from each other by their different modes of being or relations—for example, unbegotten, begotten, and proceeding. For, he says, the Word is equal in divinity and power to the Father. Yet unlike the Sabellians who deny a difference between Father and Son, Ambrose insists that the Son cannot be “confused” or conflated or collapsed into the person of the Father by “the law of generation.” That is, the Son is distinct from the Father because the Son is begotten by the unbegotten Father. Moreover, Ambrose repeats a version of the argument made by Origen and the Cappadocians for the Son’s coeternality with the Father.24 Since the Son is the power of the Father and the eternal Father has never been without his power, then, contra Arius, the Father has never been without the Son.25 Thus the Son is necessarily coeternal with the Father.26 Although we call the Son “the Word,” Ambrose warns against thinking of “corporeal speech.” Since the Word shares the Father’s divine nature, the Word is incorporeal and simple.27 Being incorporeal and so unable to be seen according to his divinity, the Word “took on what was outside the nature of divinity, that he might be seen according to the nature of the body.”28 Although the Holy Spirit, too, assumed an outward visible appearance when it descended upon Christ at his baptism, the Spirit did not take on a bodily nature as the Word did in the Incarnation. For the Spirit had only the appearance of a dove while the Word became united with a human bodily nature.29 The Word’s possessing equal power with the Father is, for Ambrose, essential for the right understanding of salvation that the Catholic Church proclaims. Ambrose drives home the necessity of Christ’s divinity by appealing to the

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soteriology that is the core of Christian piety. In this he follows a similar strategy employed by Athanasius against Arius and his allies, who denied that the Son was truly God and equal in divinity with the Father. Contra Arius, who claimed that Christ could be a mediator between God and humanity because he was perfectly begotten by the will of the Father, Athanasius argued that the Logos could not mediate the divinity of the Father to humanity unless the Logos was equal in divinity with the Father.30 A piety that affirms with Athanasius and Nazianzen that “God became man that man might become god” is incoherent unless the Savior is God himself, who alone can impart his divinity to humanity.31 Similarly, Ambrose appeals to a divinization soteriology in order to show why the Word must be God from God. Alluding to 2 Peter 1:3–4—“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness . . . that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion and become partakers of the divine nature”—Ambrose asks, “Who will also deny his divine nature, when the Apostle Peter wrote this in his letter, saying that through the passion of the cross the mercy of the Lord brought it about that he made us partakers of the divine nature?”32 Unless Christ is fully God, possessing the divine nature in every way as the Father, he cannot give us a share in that divine nature and the eternal life that comes from it. “Can he grant anything that he does not have?”33 Humanity’s participation in the Word’s divine nature begins when he confers that nature upon humanity in the Incarnation. The Incarnation, for Ambrose, is a union of two natures. In De incarnationis, he offers a summary of the “general faith,”34 which is the foundation of the Church against which Christ tells Peter the gates of hell shall not prevail.35 He elaborates the point by appealing to Psalm 18:6 (LXX), which, on Ambrose’s interpretation, speaks of Christ the bridegroom as a giant (gigas), meaning that “he, [though] one, is [as if ] of double form and of twin nature [biformis geminaeque naturae], a sharer in divinity and body.”36 He possesses his divinity by virtue of being the only begotten of the eternal Father. He possesses his humanity by sharing in the same nature as his mother, Mary. Although Christ’s conception was not through “the customary intercourse of male and female,” Ambrose explains: [N]evertheless the flesh of Christ is one nature with all men . . . for the mother did not give something of another, but she contributed her own from her womb in an unusual manner, but in a usual function. Therefore, the virgin had the flesh, which by customary right of nature she transferred to the fetus. Therefore, the nature of Mary, who gave birth, and that of the Begotten are the same according to the flesh, and not unlike his human brethren.37

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In the context of Christology, Ambrose uses the terms flesh or body to refer to human nature as a whole. This being the case, it appears that he is anticipating the Antiochene distinction between the divinity and humanity as two natures, which becomes normative in the East with the Formula of Reunion and the Chalcedonian Formulation. Yet, Christ is “of a double form or twin nature” (biformis geminaeque naturae). Ambrose is speaking of Christ’s twofold nature, using the genitive singular, naturae, not plural naturarum. Ambrose repeats this description of the Incarnation as a union that consists of a twofold nature in his Christmas hymn, “Intende Qui Regis Israel.” In the fifth verse, he refers to Christ coming forth from Mary’s womb, which he describes as both his “bridal chamber” (thalamo) and his “royal court” (aula regia), as Christ “the Giant of a twin nature” (geminae gigas substantiae).38 In this metaphor, taken from Psalm 18:6 (LXX), Ambrose draws upon Philo’s account of the giants from Genesis 6:4. As the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men, giants possessed a compound nature, angelic and human.39 Thus the image of the giant is an appropriate type for the Incarnation that expresses both the unity of Christ and the dual nature of the God-man. Although in De incarnationis sacramento he equates the twin nature with Christ’s divinity and his body, Ambrose does not follow the Logos-sarx Christology of Apollinaris, for he is explicit that Christ assumed a rational soul and not just a human body that the Logos governs in place of a human rational soul.40 For the Word sanctifies the whole person only by assuming the human soul,41 which has a greater share of responsibility for sin than the body by itself.42 Although Ambrose affirms Christ’s full humanity, his high, unitive Christology is still open to questions about the character of the human nature the Word took from Mary.

Problems in Ambrose’s Christology CHRIST’S HUMAN NATURE.

If Christ’s human nature was “not unlike his human brethren,” was it subject to the same corruption that all Adam’s progeny experience? Ambrose’s response to the question reflects the tension between Christ’s sinlessness and his assumption of our nature that is vulnerable to sin. On the one hand, Ambrose recognizes the biblical claims that the Father sent the Son only “in the likeness of sin” (Rom. 8:3–4) and that Christ was not a high priest “unable to sympathize with our weakness, but who, in every respect as we, was tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). On the other hand, his soteriology follows the logic of the communicatio idiomatum: Christ’s assumed humanity is sanctified by the union with the divine Word in the Incarnation. Can a divinized human nature also experience human weakness?

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In De virginibus, while exhorting the virgins to weep tears of repentance, Ambrose quotes Psalm 6:6, “Every night I shall wash my bed, I shall water my couch with my tears.” The “bed,” he explains, is the body in which the soul rests, but the “bed of pain” (Ps. 41:3) is the “body of death” that caused Paul to cry for release. Yet, as Psalm 41:3 promises, “The Lord will bring him help upon his bed of pain.”43 The Lord helps us in our bed of pain by taking for himself a similar body of pain and passion: he wept for Lazarus, and suffered and was wounded upon the cross.44 Yet Christ, who shares our bed of pain and weakness, helps us by abolishing weakness through the sufferings, death, and resurrection of his flesh.45 In this text, Ambrose is explicit that Christ assumes human weakness. Here the locus of man’s deliverance from his natural infirmity shifts from the sanctification of human nature in the Word’s assumption of our flesh in Mary’s womb to the atoning work of his passion. Are the weaknesses of the “body of pain” the natural limitations of an inherently mortal body or are they the corrupted nature that results from sin? Ambrose specifically addresses those who in an overly literal reading of “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) assume that the Word was “turned into flesh” (reading John 1:14 through 2 Cor. 5:21). When Paul writes, “For our sakes, he was made to be sin who knew no sin,” he means, says Ambrose, that Christ did not become sin but took on our sin and the curse of our sin and so himself became an accursed thing in his crucifixion. He then explains that Christ’s becoming sin does not mean that he himself was guilty of sin. When the Word assumed our flesh, Ambrose says, “He was made sin, that is, not by the nature and operation of sin, inasmuch as he was made into the likeness of sinful flesh; but, that he might crucify our sins in his flesh, he assumed for us the burden of the infirmities of a body already guilty of carnal sin.”46 Here Ambrose interprets 2 Corinthians 5:21 (the Father “made him to be sin”) in light of Romans 8:3–4 (he was made “in the likeness of sinful flesh”). Christ was not himself sinful “by nature or operation,” that is, his nature was not sinful nor did he commit sin, but simply shared with us the likeness of sinful humanity that he might die on behalf of Adam’s sinful race. What is curious here is that having said that Christ was not sinful “by nature,” Ambrose says that the humanity he assumed bore “the infirmities of a body already guilty of carnal sin.” From this perspective, the weaknesses of the “body of pain” that Christ bore were not simply man’s natural passibility and mortality, but were the weaknesses of the flesh that are the result of sin. The implication is that the human nature the Word took from Mary in the Incarnation was not a pristine humanity free of blemish but one bearing the marks of sin’s corruption. This is such a striking passage because it appears to contradict the vast majority of passages where

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Ambrose distinguishes the character of the nature Christ took from Mary from that of our own sinful nature. This problem Ambrose addresses in his interpretation of Paul’s description of Christ as having the “likeness of sinful flesh” in light of Jesus’ supernatural conception and the divine nature of the one who assumed human flesh. THE CAUSE OF CHRIST’S SINLESSNESS: VIRGINAL CONCEPTION OR THE GOVERNANCE OF THE WORD?

Ambrose’s Christ is fully human yet sinless. The causes of Christ’s sinlessness are twofold. Initially, Ambrose locates the cause of Christ’s perfection in Jesus’ virginal conception. In De paenitentia, he directly addresses Paul’s claim that God made his own Son to be the “likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3–4), explaining that to become the “likeness of sinful flesh” simply means that the Word became a man whose bodily form is recognizable to other men, in contrast with his divine power that so transcends human analogy as to be unrecognizable to mortals. To have a human body is to have the appearance of fallenness characteristic of Adam’s sinful children. For Ambrose, Christ Jesus shares Adam’s nature but not Adam’s sin and moral weakness: “He has our flesh, but has not the failings of this flesh.”47 Christ was not only innocent of our sins, but his flesh did not have our weaknesses that are the result of sin. His human nature, though mortal, was not corrupted, as is ours, because Christ’s virginal conception did not expose his flesh to the contagion of sin. “For he was not begotten, as is every man, by intercourse between male and female, but born of the Holy Spirit and of the virgin; he received a stainless body, which not only no sins polluted, but which neither the generation nor the conception had been stained by any admixture of defilement.”48 Ambrose’s assumption is that the corruption of human nature is transmitted through sexual intercourse. This is the meaning of David’s penitential pronouncement of the pervasive character of sin: “I was conceived in sin and in sin did my mother bring me forth” (Ps. 50:5 [LXX]). Ambrose returns yet again to Paul’s description of the wretchedness of the human condition as “the body of death.” The body from which Paul desires to be released (Rom. 7:24) is the body that is “stained by an admixture of defilement” as a result of his conception in sin. However, because Christ was not conceived as the result of intercourse between man and woman, there was no transmission of concupiscence or other corruption. Christ’s body, though mortal, was not Paul’s “body of death.” Rather, the humanity taken from Mary and fashioned by the Spirit was pure humanity. By virtue of his virginal conception, Christ was free not only from the corruption of the body, but also from that of the soul. In a typical anti-Homoian and anti-Apollinarian move, Ambrose says that the Logos did not indwell the body in the place of a soul. Rather, “just as he has taken up our flesh, so too he

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has taken up our perfect soul by the assumption of human nature. He has assumed . . . the soul, that he might bless it with the sacrament of his incarnation; he has taken up my disposition of mind to emend it.”49 The soul and body that the Word assumed are perfect only in the sense of being free from defect. Unlike the rest of Adam’s race, Christ Jesus did not begin life with the corrupt disposition of concupiscence that set the mind and the flesh at war so that the soul cannot properly govern and order the bodily impulses and actions. Against the Homoians and Apollinarians, presumably, Ambrose says that the heretics agree with Paul’s argument in Romans 7 that the concupiscence of the flesh resists the “law of the mind,” and therefore they fear that Christ would have been overcome by concupiscence and led to “err in a human sense” if he had had a human soul that was unable to control the body. However, Ambrose counters, Paul did not believe that Christ’s mind could have been overcome by the law of the flesh, that is, concupiscence, and led into the “bonds of sin” since Christ assumed and sanctified the soul. Christ could not free us from the internal conflict between the flesh and the mind if he himself had not been free from this inner conflict.50 This form of perfection, however, is very different than the eschatological perfection that is proper to the renewed humanity that we see in Christ’s resurrected body.51 In fact, Ambrose views the perfection of Christ’s humanity as an ongoing process throughout the course of the Incarnation. Such, after all, is consistent with Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ childhood and adolescence that speak of his growing “in wisdom and age and grace with God and men” (Luke 2:40).52 This account of Jesus’ growth in wisdom and grace marks a departure from his argument for Christ’s sinlessness based on virginal conception. It is not enough to say that Christ was born free from the baggage of concupiscence. Indeed, the first people were born immaculately and yet fell into sin. Ambrose must account for Christ’s perseverance in holiness. The sanctifying dominion of the Word ensures Christ’s sustained purity. Although Jesus was subject to temptation, he did not fall into sin as do we precisely because his human soul is governed by the Word. The assumption of a human soul did not make Christ vulnerable to sin because the divine Word who assumed our human nature is the same God whose grace has the power to save us from sin. Ambrose’s logic is as follows: If we cannot trust that Christ’s grace could render him free from sin, how can we hope that that same grace can sanctify us and free us from our sin? “But how could he have feared the hazardous condition of sin, who had come to remit sin?”53 Ambrose’s answer: Because Christ has the power to remit and heal sin, and this power was at work perfecting the humanity he assumed, he need not fear the power of sin. “And so, when he took on the flesh of man, it follows that he took on the perfection and fullness of the Incarnation, for there is nothing imperfect in

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Christ.”54 Here Ambrose has shifted focus in his account of Christ’s invulnerability to sin. The emphasis is not now upon the purity of Christ’s humanity as the result of his virginal conception, but upon the power of the Word to restrain and sanctify the humanity he assumed. By way of proof text, Ambrose illustrates that Christ did not fear sin as we do by pointing to Jesus’ words of warning to the bystanders watching his procession to Golgotha: “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me; but weep for yourself” (Luke 23:28). Ambrose paraphrases this with: “Do not be afraid for me but fear for yourselves.” The reason: “I was unable to fear the fall of human nature, which man himself did not fear. Therefore, I, God before the flesh, God in the flesh, assumed the perfection of human nature, I have taken on the senses of man, but I have not been puffed up by the senses of the flesh.”55 Whereas man has reason to fear the fall, Christ does not because he is “God in the flesh” and so his corporeal human nature is perfect. Yet here is the rub: Ambrose does not give a particularly nuanced account of how Christ could experience temptation. As with any unitive Christology that places the emphasis upon the governance of the Word, there is the problem of explaining how the incarnate Word could be tempted. Even maintaining the existence of a human soul does not solve the problem. Ambrose speaks of temptation, the source of sin, as arising from either pleasurable sensations that arouse inappropriate desire or fearful perceptions that might weaken one’s moral resolve or courage. Therefore, since the Word rules the mind that rules an appropriately submissive body, the mind of Christ does not yield to temptation of the senses. Yet Ambrose’s position that defines temptation chiefly as a tension between the judgment of the mind and the senses that arouse passions does not explain the more subtle temptations Christ experiences in the wilderness. CHRIST IS ONE WHAT? A TERMINOLOGICAL CONFUSION.

The Word’s assumption of human nature forms a true union of the two natures. Ambrose clearly advocates a high Christology with his emphasis upon Christ’s divine nature and the salvific benefits the Word confers upon our human nature. These benefits accrue to our humanity because the humanity and divinity are genuinely united. The problem for Ambrose is how to speak of Christ as truly one without conflating the divinity and humanity. In other words, how do the human and divine natures fully retain their distinctive qualities in the Incarnation? How does Ambrose describe the Incarnation as a real union of the human and the divine that, nonetheless, does not fundamentally change or corrupt the essential nature of either? As we have seen, Ambrose speaks of the union of Christ as being, like a giant, “of double form and of twin nature, a sharer in divinity and body.” Then immediately he declares that Christ is one: “The bridegroom

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of the soul according to the Word . . . in going through the duties of our life, although he was always God eternal, he assumed the sacrament of the Incarnation, not divided, but one, because he, [who is] one, is both, and one in both, that is, as regards both divinity and body. For one is not of the Father, and the other from the virgin, but the same is of the Father in one way, and from the virgin in the other.”56 As the archetypal sacrament, the Incarnation is not divided but exists as a unity; the invisible divinity of the Word is revealed through the visible humanity of Christ. The former is not beheld without the latter. What is striking about this passage when read retrospectively through the lens of fifth-century Christological debates is how lacking it is in technical vocabulary. Ambrose is awkwardly groping for some way to describe the unity of the sacrament of the Incarnation. The Bridegroom is one, but one what? His description of Christ as having a “twin nature” or “twofold substance” is neither unambiguous nor unproblematic. To begin with, he uses natura and substantia as virtual synonyms. Moreover, in both his hymn, “Intende Qui Regis Israel,” and De incarnationis, Ambrose uses the genitive singulars, substantiae and naturae. Thus his expressions geminae naturae or geminae substantiae could be interpreted to mean that Christ has one nature or substance that is twofold in character. It is not obvious that Ambrose’s “twofold nature” means the same thing as the Formula of Reunion and the Chacedonian Formulation’s language of “two natures.” Nor is it clear that the Christological image of a giant, such as a centaur, clarifies Ambrose’s intention. For while the centaur has a compound nature, it would not be described as fully man and fully horse. Rather it is a hybrid, part human and part horse. A “twofold nature” could refer to a being that is neither one nor the other, but a third creature, a cross-breed. As Brian Daley has demonstrated convincingly, Augustine in his Contra sermonem Arianorum draws upon Ambrose’s metaphor of the “twin-natured giant” to describe the incarnate Christ. However, Augustine makes the meaning of the metaphor clearer than Ambrose does: “twin substance” means “two natures.” Christ’s twin substance is the full divinity of the Word and the full humanity, soul and flesh.57 Moreover, he uses the term persona, in explicit contrast with substantia, as the term for the unity of Christ.58 The Incarnation is the union of divinity and humanity as a twofold substance in a single person, Jesus. This is essentially the same point that Ambrose is making, but his language is less clear than Augustine’s. Therefore, the key to Ambrose’s meaning lies not in his terminology, but in the cumulative force of his repeated descriptions of the relation of the divinity and the humanity in the Incarnation. Thus when Ambrose’s language of Christ’s “twofold substance” is read within the context of Ambrose’s argument against Apollinaris in De sacramentis, it is clear that Ambrose’s unitive Christology is quite different from Apollinaris’s account of

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Christ’s unity as a “single nature” (miaphysis). The key to understanding Ambrose rightly lies in his insistence upon correctly distinguishing the divinity and the humanity that are united in Christ Jesus. The heart of Ambrose’s critique of heterodox Christologies, especially those of the Arians and the Apollinarians, is his insistence that the sacrament of the Incarnation can be rightly understood only by “dividing rightly” or distinguishing between Christ’s divine and human natures:59 Divide what is mine; divide what is his of the Word. I did not have what was his; he did not have what is mine. He assumed [suscepit] what is mine, so that he might impart [impertiret] what is his; he assumed it not to confuse [confunderet], but to complete [repleret]. If you should believe in the assumption, yet add on confusion, you have ceased being a Manichee, but you have not yet become a son of the Church.60 It is necessary to keep Christ’s two natures distinct, not because the two were never really united during the Incarnation—as would be the case with a docetic Christology—but in order to understand the “great exchange” the Word accomplished in the Incarnation. The exchange between the human and the divine that takes place in the Incarnation is twofold. First, as we have already seen in chapter 4, the divine Word in assuming man’s mortal nature and so bearing the likeness of sin takes on himself humanity’s debt of sin and satisfies that debt by his death on the cross. In return he gives mankind “what is his,” that is, the reward of his righteousness that is the forgiveness of sin and the restoration of paradise.61 Even this penal substitutionary account of the exchange is not a forensic fiction: it is not that our debt of sin is imputed to the Word and the Word’s righteousness and its rewards are imputed to sinful humanity. Rather, the Word’s assumption of the debt of sin and conferral of his reward is possible only because he assumed our mortal nature. The ambiguity in Ambrose lies with the implied object of confunderet. Who or what is confused? We the believers? The characteristics of humanity and divinity? Initially, Ambrose may mean that Christ did not assume our humanity to confuse us about the nature of God, but to complete our understanding. This reading would be consistent with the overall thrust of Ambrose’s argument that we must properly distinguish between Christ’s two natures in order that we not confuse attributes of the divine nature and those of the human nature and so be confused in our understanding about God’s nature. Moreover, our ability not to confuse but to preserve the distinction between the human and the divine presupposes that the divinity and humanity of Jesus were distinct. Thus, Ambrose may mean that the Word did not assume human nature

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to create a confusion or mixture of human nature with the divine, but to complete or perfect human nature. In the immediate context, the parallel structure of the compound sentence may be the key to the meaning.62 His concern is to qualify the character of the Word’s assumption of “what is ours” by explaining the purpose of the assumption, that is, the perfection of human nature. What is the confusion that God did not intend in the assumption of human nature? In De virginibus, Ambrose offers a similar description of the union of the human and divine in the Incarnation. “But after the Lord entered into this body and joined the Deity to a body without any stain of confusion [sine ulla concretae confusionis labe], this custom characteristic of the heavenly life spread throughout the world and implanted itself in human bodies.”63 The phrase “without any stain of confusion” when applied to the Deity rules out any notion of corruption of the divine nature through its being joined with a human bodily nature. What is the stain of confusion that Ambrose insists did not occur in the Incarnation? Later in De virginibus, when speaking of the distinction between the Father and Son, Ambrose expressly says that two things being confused (confusus) entails the two being “mixed” (mixtus) in a way that creates an indistinguishable amalgamation of the two.64 Thus when speaking about the exchange in the Incarnation that is without the stain of confusion, Ambrose means that the Word assumed “what is ours,” that is, human nature, in order that he might complete human nature by giving to us “what is his own,” a share in his divine nature. The Incarnation completes human nature because the divine Word who governs humanity restores to it the divine image that was corrupted by sin. In short, Ambrose preaches a high Christology in which the Word governs and thus perfects the humanity assumed in the Incarnation. Although he insists upon distinguishing between the divine and the human natures in Christ, his Christology is fundamentally unitive. Christ is one. This gives rise to questions of how humanity and the Word are united to each other without being changed essentially. First, human nature in the Incarnation is transformed, but not obliterated. It is a new humanity; but it is still human. It is new in that it is perfected humanity and so qualitatively different than sinful humanity characteristic of the “old man” put off in baptism. Second, the Word is the subject of Christ’s human actions, but the Word’s immutable nature is not changed as a result of the Incarnation. The Word is the subject of the humanity taken from Mary and thus is the subject of the predicates or attributes proper to that humanity. Yet at the same time, the Word preserves the divine nature that is his own by virtue of being begotten by the Father. Because of this unitive Christology, Ambrose distinguishes between two forms of predication: (1) that which is proper to the Word by virtue of his divine nature; and (2) that

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which is his within the divine economy by virtue of his assumption of our humanity. The strategy of divided attribution, unlike the strategy of segregating some predicates to the human and some to the divine natures, preserves the unity of Incarnation such that the Word genuinely takes upon himself the human condition yet he does so without being corrupted or altered in his divinity by it. Yet Ambrose recognizes that this predication is possible precisely because Christ possesses a twofold nature in which the humanity and divinity even in their union are not confused, but remain discrete. Yet Ambrose insists that this completion of our nature through the restoration of the divine image does not create confusion between the nature of a creature and that of God. That is, we should neither think that there is a substantial confusion of the natures in the person of Jesus, nor err in ascribing the metaphysical attributes unique to God to the creature or vice versa. It is precisely because there was a union of the two natures that there is the risk of confusing the properties of the divine nature and of the human nature, both of which belonged to Christ. Therefore, in order to understand what Christ gave to our human nature we must be clear what qualities are unique to the Word’s divine nature and lacking in human nature before the Incarnation. Likewise, since the Incarnation is the visible, bodily revelation of the invisible, incorporeal divinity, it is necessary to distinguish between the natures in order that we not wrongly attribute to God qualities not proper to the divine nature but belonging only to the nature of his bodily form of self-disclosure. Such a failure to distinguish between the natures results in a distorted picture of God and so defeats the purpose of the revelation. Specifically, Ambrose is concerned that human passibility not be attributed to God.65 Thus we see, in Ambrose’s explanation of the “great exchange” between the Word and humanity, the central tension in Christology that will occupy the Greek-speaking Church in the fifthcentury debates between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople. The key question is: How can one hold that the Word re-creates and heals corrupt human nature in the Incarnation through a communicatio idiomatum whereby the power of the Word transforms the human nature that is assumed and at the same time insist that the human and divine natures are not confused but remain distinct in the Incarnation? How can human nature be divinized in the Incarnation by partaking of God’s nature and also remain fully human? Likewise, how can the divine nature take on our humanity, undergoing real birth, real passion, and real death, without being altered in the process? In the end, Ambrose does not offer an explanation of how there can be real union without confusion, but simply asserts that the Divine Word assumes our humanity to complete or perfect it by giving to it what belongs to the Word, namely righteousness, incorruptibility, glory, and blessedness. At the same

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time, however, this transformation of human nature in the Incarnation must not create a confusion of the human and the divine in a way that blurs the line between the eternal, immutable, and impassible divine nature proper to the Creator and the mutable and passible human nature proper to the creature.66 This is the message that Ambrose the preacher declares to his congregation and to his priests. But there he stops. He offers neither a metaphysical explanation nor a developed theological analysis, but only a doxological or kerygmatic confession, like those theologically suggestive but undeveloped passages in Paul’s epistles. Ambrose’s doxological justification for his unitive Christology comes in chapter 7 of De incarnationis. There he insists that Christians must divide rightly between Christ’s two natures by arguing that dividing rightly does not compromise the unity of the two natures in Christ. Anticipating the objection of those who would claim that Ambrose’s strategy of divided predication (that is, predicating some properties to divinity but not to humanity, and others to humanity but not divinity) breaks the unity of Christ, he counters with the rhetorical question: “When we adore both his divinity and flesh, do we divide Christ? When we adore the image of God in him and the cross, do we divide him? Surely the Apostle [Paul], who said of him: ‘For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God’ (2 Cor. 12:4), said that Christ was not divided.”67 The force of Paul’s words is, for Ambrose, that one Christ is adored, one Christ who both was crucified in the weakness of his flesh and also lives by his divine power. Therefore, Ambrose concludes that we, with Paul, can divide rightly in the sense of conceptually distinguishing between his human and divine natures so as not to confuse the predicates unique to divine nature (for example, immutability, impassability, etc.) with the predicates proper to human nature (for example, mutability, passibility, etc.) and yet worship one Christ who is human and divine. Ambrose is aware of the Apollinarian argument that if Christ has a human soul and so is human, then Christ is not one but two: the Divine Word and the man Jesus. If, however, the Logos is the soul of Jesus, reasons Apollinaris, there are not two natures but only one. The body is not another person but only the Word’s body, which the Word takes with him at his ascension into heaven. If Christ has a human soul such that there are two natures, that is, two substantial entities, then at the ascension Christ returns to the right hand of the Father, bringing with him the man Jesus. Consequently, Apollinaris contends, we end up worshipping, not the Trinity, but a tetrad, that is, the Trinity plus the man Jesus. Ambrose emphatically denies the charge: “For I do not divide Christ when I distinguish the substance [substantiam] of his flesh and divinity; but I proclaim one Christ with the Father and Spirit of God.”68 In his early Trinitarian

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work, De fide, Ambrose distinguishes between natura and substantia. Natura or nature denotes the divinity common to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Substantia refers to what each is; thus substantia corresponds with the Greek hypostasis.69 Here, however, Ambrose is using substantia as a synonym for natura since substantia refers to the divinity or divine nature that Christ the Son holds in common with the Father and the Spirit and the substance of the body or human substance he shares with us. Thus Ambrose distinguishes the human and divine substances or natures without compromising the fundamental unity of the Incarnation. Ambrose’s unitive Christology is quite different than Apollinaris’s unitive Christology. When Apollinaris speaks of Christ as mia physis, he means one substance or substantial entity or one person. Christ does not have a human nature, only a human body governed by the Word. Within Apollinaris’s terminology, to speak of Christ as having two natures or substances would be to speak of two separate substantial entities or persons. Yet for Ambrose, there are not two Christs, only one Christ in whom there are two natures. Ambrose counterattacks by saying that if Christ’s flesh and divinity come together to form one substance, as Apollinaris claims, then there is a mixture or confusion of the human and divine natures. Such a union that confuses the natures creates a mongrel or third thing whose nature is a hybrid of human and divine. From this argument he flips Apollinaris’s own argument against him. If the Incarnation created a hybrid of the human and divine, we would have the tetrad of the three persons of the Trinity who share a single divine substance and Jesus with his mixed substance. Ambrose can make this argument because he distinguishes substantia and persona. The warrant for this distinction derives from the Nicene Creed. With Apollinaris clearly in his sights, he writes, “I shall demonstrate that those [the Apollinarians] who say that the flesh of Christ is of one substance with his divinity introduce a tetrad. For what is of the same substance [eiusdem substantiae] is not one person [unus], but one thing [unum], for surely those who confessed the Son of the same substance with the Father [eiusdem cum Patre substantiae] in the tract of the Nicean Council did not believe in one Person [unam personam], but in one divinity [unam divinitatem] in Father and Son.”70 Ambrose’s phrase eiusdem substantiae, which he uses to express the consubstantial unity of the Father and Son, corresponds to the Greek term homoousia adopted by Nicaea to express the Father and Son’s shared nature. Since, by the grammar of Nicaea, the Father and Son are of one substance (eiusdem substantiae) but are not one person (unam personam), then substance (substantia) and person (persona) are different. Grounding himself in the grammar of Nicaea, Ambrose rejects Apollinaris’s equation of substance or nature with person and, by extension,

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when he affirms two substances or natures in Christ, he is not claiming that Christ is also two persons. To sum up, Ambrose’s Christology anticipates certain moves made in the Chalcedonian Formulation and yet falls short of being fully Chalcedonian. On the one hand, he affirms the unitive Christology of Cyril, which describes the Incarnation as a union of humanity and divinity whereby a “great exchange” between the divine and human occurs that fashions a new humanity. The justification for this unitive Christology flows from the practice of worshipping Christ as a member of the Trinity. At the same time, Christ’s humanity and divinity remain distinct within the union of the Incarnation. Although Christ is one, Ambrose insists, the union does not cause the loss of the humanity or divinity by creating a hybrid creature in which the two substances or natures would be confused. Ambrose expresses this distinction through the strategy of divided predication. Thus Christ suffers in his humanity and yet remains unchanged in his divinity. His humanity, though made incorruptible, remains passible and changeable. In his divinity, Christ remains immutable. Ambrose’s presentation of this distinction between the divine and human substantiae of the Incarnation—his anticipation of Chalcedon’s insistence upon union without confusion or mixture—arises from his need to place his unitive Christology well within the bounds of orthodoxy in contradistinction from Apollinaris’s unitive, but heterodox, Christology. On the other hand, Ambrose’s Christology falls short of Chalcedon in that he is unable to come up with a language to describe the union of the human and the divine in the Incarnation. The best he can do is to speak of Christ as being like a giant of “a twin or twofold nature.” Without the added qualifications that Augustine makes in his appropriation of Ambrose’s metaphor, Ambrose comes close to sounding like Cyril, who appropriated Apollinaris’s language of mia physis to speak of the union. Only Ambrose’s strategy of divided predication preserves the distinction of humanity and divinity in a way that prevents his unitive Christology from becoming protoMonophysite. Even though he recognizes the distinction between substantia (denoting the common nature of Father and Son) and persona (the term of individuation corresponding to hypostasis), as proper to the grammar of Nicaea, he does not use persona to speak of the one Christ in whom the human and the divine are united. Moreover, he does not recognize the problems inherent to his unitive Christology and his soteriology of the “great exchange.” Thus while Ambrose preaches a Christology that he sees as consistent with Nicaea and the Alexandrian soteriology of theopoiesis to which pro-Nicenes, like Athanasius, were committed, he does not offer an explanation of how the Divine Word can assume, divinize, and perfect human nature by being

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united to it without being itself altered by the union. Ultimately, his greater concern is dividing rightly in his Christology so that the Church’s sacraments may be efficacious in declaring humanity’s hope of renewal and redemption through Christ’s new humanity.

The Leavening of Baptism: Participation in Christ’s Humanity Out of the great exchange resulting from the union of the two natures in the one person of Jesus comes a renewed humanity that the Christian puts on in baptism. In the Incarnation, the Word assumes our nature and yet through his conception God performed “a work beyond nature” as “renewed nature.”71 The renewal of our nature, which culminates in Jesus’ resurrection, inaugurates the renewal of all creation. In his second oration on Satyrus, Ambrose makes the point that the resurrection was not for the sake of the immutable Word, whose divine nature was uncompromised in the Incarnation and the cross, but for ours. “For, if he did not rise for us, he did not rise at all, because there was no reason why he should rise for himself. The universe rose again in him, heaven rose again in him, the earth rose again in him. For there shall be a new heaven and a new earth.”72 The incorruptibility that Christ’s human nature exhibits in his resurrected body is reflective of the moral perfection humanity acquires through its union with the Word. Commenting on the Christ hymn of Philippians 2, Ambrose concludes that through Christ’s humble condescension in the Incarnation and then his obedience unto death, “the glory of the Only-begotten and the nature of perfect man are thus preserved in Christ.”73 In his autobiographical work, De fuga saeculi, Ambrose sums up sacramental participation in Christ’s renewed humanity. “In truth, [because] that old man of ours was fastened to the cross .  .  . we may cease to be subject any more to shameful actions. The old man indeed has gone away. But now there is in us, not the old man, but a new creation having in itself the likeness of Christ. We were buried together to the likeness of his death, and we have taken up the image of his life and received the wings of a spiritual grace.”74 Ambrose does not view the consecration of human nature in the Incarnation as a mere metaphor for the cleansing of the soul alone by baptism. While the soul or mind is primary since this is the locus of faith, elsewhere in his Exposition on Luke he repeats the claim that the sanctification that occurs through the ministrations of the Church, that is, through its teachings and the sacraments, sanctifies the whole person, body, soul, and spirit. In his interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the leaven and the three measures of flour (Matt. 13:33; Luke 13:20–21), the Church is the flour in which the woman “hides the Lord Jesus in the inner parts of our mind until the radiance of the

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Heavenly Wisdom envelopes the secret places of our spirit.”75 Christ is not only the leaven of the Gospel, but also the leaven hidden within the law of Moses and in the teachings of the prophets—a leaven that perfects the faith of all “through the touch of the Scriptures.” The leaven is thus the spiritual teaching of the Church: [T]he Church sanctifies with spiritual leaven the reborn man who is in body, soul, and spirit; for the body and soul are sanctified, and spiritual Grace itself received the increase of sanctification, when through, as it were, the office of the leavening Church and through the teaching of the Scriptures, which rises as if with the bestowal and richness of heavenly sayings, its use infused and commingled is implanted in the whole man.76 Thus the one who is reborn through baptism is sanctified through an ongoing leavening process so that the grace of baptism increases and sanctifies the whole person. The leavening process that sanctifies the whole person allows the Christian to grow into the new humanity—the new humanity that Christ fashioned and perfected in the Incarnation—which she put on at her baptism. One of the chief characteristics of this new humanity is a restoration of the intellect’s power to rule the body, thereby restoring harmony between the rational soul and body. Ambrose clearly sets this goal before his catechumens in his account of the soul and its development in the catechetical homilies on Isaac. One of the more obscure passages in which Ambrose finds foreshadowing of Christian catechesis is Genesis 26:18–33. There Isaac, while encamped in the valley of Gerar, digs up a series of three wells that had originally been dug by his father Abraham, but that the shepherds of Gerar had filled with dirt. According to Ambrose’s renarration of the episode, the first of the wells Isaac called “the well of injustice” because the shepherds had usurped Abraham’s well. After Isaac unearthed a second well, the shepherds quarreled with Isaac’s servants; so that well was called “the well of enmity.” When Isaac dug a third well that did not become the source of contention, Isaac called it “the well of room-enough.” The symbolic significance of the wells is multilayered.77 Initially the wells represent the illumination of the intellect by proper training. Since, as we have seen, Ambrose speaks of baptismal initiation as the sacrament of illumination, the wells may, though he does not say this explicitly, be symbolic of the baptismal font. What he does say explicitly is that the wells, first dug by Abraham, then Isaac, and then Jacob, are symbols of the instruction the catechumens receive by studying the lives of the patriarchs, who are “fountains of the human race, and specifically fountains of faith and devotion.”78 It is the water from the

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tradition of the patriarchs that cleanses the intellect, preparing it for maturation in wisdom. “Therefore, Isaac undertook to open wells out of a depth of vision and in good order, so that the water of his well might first wash and strengthen the reasoning faculty of the soul and her eye, to make her sight clear.”79 The wells of injustice and enmity represent the internal strife between the flesh and the mind that characterizes man’s sinful condition. Where the individual is not justly ordered, there is division and conflict between the mind that is oriented toward God’s will and the fleshly and irrational impulses of the soul. By contrast the well called Room-enough represents the harmonious existence possible when “the man who has passed beyond worldly and material things is already tranquil and composed, without contention, without strife . . . [ for] he has overcome hostile and alien thoughts.”80 Ambrose explains that the first step toward tranquility is the true wisdom from moral instruction, which is “our remedy against the temptations of the world . . . [and] washes and cleanses man’s image, that had been smeared by the harlot’s rouge of worldly pleasure.”81 For Ambrose, excessive attachment to and involvement in the affairs of the world have the effect of defacing the divine image so that the rational creature takes on the likeness of the prostitute who embodies the seductive powers of the world and represents betrayal and infidelity to God. With the catechumen’s renunciation of the world at baptism, the worldly elements that covered up the divine image are washed away so that man’s true image may come through. The ultimate restoration of the internal harmony characteristic of “man’s image” can be accomplished only by baptismal participation in the new humanity inaugurated in the Incarnation. In Christ’s perfect humanity, the Word who rightly orders and governs our common nature has overcome the injustice and enmity between the rational and the nonrational represented by the first two wells. “In them [the wells] there seems to appear a moral teaching, for once the wall of separation [pariete maceriae] is removed, the enmities in man’s flesh are dissolved and both elements become one—in figure through Isaac, in truth through Christ.”82 The “wall of separation” refers to the tension or enmity between the body and the soul or the nonrational and rational aspects of human nature. Yet, as Paul declares in Ephesians (2:14), Christ has “broken down the dividing wall [parietem maceriae] of hostility.” In his Exposition on the Gospel according to Luke, Ambrose gives his interpretation of Jesus’ warning that he did not come to bring peace, but to divide households “three against two and two against three” (Luke 12:52–54). Ambrose equates the divided house to the division or conflict within the person between the soul and the body. He equates the “three” with the three dispositions (affectiones) of the soul when it

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is united with the body. They are the rational faculties (logistikon or rationabilis) and the nonrational faculties of desire (epithymētikon or concupiscibilis) and of irascibility (thymētikon or impetibilis). This is the division between the rational and the nonrational. Alluding to Ephesians 2:14, he insists that as a result of the Incarnation, the division between the faculties is overcome and a harmonious union of body and soul is made possible.83 The Incarnation breaks down the wall of separation through the Word’s assumption and sanctification of our whole human nature. Free from the rebellious impulse of corrupt concupiscence as a result of Jesus’ virginal conception, the nonrational element of Jesus’ soul did not war against his reason. On the contrary, it was wholly submissive to the judgment of Jesus’ intellect, which itself submitted to the will of the divine Word. The renewal of humanity through Christ’s tearing down “the dividing wall of hostility” is the result, not just of his refashioning human nature free of the stain of concupiscence, but of Christ’s handling of the law, which contributes to the internal conflict between the desire of the flesh and the judgment of the intellect. For in Christ’s sanctified humanity, the rational and nonrational coexist in harmony under the rule of reason that knows and administers the moral law of God. This is possible because Christ has liberated us from the condemnation of the law to which the intellect assents and against which the flesh rebels. Thus Christ frees the Christian from the vices that result from the flesh’s rebellion against reason and the law of God. Ambrose writes: Although their disagreement [sc., that between soul and body] was transferred to nature through the transgression of the first man, so that they are by no means united in equal zeal for virtue, yet with both enmity and the Law of the commandments annulled through the Cross of our Lord and Saviour, they [body and soul] agreed [congruerunt] in the harmony of fellowship [in societatis concordiam], after Christ, our peace descending from heaven “hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition [parietem maceriae], the enmities in his flesh, making void the Law of commandments contained in decrees; that he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace; and might reconcile both to God in one body.”84 Ambrose reinterprets Christ’s reconciliation of the Gentiles and Israel, who are divided by their bodies marked as circumcised or uncircumcised, through his own crucified body, which has nullified the law requiring circumcision. Now Christ has reconciled within his body the division between body and soul that resulted from the fall. Jesus’ death, for Ambrose, has by its annulment of the

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law created the condition by which those united in his death through baptism can experience harmony of mind and body. Christ is the “one new man” who is free from the law and so free from the enmity between the soul and body. Although the law that condemns and so promotes enmity between the rational and the nonrational is nullified for us in his cross, Christ is the one new man freed from the law because Christ is superior to the law and so not subject to the law. Ambrose is explicit that the new creation inaugurated in the Incarnation is, in part, the result of his abolition of the law. Commenting on Jesus’ healing the man with the unclean spirit on the Sabbath (Luke 4:31–37), Ambrose says that this healing occurs on the Sabbath (which Ambrose takes to be a violation of the Torah) to show that the Word who made the world has brought to an end the old creation that is under the law and in its place fashioned a new creation. As the Sabbath, the day of rest, marked the end of the Word’s original act of creation, so now the incarnate Word in healing on the Sabbath resumes the work of creation to bring the first creation to its completion. This new creation does not mark the destruction of the law but the fulfillment of the law. He goes on to say, “[T]he son of God is not under the Law, but above the Law, nor [is] the Law to be destroyed, but fulfilled. For the world was made not through the Law, but by the Word. . .. Thus, the Law is not destroyed, but fulfilled, so that the renewal of man, already in error, may occur.”85 Because Christ is God and man, Jesus is not subject to the law since in his divinity he is its author. Therefore, Jesus is the prototype of the free humanity that is liberated from both the corruption of concupiscence and the divisive judgment of the law. Ambrose presses the point that humanity is free from the law because Christ has healed us and made us a new creation apart from the law. Since the world was made not by the law but by the Word, Jesus as the Word is not bound by the law but is above it precisely because he created the law that governed the world. Therefore, the new creation, though not subject to the law, conforms to the perfected form of the law manifest in Christ in whom the law finds its fulfillment. So too we, who are in error, are renewed and delivered from the error of sin, and bound, not to the law, but to Christ who is the source of our renewal. The body’s disposition of defiance against the rule of reason and the law of God is replaced by a “disposition of obedience.” The logic of Ambrose’s view here is that by abandoning the life of luxury there is no longer the repeated stimulation of sensual pleasure to which the individual is attracted. The longer one is removed from pleasure, the weaker is the craving for the pleasure and thus the body is less resistant to the rule of the mind. This is the disposition of obedience. Because the mind is set upon the contemplation of the word of God, the impulses of the body are set upon the “path of heavenly conversation,” that

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is, fellowship with God. When the appetitive faculties are chiefly directed to the same end as the judgment of reason, then the body is not in conflict with the mind. As the rational and nonrational faculties are focused upon the goods of God, there is what Ambrose calls “unanimity of inseparable love” that enables the body and soul to coexist in a harmony.86 Throughout this discussion of the “new humanity” inaugurated by the Incarnation—a humanity in which the “dividing wall of hostility” between the nonrational impulses and the judgments of the intellect is torn down and an internal harmonic unity is restored—one must not forget Christ’s temptations in the wilderness. Ambrose is clear that the new humanity is not, at least in the present age, free from temptation. For those of us who, like David, were conceived in sin and so experience the impulse of concupiscence warring against the mind, the inward harmony is not perfect. Ambrose is not a triumphalist. In this life, struggle continues. The Paul who complains bitterly about the inner conflict of the law of the flesh and the law of the mind has been baptized. But Ambrose conceives of our baptismal participation in Christ’s new humanity bringing a new liberty to the Christian. This liberty is not freedom from temptation or the impulses of corrupt desire. Rather it is a freedom from the inevitability, or at least the high probability, of succumbing to temptation. The new man born in baptism has gained a moral freedom that allows him to struggle against temptation confident that he will not be overcome by it.87 Ultimately, this restoration of a harmonic relation of soul and body for individuals is dependent upon their participation in the new humanity of Jesus. Echoing both Origen and Athanasius, Ambrose contends that when the Logos refashions humanity without concupiscence and so reestablishes the proper hierarchy within the soul between the rational and the irrational faculties, then mankind is once again the rational creature God intended him to be. He explains, “through the coming of Christ, man, who was irrational, became rational. Before [Christ] we were like unto beasts which know not reason, we were carnal, we were earthly, according to the saying ‘Earth thou art, and to earth thou shalt return.’ The Son of God came, he sent his Spirit into our hearts and we became spiritual sons.”88 Over against the carnal humanity dominated by concupiscence, the new humanity is rational. But for Ambrose, to be rational in the proper sense is to be spiritual. Whereas the worldly affections and ambitions of carnal humanity are indistinguishable from nonrational animals in that they lack a sense of transcendence, the truly rational man uses the intellect, as it was intended, to direct his thoughts beyond the realm of creatures to the being of the unseen Creator. This is possible when we participate in the humanity of the new Adam by being reborn as spiritual sons of the Spirit through baptism. But how does the Spirit enable

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the Christian to share in Christ’s new humanity? To answer this question, we need to inquire about Ambrose’s conception of the joint operation of Christ and the Spirit in baptism.

The Working of the Holy Spirit in Baptism As we have seen, the Incarnation of the Word is the paradigmatic sacrament. When Christ cleansed our flesh by assuming our human nature, Ambrose says, he established the “form of our faith.”89 Easter, the climax of the Incarnation, marks Christ’s passage from death to life. So, too, in baptism, the immersion in and rising from the font marks the Christian’s passage from earth to heaven, from being dead in sin to being alive in Christ. It is a passage from fault to grace, from defilement to holiness.90 The Holy Spirit brings the work of the Incarnation to fruition, purifying and vivifying the body of Christ, the Church. Although the Spirit’s activity in baptism and in the whole of the Christian’s life is grounded upon the work of Christ, which is temporally and causally prior, Ambrose is no modalist. The Incarnation of the Word is not a prior mode of God’s self-revelation that is succeeded or superceded by the coming of God in the mode of the Spirit. Ultimately, the redemption of the Christian through the sacrament of baptism is the unified work of Father, Son, and Spirit. To appreciate the Trinitarian character of Ambrose’s soteriology, we must examine his depiction of the Holy Spirit’s work, principally in the context of baptism, and the close relationship of the activities of the Spirit and the Son.

The Work of the Spirit and the Triunity of Operations The work of the Spirit in baptism cannot be understood apart from the Spirit’s relation to the Son and the Father. Ambrose’s extended discussion of the person and work of the Spirit comes in his treatise De Spiritu Sancto. Ambrose wrote the work before the spring of 381 in response to the Emperor Gratian’s request for an expansion of the account of Nicene orthodoxy that Ambrose had first presented in De fide (378). In De Spiritu Sancto, Ambrose counters the exegetical arguments of Macedonius, the Homoian Bishop of Constantinople, who claimed the Spirit was not divine, but a mere creature. Ambrose must overcome the Homoian objection that the passages where Scripture speaks of Father and Son but omits any reference to the Spirit are an implicit denial of the Spirit’s equality with the Father and Son. The general thrust of Ambrose’s argument, taken largely from Basil’s On the Holy Spirit,91 is that there are many

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passages that speak of only one or two of the persons of the Trinity, omitting any reference to the third. So common is it that one cannot not draw any conclusions about the Spirit’s status based on these omissions. The authors of Scripture mention only one person or sometimes two persons because they simply assume that to speak of one person is implicitly to speak of the whole Trinity. They make this assumption, Ambrose argues, because of the unity of divine operations. No person acts alone, but always together with the other persons. Countering the Homoian argument that all things do not belong to the Spirit as they do to the Son “through whom all things were made” (John 1:3) or to the Father, of whom Paul says, “All things are of God” (2 Cor. 5:18), Ambrose appeals to Romans 5:5, “The charity of God is poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us.” Not only does this verse identify the Spirit with the conferral of divine charity, but it does so without reference to the Son. One cannot logically construe from the absence of a reference to the Son in this verse that Paul does not think the Son is God. The Macedonian argument from silence does not work. But then Ambrose encapsulates the core argument he will develop throughout the rest of the treatise: “And just as he who is blessed in Christ is blessed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit because there is one name, one power, so, too, when some divine operation either of the Father or of the Son or of the Spirit is described, it is referred not only to the Holy Spirit but also to the Father and to the Son, and it is referred not only to the Father but also to the Son and to the Spirit.”92 Because there is a unity, not a division, of power, there is also a unity of operations within the divine economy. Therefore, whenever the Bible explicitly ascribes one work to the agency of one person, it necessarily implies the agency of the other persons who share the one power by which the work is accomplished. Thus the Father’s conferral of the “love of God” in the anointing of the Spirit includes the conferral of the Father’s own love and the Son’s love since there is one love shared by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Similarly, the sanctifying work of the spiritual grace conferred by the Spirit in baptism is the divine power of the Godhead and so is evidence of the Spirit’s part in the Godhead. Ambrose illustrates this point by comparing the way Scripture speaks about both the Godhead and the Spirit as fire. God revealed himself to Moses in the fire of the burning bush (Exod. 3:15) and so Moses describes God as “a consuming fire” (Deut. 4:24); for the power to illuminate and sanctify are proper to the divine nature.93 Not surprisingly, therefore, John the Baptist in his prophecy of the Messiah’s baptism with the Holy Spirit describes the Spirit as fire “that he might distribute grace and consume sins.”94 So Ambrose concludes, “Who, then, will doubt of the Godhead of the Holy Spirit, when, where the grace of the Spirit is, there the likeness of the Godhead

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appears? By this testimony we gather not diversity but unity of the divine power. For how can there be a separation of power, where the effect of the operation is all one? Neither indeed can there be grace of the sacraments, except where there was remission of sins.”95 Since the power to sanctify and illuminate is proper to the power of the Godhead, the Spirit who is operating in baptism, bestowing the sanctifying and illuminating grace upon the initiates, must be God. If the Spirit were not God and so did not share in the divine power, the sacrament would be devoid of sanctifying power.96 God’s transmission of power and grace follows the order of the procession of the person. The sanctifying power flows down from the Father, to the Son, to the Spirit, and finally to us. Our minds then use this order of transmission as a ladder of ascent. Quoting 1 Corinthians 2:12–13—“Now we have received . . . the Spirit that is of God, that we may know the things that are given us from God . . . in the manifestation of the Spirit and in the power of God”—Ambrose argues that, since Paul was chosen by Christ and taught by the Spirit and so “obtained knowledge of the divine secret through the Spirit, he [Paul] shows that the Spirit both knows God, and the Spirit has revealed to us the things that are of God, as the Son also has revealed them.”97 The Spirit brings knowledge of God because the Spirit is of God. He concludes, “just as God has revealed to us the things that are his, so, too, the Son and so also the Spirit has revealed the things that are God’s. For from one Spirit through one Son into one Father does our knowledge proceed. . . . Where, then, there is the manifestation of the Spirit, there is the power of God; nor can there be any distinction where there is one work.”98 Thus the divine light by which the Christian’s mind is illuminated in baptism is the divine power that shines from the Father, passing to the Son and to the Spirit.99 Ambrose reads Psalm 35:10 (LXX), “For with thee is the fountain of life; and in thy light we shall see light,” through John’s account of Christ’s breathing the Spirit upon the apostles (John 20:22). The Father who is the fount of life is the source of the light that reveals him as the source of life. The Spirit confers upon us the knowledge of the Father as life by drawing our minds back to the Son and through the Son to the Father, the source of our life. The Spirit can make the Son known to us precisely because his light is the light of the Son.100 The radiance of Jesus’ heavenly glory on the Mount of Transfiguration is the light of the Spirit that reveals Jesus’ identity as the heavenly Son of God. Ambrose appeals to Paul’s description in 2 Corinthians 4:6 to interpret the transfiguration of Christ’s face: “God hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus.”101 He asks rhetorically, “Who is it, then, who shined that we might know God in the face of Christ Jesus? For [Paul] said, ‘God shined’ that the glory of God might be known in the face of Jesus Christ. Who else do we think but the Spirit

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who was made manifest?”102 Thus the Spirit is light that issues from the Son and is proper to the Son and so reveals the Son. The Spirit’s disclosure of the hidden divinity of Christ upon the Mount of Transfiguration is paradigmatic for thinking about the unity of the Son and the Spirit’s work of illumination for all Christians. As the apostles beheld the face of Jesus through the radiance of the Spirit, so too we behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus because the Spirit illumines our minds in the sacraments and in the study of Scripture. The unity of power from which Ambrose can argue for a unity of operation does not, however, collapse the three persons in a modalistic manner into a single monad lacking any real distinction between Father, Son, and Spirit. A distinction remains between the persons, not just at the level of their generation or procession, but in their activity within the divine economy. When Scripture speaks of the agency of only one person, the others are implied because there is an order to the activity that implicitly involves all three persons. In the case of baptism, for example, Ambrose says, “the sacrament of baptism is full in the name of Christ, so also, when only the Spirit is named, nothing is lacking to the fullness of mystery. . . . [H]e who has said one has signified the Trinity. If you say Christ, you have designated also God the Father by whom the Son was anointed, and he himself who anointed, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with whom he was anointed.”103 A baptism that is done in the name of Christ alone includes the Father and the Spirit because our understanding of that baptism is framed by the narrative of Christ Jesus’ own baptism in the Jordan—a baptism in which the incarnate Son in his humanity was anointed by the Father with the Holy Spirit.104 Yet within the economy of salvation, the role of each person in the single operation is distinct. For example, the outpouring of the charity of God into the Christian’s heart by the Spirit presupposes the prior activity of the Son. Unless the Son had freed the heart from corrupt concupiscence, the heart would be bound to its sinful disposition and so could not receive the infusion of divine charity through the anointing of the Spirit.105 Moreover, Ambrose sees a parallel between the joint operation of the persons in their activities within the larger economy of salvation and the procession of the persons immanently within the Godhead. When, for instance, the Spirit’s name is invoked in Scripture and some activity is ascribed to the Spirit, the reference to the Spirit and the activity of the Spirit presupposes the Spirit’s immanent relation to the Father and the Son. Since this immanent relationship is eternal, the Father and the Son will always be implicitly present in the biblical narrative even when only the Spirit is mentioned explicitly. “And if you say the Father, you have indicated alike both his Son and the Spirit of his mouth, if, moreover, you also comprehend this in your heart. And if you say the Spirit,

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you have named also God the Father, from whom the Spirit proceeds, and the Son, because the Spirit is also of the Son.”106

The Renewing Work of the Holy Spirit If it is Christ who by his Incarnation, death, and resurrection has overcome death and fashioned a renewed and perfected humanity, then it is the Spirit’s operation in baptism that allows the Christian to participate in the new humanity and so enjoy the benefits of Christ’s salvific work. It is chiefly through the Spirit that Ambrose describes the agency of God in the sacrament. In his postbaptismal instruction he explains to the newly baptized that, although they saw the water of the font, it is not the water per se that cleanses them. Not all waters can cleanse humanity of sin and its corruption, only those that possess the grace of Christ. The water itself is only the element (elementum) or work (opus) that signifies the unseen operation (operatio) of the Spirit who descends upon the water, making it the means of our healing by his consecration (consecratio).107 Ambrose, likewise, distinguishes the work of the priest from the work of the Spirit. The service of the bishop does not cleanse, but only the sacrament of the Spirit. For the forgiveness given to the believer in baptism is a gift that comes by divine power and prerogative, not from human power.108 Ambrose speaks of the Spirit’s operation in the sacraments using three intertwined metaphors: rebirth, illumination, and purification. Fundamentally, baptism as the sacrament of regeneration is the renewal or rebirth of the corrupted creature. Consequently, Ambrose emphasizes the continuity between the work of the Spirit at the beginning of creation and at the re-creation in the font. He identifies the “spirit of God [that] moved over the waters” (Gen. 1:2) with the Holy Spirit as evidence that “the operation of the Holy Trinity clearly shines forth in the constitution of the world.”109 Indeed, based on Psalm 32:6 (LXX)—“By the word of the Lord the heavens were established and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth”—Ambrose asserts the cooperative work of the Son and the Spirit. The significance of the Spirit’s activity in the beginning is that the Spirit implanted within creation from its inception “the seeds of new birth.”110 He repeats the point in On the Holy Spirit. Countering those who deny the Spirit’s involvement in the creation of the world, Ambrose asks, “And who will deny that the work of the Holy Spirit is the creation of the earth, whose work is that it is renewed?”111 His logic: Were the Spirit to be the agent of God’s renewal of creation but not involved in the initial act of creation, the implication would be that the Father and Son were weak or incompetent in their creation of the world such that they need, after the fall, to draw upon the power of another. Thus the Spirit who created the world in the beginning must also be part of the

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healing and restoration of creation. This re-creation is accomplished for the individual Christian in baptism. “For in the water is the representation of death, in the Spirit the pledge of life, that through the water the body of sin may die, which as in a kind of tomb envelops the body, and through the power of the Spirit we may be renewed from the death of sin, reborn in God.”112 The effect of the Spirit’s pledge is the restoration of the imago Dei.113 The power of the Spirit by which the Christian is reborn in God is, for Ambrose, synonymous with grace. For he expressly contrasts the renewing grace with the natural powers of the water. “If, then, there is any grace in water, it is not from the nature of water, but from the presence of the Holy Spirit. . . . For we live in him, and he himself is the pledge of our inheritance. . . . So, we were sealed by the Holy Spirit, not by nature, but by God.”114 Ambrose had discussed the distinctive nature of grace earlier in book 1 of On the Holy Spirit. When Paul tells the Corinthians, “For in one Spirit we have all drunk” (1 Cor. 12:13), Ambrose explains, he means that the Spirit is able to “quench [our] ardor of worldly thirst” because the Spirit infuses itself into our souls and senses.115 The Spirit’s infusion of grace is capable of quenching our “worldly thirst” because it is able to make our corporeal nature a partaker of his own unchangeable and incorruptible nature. “The Holy Spirit, then is not of the substance of corporeal things, for he infuses incorporeal grace into corporeal things, but neither is he of the substance of invisible creatures, for they, too, receive his sanctification, and through him are superior to the other works of the universe.”116 Because the Spirit is God and so is holy by nature, the Spirit is not like the angels that must derive their holiness from some other nature. Therefore, the Spirit is the one who sanctifies corporeal creation. The effect of this infusion of incorporeal grace is that corporeal nature is itself changed and freed it from corruption. Commenting on Paul’s declaration in Romans 8 that all of creation groans for the eschatological revelation of the sons of God, Ambrose says: “Thus, too every creature awaits the revelation of the sons of God, whom he makes sons of God by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Thus, also, every creature itself shall be changed by the revelation of the grace of the Spirit ‘and shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.’”117 All creation is subject to change either due to its perversion by sin or the inherent imperfection of the material elements of creation.118 Yet the infusion of the incorporeal and incorruptible grace of the Spirit communicates the incorruptibility proper to the Spirit’s divinity to the material elements of creation. “Then every creature is capable of change, but the Holy Spirit is good and not capable of change; for he cannot be changed by some imperfection of nature, who does away with the imperfections of all, and pardons their sins. How, then, is he subject to change who by sanctifying

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changes others to grace and is not himself changed?”119 Since grace is itself that incorruptible substance that sanctifies and renders incorruptible the corruptible creation, grace here denotes the divine nature that the Spirit communicates to humanity in order to make us sons of God and to free the groaning creation from corruption. Thus sanctification is principally the purification of the soul and body from moral and substantial corruption through the Spirit’s infusion of grace. Ambrose often expresses the regenerative work of the Spirit in terms of the renewal or illumination of the Christian’s mind. The Spirit, like the angel that disturbed the waters of Siloam’s pool, applies to the mind a “spiritual grace” that functions as a medicine to heal the mind and soul of their infirmities.120 Again the “spiritual grace” is nothing other than the “infusion of the Holy Spirit” which fulfills Paul’s prayer that “you may be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (Col. 1:9). The grace of the Holy Spirit heals our minds in that it is filled with the will of God, which orders our works, words, and affections according to God’s will.121 This is the grace by which the Christian is born again in baptism. Ambrose, commenting on Jesus’ declaration to Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are “born of the Spirit” (John 3:8), says, “Who is he who is born of the Spirit, and who is made Spirit, if not he who is renewed in the Spirit of his mind? Surely this is he who is regenerated through water and the Holy Spirit, for through the laver of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit we receive the hope of eternal life.”122 Ambrose here interprets regeneration or rebirth to mean being “made spirit” through this renewal of the mind. As spirit, we need not go the way of all flesh but have the hope of eternal life. In the renewal of our minds in baptism, Ambrose says, “[T]he Spirit made us sons of God by adoption.”123 The Spirit adopts us by revealing the truth of Christ. Ambrose reads the discussion of the threefold witness of Spirit, water, and blood to the truth of Christ (1 John 5:7) together with Romans 8:16: “The Spirit bears witness to our spirit.” The threefold witness of Spirit, water, and blood is the “one invisible and one visible testimony in the spiritual sacrament [baptism].”124 The Spirit illuminates our minds by bearing witness to the truth of Christ and his redemptive works represented by the blood that witnesses to his redemptive death and by the water that witnesses to the cleansing consequences of his death. We know we have been adopted as children of God because through the Spirit’s witness our spirit is able to assent to the truth of Christ and so make our baptismal confession. The Spirit brings the hope of eternal life precisely because the Spirit gives the knowledge of Christ. Ambrose unites Christ’s priestly prayer in John— “This is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ

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whom you have sent” (John 17:3)—with Christ’s earlier promise of the Paraclete—“I will ask the Father and he shall give you the Paraclete, that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth. . .  . [The world] sees him not, nor knows him; but you know him, because he abides with you, and he is in you” (John 14:15–17). Ambrose concludes that the world does not have eternal life because it does not have the Spirit through whom we receive knowledge of the only true God and of Jesus Christ. Ambrose describes the Christian’s “rebirth” (the Johannine language) and “adoption” (the Pauline language) in baptism through the witness of the Spirit as the “renewal of our minds” because the Spirit is the source of the intellect’s illumination. The Spirit, who by nature is God, is light.125 Thus the Spirit reveals the light of the Son that flows from the Father who is the fount of life and light.126 The light of the Spirit that illuminates the intellect is capable of renewing the mind because the light also has the property of fire to purify the mind. The key text for Ambrose is Isaiah 10:17: “And the light of Israel shall be as fire.” Ambrose comments, “Thus the prophets called him a burning fire, because in those three points we notice more readily the majesty of the Godhead, for to sanctify is of the Godhead, and to illuminate is proper to fire and light, and to be expressed and to be seen in the appearance of fire is customary with the Godhead; ‘for God is a consuming fire.’”127 Therefore, when John the Baptist says that Christ will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, he means, Ambrose says, that the Spirit was sent both “to illuminate the thorns of our body,” that is, our sins, and then “distribute grace and consume sins.”128 The Spirit’s illumination of the mind in baptism does not simply allow the intellect to see and so confess what it could not before, but brings a change in the affections of the baptized. The infusion of divine light into the intellect that attests to the work of Christ also reveals God’s love for his creatures. Commenting on the liberality of God in the baptism of the Spirit, Ambrose writes that “in [the baptized] abides forever the fullness of the whole Spirit. Whatever then he has judged as sufficient for us, he has poured forth . . . but he has a unity of fullness, whereby he illumines the sight of our hearts according to the possibility of our strength.”129 The sight of the heart is distinct, though not separate, from the vision of the intellect, for he says immediately, “we take as much as the progress of our minds acquires; for the fullness of spiritual grace is indivisible, but is shared by us according to the capability of our nature.”130 His point is that the Spirit, who is immaterial and simple, cannot be divided or portioned out but rather dwells fully with the Christian. The difference in the degree of spiritual grace that each receives depends upon their particular degree of spiritual progress. The spiritual grace illumines the vision of the heart with as much of the light of the Spirit as the intellect is capable of receiving. Ambrose

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proceeds to amplify the particular nature of the heart’s illumination: “So God pours forth of the Spirit; God’s love is also poured forth through the Spirit . . . [ for] the Holy Spirit is not a work, who is the arbiter and affluent source of divine love.”131 The grace of the Spirit illumines the heart in the sense that it reveals the love of God. This witness of the Spirit who is from Christ allows us to see in Christ’s salvific work God’s love for humanity. The Spirit’s light that reveals the love of God in Christ does not merely communicate some new knowledge. Grace transforms the darkened space of the heart with its light. When Ambrose speaks of Jesus’ baptism, he says that the Father anointed him with the Holy Spirit, who is the oil of anointing.132 Thus the Spirit is the ointment of Christ who anoints the Christian; specifically the Spirit is the “oil of gladness.”133 Oil, he says, is an apt symbol for the divine Spirit since Spirit is not a creature or material substance that mingles with other creaturely substances but “illuminates the recesses of the heart.”134 Rightly is the Spirit with which Christ anoints the Christian called the oil of gladness because the Spirit’s illumination of the heart fills the Christian with the gladness of her deliverance from death. “Nor is it wonderful if [Christ] has the oil of gladness who caused those at the point of death to rejoice, relieved the world of sadness, and destroyed the stench of sorrowful death.”135 Ambrose integrates the Spirit’s work of illumination with the work of purification: the Spirit’s “infusion” of the illuminating light of spiritual grace into our mind is the Spirit’s purgative indwelling. Contrasting the Spirit with the seraphim who purified Isaiah by touching his mouth with the burning coal, Ambrose says that the Spirit fills all things because he is incorporeal, unlike the seraphim, which must move from place to place because they are located in space.136 Yet the Spirit’s infusion of grace is different than the Spirit’s omnipresence. For with the anointing or outpouring of the Spirit at baptism, the Spirit makes the mind of the baptized its temple: “God, then, has a temple; a creature has no true temple. But the Spirit who dwells in us has a temple. . . . But he dwells in the temple not as a priest nor as a minister, but as God.”137 Through the indwelling of the Spirit in the mind of the believer, Christ himself dwells in the believer, fulfilling God’s promise: “I will dwell in them, and I will walk with them, and I will be their God and they will be my people” (Lev. 26:12). Ambrose repeats the theme of indwelling in his Hexameron. Having rehearsed the familiar argument that the self is the soul and the body is what the soul puts on, he says that true beauty is a quality, not of the body, but of the soul, which is capable of desiring the incorruptible and imperishable beauty of heaven that does not deceive. Our soul, therefore, is made beautiful when it is renewed by the indwelling of God’s Spirit. Citing Colossians 3:9–10, he says, “And so you are told to ‘strip off the old man with his deeds and put on the new’—you who

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are renewed not in the quality of the body, but in the spirit and affirmation of the mind.”138 For with the renewal or reorientation of the mind from the corruptible and carnal to the incorruptible and heavenly—the reorientation that characterizes the new birth of the faithful—the Spirit of God makes the soul the temple of his dwelling.139 Within the context of Ambrose’s view of the unity of operations, he is able to speak of the indwelling of the Spirit and the indwelling of Christ interchangeably. While the lives of the patriarchs have provided models of the life of faith and examples of the moral character of those who have been cleansed of sin in baptism, the life of virtue that follows from baptism is, for Ambrose, not merely an imitation of the virtuous patriarchs, but is the result of Christ’s indwelling presence in the mind of the baptized. Ambrose expresses the sense of Christ’s indwelling by uniting the twin baptismal themes of crucifixion and resurrection. Being united with Christ in the symbolic death of baptism allows Christ to live in the believer. Commenting on Jesus’ apocalyptic sayings in Luke (21:5–33), Ambrose exhorts his readers: [W]hat does it benefit me to know the Day of Judgment? What does the awareness of such great sins benefit me, if the Lord come, unless he comes into my spirit, returns into my mind, unless Christ lives in me, Christ speaks in me? Therefore, Christ must come to me, his coming must happen for me. Then, let the Lord’s Second Coming happen at the end of the world, when we can say “So the world is crucified to me and I to the world.”140 Here Ambrose expressly links the themes of repentance with Christ’s indwelling. Being prepared for the end of the world means being dead to the world. To be dead to the world means that Christ lives within the believer. Thus baptism prepares the Christian for the passing away of the world by putting to death the sins of the past, and simultaneously raises her to eternal life through the indwelling of the risen Christ. Ambrose uses the theme of the Spirit’s indwelling to introduce his discussion in book 6, chapter 7 of Hexameron about man’s having been made spiritual by virtue of being made in the image of God who is spirit. The beauty of the new man born in baptism is the renewed “celestial image” in which Adam was made and which he forfeited by his sin.141 The new birth of baptism purifies the orientation of the soul that it may be a suitable temple for the Holy Spirit. By this indwelling the soul participates in the life of the Spirit who refreshes and sustains the soul’s heavenly image. For the Spirit is the river that watered the trees of paradise that prefigure the resting place of angelic saints.142 The Spirit sustains and gives life because he is the living water that is the divine

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grace that flows from the Father who is the Fountain of Life.143 Ambrose plays with the reciprocal functions of water, which both rehydrates and cleanses: “For the water of spiritual grace is living, that it may purify the internal parts of the mind, and wash away every sin of the soul, and cleanse hidden errors.”144 The grace of the Spirit gives life because it washes away what is dead, which is sin and corruption. Likewise, it cleanses because it replaces what is corrupt with what is life itself, that is, the power of God’s being, for the overflowing water of heavenly grace renews the mind, giving it a new fertility so that the soul may bring forth the fruit of heavenly virtue.145 Ambrose alternates between speaking of the Spirit as the one who dwells in us and the one in whom we dwell. The Spirit seems to descend to us but really raises us up to participate in his heavenly life.146 This is possible because the soul as spirit does not occupy a particular place, as does the body.147 Thus the Spirit indwells the soul as the soul by its thoughts enters into heavenly fellowship with the Spirit. The reorientation of our thoughts characteristic of new birth in the Spirit is the purification of the soul’s desires. In the prologue to the first book of On the Holy Spirit, Ambrose begins his treatise with a discussion of God’s calling of Gideon (Judges 6).148 He interprets Gideon’s sacrifice of a young goat with its broth, which was consumed by fire upon the rock altar with the touch of an angel’s rod, to be a type of Christ’s sacrifice. The rock altar denotes Christ’s flesh, which “when crucified, would destroy not only the sins of the doers but also the desires of the souls.” The fire from the angel’s rod is a symbol of the Spirit who burns away the sins, for he adds, “the flesh of the Lord, filled with the Divine Spirit, would burn away all sins of mankind.”149 Christ’s sacrifice not only pardons but burns away sin in the baptized, for the purifying fire of the Spirit purges the soul of “excessive desire.”150 Later in his discussion of the role of the Spirit as the author of our regeneration, Ambrose returns to the theme of renewal of our desires. By baptismal regeneration, we are born again as sons of God. He explains this spiritual sonship by appealing to Galatians 4:28–29: “Now you, brothers, as was Isaac, are children of the promise. But as then he, who was born according to the flesh [Esau], persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit [Jacob].” Birth according to the flesh and according to the Spirit, he distinguishes in terms of both the cause and the orientation of the soul’s affections. “He, then, who is born according to the Spirit is born according to God. Now, we are born again when we are renewed in our inward affections and lay aside the old age of the outer man. And so the apostle says again, ‘And be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who, according to God, is created in truth, and justice, and holiness.’”151 Here Ambrose weaves together the threefold work of the Spirit. First, through the Spirit the Christian is reborn in baptism. Second, this

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rebirth entails the illumination of the mind through the Spirit who reveals the truth of Christ. Third, in rebirth the Christian puts off the corrupt affections of the “old man” and puts on the justice and holiness of the Spirit, who has made the Christian his temple. The Spirit’s regenerative work in baptism naturally renews in the baptized the image of God, which is, for Ambrose, the restoration of humanity’s prefallen nature. Given Ambrose’s depiction of baptism as the “seal of Christ,” it might be better to speak of the imago Christi. Obviously, he does not imagine that the body ceases to be mortal and subject to decay. Rather, through the sanctifying unction of the Holy Spirit, the will of the baptized is restored to the “origin of its nature.” Commenting on Psalm 113:5 (LXX)—“Jordan was turned back”—he tells his catechumens that the psalmist’s reference to the river Jordan “signifies the future mysteries of the laver of salvation,” that is, baptism. The Jordan is “turned back” in that those who undergo the cleansing of baptism have their will purified so that they have been restored to their original nature. This discussion comes in the context of Ambrose’s explication of the angel’s declaration to Zechariah that John will be “filled with the Holy Spirit” and so clothed in the “spirit and power of Elijah.”152 Ambrose’s point is that where the Spirit is, so too is the Spirit’s power. Thus the Spirit who anoints the catechumens in baptism confers upon them the power manifest in John and in the apostles at Pentecost. He repeats the language of “restoration” in a more relational sense when he interprets the father’s killing the fatted calf for the prodigal son as a reference to the admission of the newly baptized to the Eucharist. The catechumen is “restored by participation in the mysteries through the grace of the Sacrament, [so that] he may feast on the flesh of the Lord, rich in spiritual virtue.”153 The newly baptized, like the returned prodigal, has in baptism the sign of his restoration. For the prodigal the sign is the ring. For the baptized the ring, which Ambrose implies is a signet ring, is a symbol of the seal of God who has planted his image, Christ, upon the baptized and has given the Holy Spirit as the pledge upon the heart. Thus restoration entails receiving the image of Christ and the power of the Spirit. To sum up, the Holy Spirit, together with the Father and Son, is the author of the Christian’s regeneration. With the anointing of the Spirit in the sacrament of baptism, the Christian participates in the new humanity fashioned by Christ in the primal sacrament of the Incarnation. The Spirit enables the Christian to participate in this reality by bearing witness to the truth of Christ’s salvific work. In the new knowledge of this truth, the Christian’s mind is reoriented from the carnal to the heavenly and so is made a suitable dwelling temple for the Spirit of the living God because now the soul is oriented toward God and so makes God the object of its desires. Thus the new man born of

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baptism is not the outer man oriented to the things of the body but is the inner man who turns within and seeks the indwelling Spirit. While the work of the Spirit in baptism involves purification, what is not clear is exactly how the Spirit, in witness to the work of Christ, reorients the soul’s affections. The sanctification of the Spirit is simply the actualization of the work of Christ in the soul of the believer. The Son’s regeneration of humanity in the Incarnation is fulfilled in the baptized by the Spirit’s regeneration. Thus Ambrose assumes there is an intrinsic relation between the work of Christ and the work of the Spirit. The outward and visible signs of baptism provide a governing narrative for the life of the baptized. Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection becomes the narrative of the new life of the baptized who has passed through the sacramental drama of renouncing the world, dying with Christ, being raised, being confirmed in the Spirit, and being adorned with the fragrance of Christ and the heavenly glory of the resurrection. Thus the baptized enters into a life grounded in the reality of the new creation that traces its beginning to the Incarnation and looks to its perfection in the eschaton. But Christians are able to live in this narrative in the present because the Spirit of the resurrected Christ is dwelling in them, infusing them with life and holiness. This, however, leads to the question: What is the holiness of the new creation that characterizes the life of the baptized? To understand this life in the new creation as partakers of the divine nature through the Spirit, we must now inquire how the Spirit’s gift of faith in Christ’s pardoning of sin through his sacrificial death is related to the Spirit’s vivifying and sanctifying work. How does the Spirit’s bearing witness to the work of Christ fundamentally change the character of the inner man’s desire and so free us from concupiscence?

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7 The New Desire of the Inner Man

The Incarnation of the Word, for Ambrose, is the advent of the new Adam who becomes the head of a new people, the Church. Through the gift of his Spirit, Christ allows the descendants of the first Adam to participate in the life of the new Adam, who, as firstborn from the dead, is resurrected humanity. In baptism, therefore, neophytes are raised in the Spirit and become participants in Christ’s new creation that shall attain completion at the general resurrection. Ambrose does not assume that the sacramental resurrection of baptism is merely a promise of what will come. Although the Church waits in hope for the complete transformation of human nature at the resurrection; nevertheless, the regeneration of human nature that will be consummated in the eschaton has already begun in baptism. The believer is no longer in bondage to the drives of sinful concupiscence. In this way, the believer is free to pursue and attain a level of virtue that she could not have attained prior to baptism. How so? What is the actual and immediate effect of baptismal grace upon the soul of the baptized? In what way is the Christian really a “new man”? The birth of the new or inner man in baptism is possible only because the old or outer man has died. Dying to the world is synonymous with the renunciation of sin. Ambrose often explains baptism by drawing upon two Old Testament types: (a) sacrifice and (b) the new exodus. He compares baptism to the sacrifices prescribed in Leviticus for the forgiveness of Israel’s sins. Even as on the altar the lamb was consumed in the flames as a sacrifice for sin, so too in baptism the

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initiate is herself the victim. The outer man is the holocaust that perishes in the baptismal waters. Ambrose elaborates the Pauline image of the Hebrews passing through the Red Sea as a type of baptism. The Egyptians and the Hebrews entered the waters of the Red Sea where the Egyptians were “swallowed up” while the Hebrews passed through to new life on the other side. So too the sinful nature or outer man is swallowed up in baptism and the inner man, like the Hebrew, “rises again, renewed by the Holy Spirit.”1 This metaphor presents the birth of the inner man as the result of the cleansing of sin from human nature. Our proper nature, like the Israelites, is liberated from the concupiscence that had adhered to it. Ambrose uses this image to express the fundamental continuity between God’s creative intention for human nature and the new humanity the Christian receives in baptism. For the inner man born in baptism, the capacity for righteousness, which under the corruption of sin has been only a latent potentiality, is actualized. The sacraments free the soul from the bonds of sinful concupiscence and from an orientation toward self-gratification through pleasure and worldly ambition. Penance is an extension of the work of baptism for “the destruction of the flesh”;2 likewise, the Eucharist is a reiteration of one’s renunciation of the world in baptism.3 Yet Ambrose goes beyond the logic of the Exodus metaphor. For baptism entails more than the restoration of our nature to its full capacity for moral freedom to resist concupiscence. The new or inner man is the new humanity formed by Christ in the Incarnation and resurrection in which we participate through baptism. This participation is possible, he says, through the purifying work of Christ’s Spirit, who anoints the Christian in baptism and comes to dwell in the Christian’s mind. The Spirit’s infusion of grace confers upon the soul the power of the divine nature in the form of sevenfold spiritual gifts or virtues. In the power of the Spirit’s grace, the mind is able to resist the impulses of its disobedient members and rule over them and gradually domesticate them so that the mind and body, the rational and the nonrational may coexist in a peace that anticipates the harmonic union of body and soul in the resurrection. The renewal of the mind and the birth of a holy love for God are possible because the fiery power of the Spirit’s grace has burned off sinful loves. The transformation of human affections characteristic of the new humanity cannot, therefore, be understood apart from the twofold baptismal signs of death and resurrection, of repentance and regeneration.

Repentance: Participation in Christ’s Death Baptism is the consummation of the repentance and renunciation of the world that began when the catechumen began her intensive Lenten catechesis.

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By enrolling among the competentes, she, like Abraham leaving the land of his fathers to follow God, has turned from the world with her face set toward her promised land, the heavenly commonwealth. By repentance, the sinner is justified before God. This has been true in some sense since the first sin. Eve’s sin, though calamitous on a cosmic scale, was pardoned because she confessed it. “Although she incurred the sin of disobedience, she still possessed in the tree of Paradise food for virtue. And so she admitted her sin and was considered worthy of pardon. . .  . No one can be justified from sin unless he has first made confession of his sin.”4 Ambrose explains that repentance makes one worthy of justification. For, in the acknowledgment of our injustice and grief for our sin, the penitent displays a disposition of justice (iustitia) toward God.5 By this just orientation of the soul toward God, the sinner becomes just and so is justified before God. The desire or hungering for righteousness (iustitia) is the fundamental change of the affections that makes the penitent worthy of forgiveness. The sinner’s response to God’s call to leave the world by enrolling in the catechumenate is a preparatory form of repentance that attains its full expression in the sacramental death of baptism. As in the case of Augustine’s baptism, the Milanese ritual of baptism required the catechumen to enter the baptistery facing west. After declaring his renunciation of the devil, the world, and worldly luxuries, he was turned to the east and then entered the font where the “old man” was buried. This ritual is consistent with Ambrose’s depiction of repentance as death. In his Prayer of David, Ambrose explains the prefiguration of baptismal regeneration in David’s ascent to the altar of God in Psalm 43:4: “And I will go in to the altar of my God, to God, who gives joy to my youth. I will give you praise upon the cithara, my God.” God restores to us the joy of youth in that “youth has been restored to him after the lengthy old age of man’s fall. For we are renewed through the regeneration experienced in baptism, we are renewed through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we shall be renewed also through the resurrection.”6 The cithara that makes music of praise to God is the body upon which the soul and the Spirit play. “The cithara is our flesh when it dies to sin to live to God; it is a cithara when it receives the sevenfold Spirit in the sacrament of baptism . . . our flesh, if it lives for bodily enticements, it is living in a kind of filth and in an abyss of pleasures. But if it dies, it dies to riotous living and incontinence, then it regains true life, then it begins to produce the fine melody of good works.”7 The body is capable of being renewed for good works because it dies to the world, that is, it is separated from sensual pleasures. This renunciation of the world, Ambrose says, is represented in Scripture by God’s command to Moses to put off his sandals in order to stand in the presence of God upon holy ground.8

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The renunciation effected by repentance is an acknowledgment of the vanity of the world that in its glory is but a shadow in contrast with the true glory of God. Initially, we are deceived by the worldly shadow of glory when we see sinners enjoying worldly prosperity while the righteous suffer. David, Ambrose says, comes to recognize the vanity of worldly glory through both his sufferings and the gift of the knowledge of God. This revelation of God exposes the worldly glory to be mere vanity and in this knowledge David is able to surrender his need and desire for worldly glory.9 Central to this recognition, therefore, is the abandonment of our quest for the ephemeral glory of worldly honors that have been the highest aim of our ambition. Ambrose explains the radical renunciation of the world that is appropriate for true repentance: “Does any one think that that is penitence where there still exists the striving for earthly honors, where wine flows, and even conjugal connection takes place? The world must be renounced.  .  .  . [T]he mode of life must be such that we die to the usual habits of life. Let the man deny himself and be wholly changed.”10 Ambrose illustrates the total change in the life of the penitent by citing the fable of a contrite youth who when addressed on the street by a former lover—a harlot— does not recognize her. When she presses him, the youth explains his lack of recollection by replying only, “I am not the former.” This radical conversion, Ambrose says, is the character of our sacramental death: “For they who are dead and buried in Christ ought not again to make their conclusions as though living in the world.”11 A life of moral simplicity replaces one dominated by the drive of worldly ambition and pleasure.12 Since repentance entails a renunciation of ambition for worldly honors and an exalted social status, the comportment of the penitent is now characterized by humility rather than pride. Ambrose points to the woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee as an example of suitable humility: she kneels before Jesus, kissing his feet and washing them with her hair. The kiss is the sign of her love for her savior, the washing a sign of repentance. The humility of the saint—even Abraham himself confessed that he was mere dust and ashes13— as well as the sinner reflects a consciousness of God’s greater holiness. The saint does not presume to stand before God but confesses that she is weak and full of sin,14 her humility reflecting that she can make no claim upon God’s mercy, but only confess her need for the healing of his grace.15 Pardon and healing are not ours by right but by the gift of divine mercy and favor.16 Unlike the Pharisee, whose self-justifying prayer disclosed his impiety and presumption, the publican’s humble confession, characterized by a quiet and moderate spirit, justified him before God.17 So, conscious of our general sinfulness, we ought to confess ourselves to be sinners even when we cannot remember specific sins we have committed.18

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Ambrose always associates tears and cries of lamentation with the spirit of contrition. Given his conviction that for psychosomatic creatures the external form and bearing of the body reflect the internal disposition of the soul, it is not surprising that he correlated the outward appearance of remorse with the soul’s repentance. Ambrose articulates this integrity of the internal and the external in his discussion of decorum or seemliness in De officiis. Even as physical beauty is a visible sign of a person’s overall good health, so too decorum is the external expression of an honorable character.19 In the case of repentance, the penitent should exhibit a type of decorum that reflects the soul’s death to the world. The outward bodily sign of repentance is tears that accompany prayer and fasting.20 As evidence of the sincerity of repentance, Ambrose says, the sinner should “hope for pardon and seek it with tears and groans.” In some people, their mortification arising from a deep sense of shame transfigures their bodily aspect into that of a corpse. He recalls, “I have known penitents whose countenance was furrowed with tears, their cheeks worn with constant weeping, who offered their body to be trodden under foot by all, who with faces ever pale and worn with fasting bore about in a yet living body the likeness of death.”21 Our tears are efficacious because they are an invocation of and a participation in Christ’s tears of compassion and mercy, which Ambrose compares to the waters of baptism: “Christ was troubled in spirit when he raised Lazarus and wept there so that he might first wash away the sins of the dead man by his tears. But now he wept and washed his face inwardly. The blindness of Paul is the weeping of Christ; he washes his face when his lost sight is restored to him. Christ washed his own face when Paul was baptized, so that through him the Lord Jesus might be seen by many men.”22 Christ wept for Lazarus’s sins that they might be washed away and he be raised to life again. Similarly with Paul, his baptism is a washing of sin through the mercy of Christ so that Paul might be freed of the filth of sin and so bear the image of Christ to the world. It is not simply the tears of the penitent that invoke the tears of Christ. The contrition of the penitent should invoke the compassion of the Church that weeps for the fallen brother or sister. Ambrose compares the tears of the Church for the one dead in sin to those of Mary and Martha, who elicited the compassion of Christ for dead Lazarus.23 Then, as in the case of Paul, Christ’s tears for us, represented by the waters of baptism, evoke our tears of repentance that wash our soul inwardly. Since sin has hardened our hearts to God, we may not be able to weep for our own sins, Ambrose says, without the aid of Christ. Comparing our condition with the woman in the house of Simon, he writes, “Nevertheless if we are unable to equal her, the Lord Jesus knows also how to aid the weak.”24

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Recognizing that most people’s contrition falls short of the woman’s example, he says that he, like most Christians, is more like Lazarus, who is dead in his sin and cannot weep for himself. Then, addressing Christ, Ambrose offers a prayer of intercession on behalf of those who cannot properly grieve their own sins: Would that you would promise to come to this sepulcher of mine, O Lord Jesus, that you would wash me with your tears, since in my hardened eyes I possess no such tears as to be able to wash away my offense. If you will weep for me I shall be saved; if I am worthy of your tears I shall cleanse the stench of all my offences.25 Repentance is the product of baptismal grace as well as the precondition for it. Since sin prevents us from knowing our corruption and being suitably contrite, we are dependent upon Christ’s compassion for us in our sin, as he was for Lazarus. If he weeps for us as he did for Lazarus, he will raise us from the death of sin and cleanse us of the foul stench of corruption. Although Christ’s mercy is not confined to baptism, Ambrose’s image of our being washed of sin by Christ’s tears surely alludes to baptism. The water of the font represents Christ’s tears of compassion, which call us forth from our death in sin even as he called Lazarus from the tomb. As we shall see, it is Christ’s mercy for us in our weakness, his tears on our behalf, that elicits our tears of contrition and gratitude. Whether literal or figurative, tears are necessary. There is no forgiveness of sin without tears of repentance: “Indeed, unless you weep for your sins, unless you receive the grace of baptism, the faith of the Church and the bond of wedlock are not given to you.”26 There is no forgiveness unless there is a desire to be righteous. Tears of contrition are a sign of our hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Ambrose links the words of Psalm 41:4 (LXX)—“My tears have been my bread”—with the promise of the beatitude that those who hunger for righteousness will be fed. To those who mourn their sins and desire to be righteous before God, Christ responds by feeding them with the bread of heaven.27 In fact, one cannot delight in the grace of forgiveness unless one knows the pain of remorse. The weeping of contrition, therefore, is inseparable from the joy of rebirth: “Let, then, nothing call you away from penitence, for this you have in common with the saints, and would that such sorrowing for sin as that of the saints were copied by you. David . . . ‘ate ashes for bread, and mingled his drink with weeping’ and therefore now rejoices the more because he wept the more.”28 Not only are the penitent’s tears evidence of his grief over sin, but they are also an unavoidable consequence of the Christian’s renunciation of the world.

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For they reflect the discomfort of one who has given up the accustomed worldly luxuries. By contrast, the new sober life is hard and so becomes the occasion for tears. Denying oneself and taking up the cross brings many reasons for sorrow: “And so, if anyone wants to ascend, let him seek, not the joys of the world or the pleasant things or the delights, but whatever is filled with pain and weeping; for it is better to go into a house of sorrow than into a house of rejoicing.”29 The sacramental death to sin and the world is necessary for being raised with Christ and for being reborn through the indwelling of his Spirit. Ambrose explains God’s warning to Adam and Eve, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for the day you eat of it you shall die,” through the words of Ezekiel 33:14–16. There Ezekiel says the wicked “die the death” while the ones who repent “live the life.” Ambrose asks whether there is any difference between the statements “you shall die” and “you shall die the death.” Appealing to the principle that the words of Scripture are not superfluous, he concludes that Ezekiel is not here being redundant. Rather he is distinguishing different types of living and dying.30 To “live the life” is the equivalent of “to live in life,” meaning to live the happy life of grace and virtue such that “in the life of this body of ours [we experience] a participation in the life of blessedness.”31 The corollary of “live in life,” he says, is “live in death,” which the martyrs do when they give up this life that they may live eternally. It is also what Paul meant when he tells the Philippians that he desires “to be dissolved and be with Christ,” which is the better life. “To live in life” and “to live in death” both are a form of true life in that both lives are oriented toward man’s eschatological end, holding to “a hope for a share in life eternal.” Thus both can be described as “living for life.” This is the life to which we are born in baptism. But in order to “live for life,” Ambrose says, we must “die to death,” which is the death of baptism. For “to die to death” is “to die to sin.” Thus “to die to death” (that is, dying to sin) is “to die for life” (that is, dying in order to be raised to eternal life). Ambrose then explains Paul’s words—“It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me” (Gal. 2:10)—noting that because Paul died to sin, Christ, who is life, is able to live in him and make Paul a partaker of his life.32 Similarly in his Hexameron, Ambrose describes the new birth as the beginning of the Spirit’s indwelling, an indwelling that must be preceded by the stripping off of the flesh that characterizes the old man. Explaining the injunction of Deuteronomy 4:9, “Keep thyself,” he says that we must preserve the beauty proper to human nature—a beauty of the soul that lasts and not of the body that decays. He repeats the theme that we are not our bodies and so we are not renewed in our bodies, “but in the spirit and affirmation of the mind.”33 For it is not the flesh that is the temple of God but the soul. Here Ambrose uses “flesh” in the dual senses of “body” and of “corruption” or “sin” in the Pauline

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view. Since the body and the beauty of the body are transitory and subject to decay, the one whose chief concern is bodily beauty is not concerned with those highest goods proper to man. The renewal of the mind entails putting off our preoccupation with transitory, bodily goods and instead seeking the indwelling of the Spirit: “And elsewhere [it is said]: ‘You are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you,’ that is to say, in those who have had a new birth and in the faithful in whom the Spirit of God dwells. It does not dwell among the carnal, for it is written: ‘My spirit shall not remain in these men forever, because they are flesh.’”34 Ambrose assumes that new birth entails a putting off of the old man with his former concerns for the body both because the soul is now oriented to the higher goods of God, rather than to the lesser goods of the body, and because the Spirit cannot indwell the soul of one whose mind is set upon the flesh. Ambrose describes the radical nature of our “putting off the old man” and “dying” to the world as a “forgetting” of our past life. In his explication of Jesus’ seemingly harsh words to the would-be disciple who asked to bury his father— “Let the dead bury the dead” (Luke 9:60)—Ambrose distinguishes between three types of death: the death in nature of the body, the death in sin through an ignorance of Christ, and the death to sin by the baptized. The dead who must bury the dead are those dead in sin who cannot receive the call of Christ. This threefold distinction Ambrose develops in greater detail in De bono mortis 2.3. When he describes the death to sin in baptism, he writes: “There is also another [death], which brings the destruction of worldly desires, in which not nature, but transgressions die. We undergo this death, buried together in baptism and dead with Christ to the elements of this world when we suffer the forgetfulness [oblivia] of our former action.”35 Baptism is a form of death inasmuch as it brings the death of the worldly desires. The destruction of the worldly desires in baptism anticipates the extirpation of such desires when the soul is liberated from the corrupt body with its longings. Thus Ambrose’s point is that the destruction of worldly desire in baptism is fulfilled when we forget “our former actions.” Forgetfulness was a characteristic of death in certain traditions of Greek culture. The river Lethe or Oblivion was one of the rivers of Hades and those who drank of its waters forgot their life in the world above or their life in Hades before their reincarnation. In some cases, the waters of forgetfulness brought peace to the soul that escaped the cares of its former life.36 For Plato, however, the river Lethe in his myth of Er was the cause of the souls’ failure to learn from their purgative sojourn among the dead. Before beginning the life they had chosen, the souls were led to a desolate place called the Plains of Oblivion, a wasteland of stifling heat. The souls resting by the river Lethe drank to relieve

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their thirst. But those who were not saved by their phronēsis or wise judgment drank more than they should and so forgot all things.37 Within a Platonic scheme in which recollection is key to knowing the good, forgetfulness is not the source of peace, but of error. For Ambrose, however, the forgetfulness that comes from the waters of baptism is not literally the erasure of memory, but is a metaphor for the radical renunciation of former desires. The baptized let go of all fond recollections of their former life so that their desires might be directed wholly to the new life to which they have been raised. Ambrose takes his language of forgetting the past action from Paul’s disclaimer to the Philippians. Having confessed that he has not yet attained perfection, Paul says, “I do not consider that I have made it [perfection] my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ” (3:13–14). In Flight from the World, Ambrose describes the difficulty of turning one’s mind from the world to God. He remarks how easily worldly cares intrude upon our thoughts even when we are trying to direct those thoughts to God. He asks, “Who, then, is so blessed as always to be ascending in his heart? Yet how is this possible without God’s help? In no way at all.”38 To illustrate his point he cites the case of Lot’s wife, who looks back upon Sodom and Gomorrah in the midst of their destruction. She is a figure of the person who lets the desire for worldly pleasure draw her thoughts back to her former life and so becomes fixed in her thoughts, never making progress from the world toward God. By contrast, Ambrose says, Paul does not look back but forgets the past and presses on to the prize that lies ahead, setting his thoughts and desires wholly upon Christ and the crown of justice. This singleness of mind allows Paul to die to himself and Christ to live within him.39 Our efforts are crucial, and yet the only way Christians can make constant progress toward the prize and not be diverted from the ascent is with assistance. But God’s assistance comes only when Christ lives within us. Such indwelling is possible only when we “forget,” or renounce, the pleasures of the old man and strain toward true blessedness in Christ. Forgetting is not merely a metaphor. The logic of renouncing the world and desiring Christ alone requires an actual forgetting, so we must escape the memories of the past life that threaten to intrude upon our thoughts and awaken desires in us for the world that we have renounced. We must focus our mind solely upon Christ, making him the supreme object of our affections. However, forgetting the former life necessarily entails a withdrawal from the world. Ambrose elaborates upon the radical character of the forgetting of the world that is expected of his priests. The ministers of God should have God, and nothing else as their portion. This does not mean only that the priest loves

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God above all, but also that the priest withdraws from the common social and familial intercourse that threatens to distract him from God: For the flight of the priest is really the renunciation of family, and a kind of alienation from dear ones, so that the one who longs to serve God denies himself with regard to his own. Therefore it was right that a decree of the eternal law entrusted fugitives to fugitives; thus, those who have forgotten this world may receive those who condemn their own sinful works, seek forgetfulness of their earlier life, and desire to efface the worldly deeds they have performed.40 Forgetting the world means breaking the old relationships that tie us to the world and the former life. Although Ambrose speaks of the priest’s life as entailing a radical separation or, as he puts it, a flight from conventional relations, nonetheless the priest’s forgetting of the world is simply a more drastic form of the forgetting that is expected of all Christians who in baptism renounce the world. Therefore, both priest and catechumen are fugitives from the world. Both must refrain from creating new memories and keeping alive old memories that arouse desires for the world, for these desires distract from a single-minded pursuit of Christ. Forgetting the past life and straining toward the prize means practically that all our life is devoted to the service that “tends towards the worship and honoring of Christ,” of which we should not be ashamed.41 Ambrose compares David dancing without shame before the ark (because he remembers the grace and the promise of forgiveness he received) with Paul forgetting the past and pressing onward to the prize. David’s dancing represents the worship of God that comes from our recollection of God’s grace: “For a shamefaced confession of sins looses the bands of transgression. You see what God requires of you, that you remember that grace which you have received, and boast not as though you had not received it. You see by how complete a remission he draws you to confession.”42 Ambrose warns that if we do not remember God’s grace and make our confession and worship God in thanksgiving, we are like the Jews to whom Jesus, imitating the child’s rebuke of his playmate, said, “We piped to you and you did not dance.”43 Forgetting what has been renounced by repentance necessarily entails its corollary, remembering God’s mercy. The mind should be informed no longer by memories of one’s past, but memories of God’s forgiveness. This remembering is expressed in worship and is represented by dancing. Then Ambrose expressly links the worshipful dancing of David and the forgetting of Paul with the Christian’s experience of baptism: “And you, too, when you come to baptism, are warned to raise the hands, and to cause your feet wherewith

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you ascend to things eternal to be swifter. This dancing accompanies faith, and is the companion of grace.”44 The “forgetting” required by repentance is a form of dying with Christ in baptism and so is itself the work of Christ’s grace. In his Prayer of David, Ambrose interprets Psalm 73:26—“My heart and my flesh have failed”—as a description of the death that comes to soul and body as a result of repentance. The logic of the verse, he explains, is that we cannot pursue eternal things as long as we pursue the transitory things of earth. Therefore the things of earth must “fail” or die in us in order for us to ascend to the eternal things of God. The earthly things, that is, the earthly orientation of our soul, “fail” when we die with Christ: And those who bear about in their flesh the dying of Jesus Christ also fail, for the death of Christ works in them so that every enticement to sin dies. From this it is inferred that the heart of man fails when evil thoughts, which proceed from the heart, are put to death. Thus forgetfulness may hide all earthly things, and, for those who are blessed with a clean heart and deserve to see God, there may come the God of their heart that they may draw near to you [God] and not separate themselves.45 Ambrose plays with the language of paradox: we live only when the earthly orientation of the heart and body dies. The earthly orientation of the flesh dies only when the dying Christ lives within our flesh. That is, when the crucified Christ occupies our thoughts, our mind is no longer set upon the transitory but upon the eternal; for it is set upon God. Moreover, by being set upon the crucified Christ, whose death pays our debt of sin, we become focused upon God’s grace. When Christ crucified becomes the content of our memories, then we become forgetful of the world and its charms that once aroused our base desire. Then the mind is pure and is able to ascend to the eternal and see God. Thus it is the vision of Christ upon the cross that casts the shadow of forgetfulness over our recollection of the world and so puts to death the soul’s worldly affections. To sum up, the point of departure for the baptized life unites repentance and renunciation. Ultimately, it is the light of the Gospel that brings about repentance. For the light of Christ is given to all to correct those in error by softening hearts hardened to the Church.46 The Gospel that the Church preaches bears the light of Christ to the world—a light that makes the obstinate soul receptive to grace and to the call for repentance. The dying or forgetting of repentance is necessarily replaced by a new disposition of the soul that delights in God’s promises and desires to be filled with more of the light of Christ’s

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grace. In his second funeral oration for Satyrus, Ambrose plays with the biblical image of trumpets that raise the dead.47 In the context of baptism where the catechumen is sacramentally raised from her death in sin, there are two trumpets that raise the dead: “belief with the heart and confession with the mouth.”48 He then explains the character of the heart softened by the light of Christ that believes and confesses the faith of the Church. This confession of faith is prefigured in Psalm 41:6 (LXX), which speaks of entering the house of God, “with the voice of joy and praise; the noise of one feasting.” This disposition of joy comes from believing the promises of the Gospel. “For no one, unless he drinks in the promises of the word of God and believes the responding oracles of Scripture, can exult with joy or keep festivals or new moons, in which, freed from corporeal pleasure and worldly concerns, he longs to fill himself with the light of Christ.”49 On the one hand, there is no joy in the soul that is dead in sin. Rather, the joy is only for those who are made alive by believing in the promise of forgiveness and resurrection. On the other hand, the soul that believes has not given up all pleasure, but now gains the true pleasure of Christ’s indwelling. This is the advent of a new desire, not for the world, but for the light of Christ. Thus the dying of repentance marks a liberation from “corporeal pleasure and worldly concerns,” and the birth of joy and delight in the teachings of the Church that manifests itself in festivals of doxology. Ambrose links this birth of a new desire directly to the catechumen’s justification in baptism.

The Birth of Holy Affections Baptismal justification for Ambrose, as we saw in chapter 4, is not merely a forensic pardoning of sin, but entails an actual change in the sinner’s soul through the sacramental illumination of baptism. Baptism places Christians on a path of repentance and renunciation. The sinner also receives the gift of faith, which confers a proper knowledge of God and a moral disposition of devotion to God. The new Christian believes, confesses, and follows. Most of all, the Christian receives love, which not only gives knowledge of God but also is at the heart of a new moral disposition. The justification of baptism thus engenders a proper love for God, and the birth of this new love is the logical consequence of both our repentance and Christ’s forgiveness. Ambrose describes the change in the disposition of the baptized by comparing the fragrance of the ointment with which the priest anoints the baptized after she has been raised from the pool to the oils used to anoint Christ’s body for burial:

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The world is crucified, not for him who loves riches, nor him who loves worldly honors, nor him who loves what are his own, but for him who loves what belongs to Jesus Christ; not for him who loves what is seen, but for him who loves what is not seen; not for him who longs for life, but for him who hastens to be dissolved and to be with Christ. For this is to take up the cross and follow Christ, so that we may die with Christ and be buried together with him, so that we may be fragrant with the ointment which the woman poured upon him for his burial.50 The fragrance of the oil alludes to the woman’s anointing Jesus in anticipation of his burial and so is a symbol of Christ’s death and our participation in Christ’s death. Paradoxically, the pleasant fragrance of the oil administered by the bishop is the sweet smell of death; for the fragrance is of a death to the world. Specifically, it is an outward sign of a change in our disposition toward God and the world, denoting the reorientation of our loves. First, to be dead to the world by repentance entails a relinquishing of our attachment to and concern for things we presume to call our own, such as wealth and honors. Instead, we love not what is ours but what belongs to Christ. Second, the things of Christ that we love are not the visible things of the sensible creation but the invisible things. Therefore, third, we, like Paul in Philippians 1:23, desire to be “dissolved” or die, so that we may pass from this life into fellowship with Christ. Ambrose does not go so far as to say that the Christian who is dead to the world abandons her possessions, relinquishing claim to property. Rather he says that she simply does not love her riches and her reputation as she loves Christ. She becomes indifferent to her possessions and is willing, and in some sense eager, to give them up in death in order to gain what she truly loves, Christ. Being united with the crucified and forgiving Christ by dying to sin is, for Ambrose, the beginning of the regenerative work of baptism. The termination of worldly desire is necessarily the occasion for the arousal of a new desire for God. After all, human beings are creatures of desire; it is one of the dominant impulses of the soul that determines our actions. So there must always be an object of longing; there is no end to desire, only the exchange of one object of desire for another. Since sin arises from worldly ambition, the death of worldly desires and the birth of the love for God mark the demise of sin. “For just as death is the end of sins, so also is love, because one who loves the Lord ceases to commit sin. . . . Strong, too, is that death through the bath through which every sin is buried and every fault forgiven. Such was the love which that woman in the Gospel brought, of whom the Lord says, ‘Her many sins have been forgiven her, because she has loved much.’”51 Here Ambrose

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is comparing the catechumen’s love for God with the love of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee. The woman’s great love for Christ, which was aroused by her belief that she would be forgiven, merited Christ’s forgiveness. Similarly, the catechumen who comes to be baptized out of a new love for God born of the hope of forgiveness is cleansed of her sins. The degree of one’s love for Christ is proportionate to the extent of forgiveness we have received. Ambrose returns to the example of the nameless woman who anoints Jesus’ feet in his discussion of Joseph’s being sold to the Ishmaelites. Joseph’s being sold into servitude prefigures Christ’s being “sold” by Judas. Yet Ambrose recognizes that the stories are not an exact parallel—the Ishmaelites pay Joseph’s brothers twenty pieces of silver, whereas Judas betrays Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.52 However, the significance of this inconsistency is that Christ is not valued equally by all. “To some he is worth less, to others more. The faith of the buyer determines the increase in the price.”53 Faith that values Christ more is the faith of the sinner whom God has forgiven much. Paraphrasing Jesus’ words to Simon, Ambrose writes: “He is more valuable to the man who has more grace. But he is more valuable as well to the man to whom many things have been given, because he loves more [plus diligit] to whom more has been forgiven.”54 Yet Ambrose’s discussion of love and forgiveness mirrors the ambiguity of Jesus’ words to Simon. The woman, like the debtor in his parable, loves much because she was forgiven more. Thus Jesus is saying both that she loves him (as shown in her anointing his feet with ointment and tears) because her many sins have been forgiven and that her sins are forgiven because she has loved (Luke 7:47). Is love the result of being forgiven or the cause of being forgiven? Ambrose’s explanation is equally ambiguous. For elsewhere he explains Paul’s claim in Romans 5:20 that “sin abounded that grace may abound” by saying that “repentance once begun [orta paententia] sets in motion the movement [impellat] from sin [ex peccato] to the conversion of one’s purpose and the desire of spiritual grace.”55 But he goes on to explain that while repentance brings the catechumen to baptism, the cleansing of baptism transforms the soul’s desires: [S]in cleansed in the water of the font is sundered from the flesh, whence it was engendered, and whereas each wishes to atone for his crime, zeal for discipline proceeds from guilt. The longing [concupiscentia] also for evil things and the intense stirrings of desire [motus fervidor cupiditatis] are transferred [transfunditur] by God’s word into an appetite for Divine charity and love and in the same

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nature a manifold discipline ensues, and that appetite of soul and body obtains for itself a delight in the heavenly mysteries.56 Ambrose’s use of the verb transfundo is curious. It normally refers to the transferring or pouring of one substance from one vessel into another. Yet in this context, the sense seems to be that the concupiscentia and the cupiditas, which have as their objects evil things (rerum malorum), have themselves become changed into the dispositions of holy desire and love. In fact, the change of our affections comes through the transferal of divine affection, that is, divine love, into the soul. There are two key points he is making here. First, although repentance begins the conversion of desire, the experience of the sacramental mystery of baptism whereby sins are forgiven changes the soul’s desires. Second, the character of human desire is determined by its object; consequently, the renunciation of sin in repentance and the cleansing of the flesh from sin in the font gives the soul a new object of desire (the heavenly mysteries), thereby changing the character of the catechumen’s desires. For Ambrose, the “heavenly mysteries” often refer to the work of the triune God in the sacraments. Thus, the sacrament of baptism reveals to the catechumen the grace of Christ, which arouses a new desire in the soul to be united with its beloved. In his prebaptismal instruction, De Isaac, Ambrose describes for his catechumens the soul’s experience in the sacramental mystery by comparing it with the first time Isaac beheld Rebekah, his betrothed: [T]he soul, which subdues the bodily passions, turns them to the service of the virtues, and makes resistant feelings subject to itself. And so the soul of the patriarch Isaac, seeing the mystery of Christ, seeing Rebekah coming with vessels of gold and silver . . . and marveling at the beauty of the Word and of his sacraments, says, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” And Rebekah, seeing the true Isaac, that true joy, and true source of mirth desires to kiss him.57 Ambrose is not disturbed by putting the words of the bride of the Song of Songs, “Let him kiss me,” in Isaac’s mouth since the one whom Isaac prophetically sees and loves in the form of Rebekah is the Church, which bears Christ in word and sacrament. Ambrose’s point is that the desires of the soul become the cause of virtue when, upon beholding the beauty of Christ’s grace in the sacraments, they are turned to God rather than sensual pleasures or worldly honors. Ambrose also uses Rebekah’s experience of being united with Isaac to represent the birth of the catechumen’s joy in the experience of baptism. Here we

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see the multiple layers of symbolic meaning Ambrose is willing to overlap. Rebekah’s leaving Laban to marry Isaac is a figure of the catechumen’s conversion in baptism. In this context, Isaac, whom his father offers up as a sacrifice, is a figure of Christ, whose sacrifice reconciles the sinner to God. Moreover, Isaac, whose name means “laughter,” symbolizes the joy of the one whose sin has been forgiven. Thus when the catechumen encounters Christ in the “heavenly mysteries” of baptism and so comes to know the joy of liberation from the burden of sin, she experiences Christ as both the source of joy and the newfound object of passion. In whatever way the repentance of the catechumen reflects an initial change in the orientation of her desires, it is in the sacrament that the proper love of Christ is born. Indeed, love and contrition must be inseparable in order for us to receive pardon for our sins. Returning to Luke’s account of the woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee, Ambrose puts himself in the woman’s place and asks how he can wash away the stain of his sins.58 Since he, like the woman, has sinned much and therefore has much to be forgiven, he should love God much in return: “I confess that I owe more . . . and therefore I fear that I may be found ungrateful, if I, to whom more has been forgiven, love less.”59 The woman gives Ambrose the example of how he should show much love in return. Her kissing of Jesus’ feet acts out the bride’s passion for the Bridegroom: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” Yet, since Ambrose cannot kiss Christ’s feet in literal imitation of the woman, how can he express his love in a manner comparable to her extravagant gesture? The sign of Ambrose’s love of Christ for the forgiveness of his sins is his compassion for others who have sinned. In contrast with the Novatians, who denied pardon to those who apostatized, Ambrose, mindful of his own manifold sins, enters into solidarity with fellow sinners: “With inmost affection [I am able] to mourn with those who sin . . . that so often as the sin of any one who has fallen is made known to me I may suffer with him, and not chide him proudly, but mourn and weep, so that weeping over another I may mourn for myself, saying ‘Tamar has been more righteous than I.’”60 Even as the woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and kisses simultaneously expresses the humility of contrition and the loving gratitude for Christ’s pardon, so too Ambrose must conjoin love with contrition. This union of love and contrition is manifest in his weeping over the sin of others as for his own sins. Humility and compassion for fellow sinners is the chief sign of the love we owe Christ, whose love is expressed in our compassion for sinful humanity. Thus we, like the woman, express our gratitude for his compassionate love by imitating his compassion in our sympathy and solidarity with other sinners.

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The Christian’s love born of gratitude for Christ’s love and forgiveness becomes the source of devotion to Christ and compassion for others. In Ambrose’s second oration on Satyrus, he explains that the mission of the Church is to proclaim the light of grace and the promise of resurrection by which Christ draws all men to himself.61 Yet to fulfill its mission, the Church must overcome her fear of the threats to life and limb posed by her enemies. Christ is the source of the Church’s courage. It is the love of Christ, who first loved the Church by conferring upon her grace and the promise of resurrection, that emboldens the Church to risk all for the one who sacrificed himself for her. Again Ambrose compares the Church to the bride from the Song of Songs, who is brought into the King’s chamber because she loves his breasts better than wine (4:10); thus he says of the Church: “[Y]ou loved him who loved you, you sought him who nourished you, and you despised dangers for religion’s sake.”62 Despite the dangers, the Church embarks upon its mission in response to Christ’s love for her and out of a desire to declare that love to the nations. In sum, the Christians’ experience of justification in baptism is both an experience of Christ’s love for them as forgiven sinners and is the cause of their new love for Christ and the desire to serve him through the Church. This love for Christ Ambrose sees as the fountainhead of other virtues, such as courage and compassion for fellow sinners. In purifying the soul’s desire, baptism renews the simplicity of love characteristic of one made in the image of God. Indeed, Ambrose speaks of simplicity as one of the qualities the soul acquires in baptism. For he comments that the soul that is cunning, having dual motives sought by means of indirection, cannot receive God. Only the soul that is simple and innocent, having God as its single object of desire, can receive grace: “For the head of Christ is God, who, when he has approved an innocent mind, somehow superimposes the power of his majesty, which seems to be a sign that the more lavish grace is instilled in the hearts of the good.”63 Here again Ambrose’s reference to “more lavish grace” confirms our argument that Ambrose has a hierarchy of grace that is given in proportion to the quality of the soul and its capacity to receive God’s self-disclosure. Specifically, his point is that one must have a simplicity or singleness of desire or purity of heart to receive God’s higher forms of grace. Such simplicity of desire, however, comes at baptism when the Holy Spirit descends upon the soul: “Why did the Spirit here descend like a dove, except that you might see, except that you might know that the dove, also, which the just Noah sent forth from the ark, was [the] likeness of this dove, that you might recognize the type of the mystery? . . . At the same time the simplicity [simplicitas] of those who are baptized should not be in likeness but should be true. . . . Rightly, then, did he descend like a dove to admonish us that we should have

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that simplicity of a dove.”64 Here simplicitas denotes purity or innocence. The Spirit who descended upon Christ and descends on the initiate in her baptism has the likeness of a dove because she regains the true simplicity of affection or innocence characteristic of humanity before the fall, bearing an uncompromised divine similitude. This generation of a new love of God is the moment of the rebirth and renewal of the image of Christ. Speaking of the baptismal font as the place of the catechumens’ birth,65 Ambrose explains that in baptism the catechumen, like the bride in Songs of Songs,66 receives a seal upon the heart which is Christ.67 Ambrose sees the metaphor of the seal as a reference to sealing wax, which receives the impression of a signet ring. To receive the seal or image of Christ upon the heart is to possess a Christlike love. “Christ is the seal on the forehead, the seal in the heart—on the forehead that we may always confess him, and in the heart that we may always love him. . . . Therefore let his image shine forth in our profession of faith, let it shine forth in our love . . . so that, if it is possible, all his beauty may be represented in us.”68 Indeed, he can say that Christ as the seal upon the heart is “our love,” since the song goes on to say that love is stronger than death, which is overcome by Christ’s death. By his loving sacrificial death on the cross that offers expiation of sin, Christ’s love engenders love within the believer. What is critical is that the love of Christ frees the soul to give up that of the world which it has claimed as its own. Ambrose interprets “zeal is like the nether world” (Song of Songs 8:6) with the double referent of Christ’s love that surpasses the hold of death and the Christlike love the baptized have for Christ. Such love has, as the song continues, “wings of fire,” which for Ambrose invokes layers of intertextual meaning. It is the baptism of fire that John said Christ would call down upon the earth. It is the Christological meaning of Scripture that Christ disclosed to the disciples on the way to Emmaus and that made their hearts burn. It is the Holy Spirit who descended upon the apostles at Pentecost.69 Mixing his metaphors, Ambrose describes the love of Christ that is the seal upon the heart as fire, because the love of Christ is a consuming fire that burns away base affection. “Good then is love, having wings of burning fire, that flies through the breasts and heart of the saints and consumes whatever is material and earthly but tests whatever is pure and with its fire makes better whatever it has touched.”70 Ambrose’s conjoining of the wings of fire from Song of Songs with the imagery of burning hearts from Luke’s account of the risen Jesus’ encounter with the disciples on the road to Emmaus is fitting in this catechetical homily. Christ made himself visible to the disciples in the messianic prophecies and figures of the Old Testament so that their hearts “burned within.” Likewise, the catechumens passing through the heavenly mysteries of baptism, the

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sacrament of illumination, will encounter the grace of Christ that will ignite a holy love for him. As Cleopas and his companion burned within during their encounter with the risen Lord, the baptized too encounter the fiery grace of Christ that burns away impure loves, that shines its luminescence upon the mind and sets their hearts ablaze with a new love for God. Ultimately, baptism constitutes a conversion for the catechumen because it entails the transformation of desire. With the experience of the pardoning love of Christ in baptism, the catechumen dies to the world in the sense that her love is no longer centered upon the world but upon God. In this new love—this new disposition and orientation of the soul’s affections—the forgiven sinner is remade in the image of God.

Conclusion: The Inner Man’s Heavenly Dwelling Place The new affection of holy love born from the grace of baptism shifts the orientation of the Christian’s thoughts and desires from worldly objects, such as wealth, honor, and political office, to the eschatological prize. Since the Christian has been justified and delivered from the debt of sin by Christ’s death, Christ is the chief object of the Christian’s love. Yet the Christian’s experience of fellowship with Christ in this life is but partial. Therefore, the Christian yearns for the fuller union with Christ that comes only eschatologically. In his second funeral oration for Satyrus, which was subsequently titled On the Belief in the Resurrection, Ambrose applies Paul’s juxtaposition in 1 Corinthians 13:12 of our present shadowy vision of Christ and the face-to-face vision we will have in the eschaton to his understanding of the relation between the law and Gospel. The law is but a shadow of Christ. The Gospel gives us the image of Christ. But we shall see the reality only at the judgment. In the present, he says, “we cannot see him now according to reality, but we see him in a kind of image of future things, of which we saw the shadow in the Law.”71 Yet the Christian is not content to see the shadow or image; she wants to see the reality. Indeed, the Christian will not attain the vision of the reality unless she is driven by a love of God that is not content with the partial but is forward looking in anticipation of beatific vision: “If anyone, therefore, desires to behold this image of God, he must love God so as to be loved by him, no longer as a servant but as a friend who observes his commandments, that he may enter the cloud where God is.”72 Ambrose draws upon the biblical image of Moses’s entry into the cloud atop Sinai to express the paradox of the eschatological vision. It is a faceto-face vision of God that can be compared only to the hazy vision in a cloud that is seen but only vaguely and that obscures one’s vision of all else. Yet to be

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enveloped in the cloud and experience the immediate presence of the divine reality is to enjoy friendship with the God whose forgiving love the Christian experienced in baptism and whose love one experiences perfectly and more immediately at the resurrection. This is eschatological blessedness. But, Ambrose says, one cannot come to such friendship unless one is motivated by a single-minded love of God. The love of God that is the fulfillment of the law defines the Christian’s life in the present, ever seeking to merit friendship with God. In this way Ambrose conjoins the character of life in the saeculum with its eschatological goal. Because Christians love God and desire eschatological fellowship with him, they live lives of love and obedience in order that their love may be made complete in its reward at the last judgment. Ambrose describes the new heavenly or eschatological orientation of the inner man by using the Pauline trope of our heavenly citizenship or dwelling place. Having invited the church at Philippi to follow his example in forgetting what lies behind and pressing on to the prize (3:13–14), Paul describes the proper orientation of the Christian life by illustrating its opposite. Unlike the faithful Christians, the enemies of the cross worship a different deity; their god is the belly and their mind is upon earthly things (3:18–19). By contrast, Paul says, “Our commonwealth [to politeuma] is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (3:20–21). For Ambrose, to politeuma en ouranois becomes construed as conversatio in caelo, that is, citizenship or way of life in heaven. This heavenly citizenship is definitive of the new life of the baptized. Heavenly citizenship is a new life for the sinner, but it is really the way of life God intended for Adam and Eve in the beginning. In Ambrose’s discussion of God’s creation of humanity on the sixth day, he explains the vital function of the knee. It is the flexibility of knees that allows humanity to bow before God in a manner of humility and of faith that pleases the Lord. Yet in bending the knee, man does not lower the eyes, unlike four-legged brutes that face the earth, but “aims at what is high.” This point is the climax of Ambrose’s account of God’s creation of humanity. He goes on to explain this humble ascent to “what is high” by appealing to Isaiah’s promise, “Your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” The prophet, Ambrose says, means that man is made to surpass the soaring ascent of the eagle by drawing near to what is celestial and so confesses “our citizenship is in heaven.”73 To be made in the image of God means that humanity possesses a mind that is able to transcend the body by thinking about God, even while on earth. Being made in the image of God, the mind has the Godlike power that “crosses boundaries and gazes intently on what is hidden. . . . God is attained and Christ is approached. There is a descent into hell, and aloft in the sky there is an ascent into heaven. Hear, then, what Scripture says: ‘But

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our citizenship is in heaven.’ Is not that, therefore, in which God is everpresent made into the likeness of God?”74 God made human beings in his image with the capacity for self-transcendence that we might claim this heavenly citizenship in the present. For such citizenship is nothing less than the blessed state of being in the presence of God. Preparation for this heavenly citizenship is the aim of the catechumen. Early in Ambrose’s homilies, he tells his catechumens that when God commanded Abraham “go forth out of thy kindred,” he was telling Abraham, who represented the soul of the catechumen, to flee “from bodily enticements and delights . . . [and] earthly conversatio and worldly pleasures, and from customs and pursuits of our former life,” so that he might claim his heavenly conversatio and cleave to Christ.75 Reinforcing the point at the beginning of the second book of On Abraham, Ambrose explicitly calls Abraham the one whose citizenship is in heaven.76 For the catechumen, this citizenship is attained by the humility of repentance and the confession of faith. Later in his homilies to the catechumens, Ambrose compares the patriarch Joseph’s embracing his brother Benjamin with Christ’s embracing Paul in merciful love. As a result of Christ’s forgiving Paul for persecuting him and the Church, Paul is lifted up into heaven, Ambrose says, “once [Paul] has shown submission by inner belief as if by bending his neck.”77 The inner belief of Paul, like that of Abraham and the catechumen, is the faith that acknowledges our indebtedness to Christ who is our Lord and Redeemer. Because of the humility of Paul’s belief and submission, he is able to claim his citizenship in heaven. The soul’s ability to partake of its citizenship in heaven presupposes the catechumen’s participation in Christ’s death in baptism. In the continuation of his catechetical homilies on Isaac, On the Good of Death, Ambrose explains the character of the good death that brings life. Christ’s death, he says, has opened to Christians the gates of heaven. On one level, he is referring to the fruit of the forgiveness of sin that restores the sinner to paradise, while on another level, however, Christ’s death provides the paradigm of dying to the world necessary for this reentry into paradise. Therefore, by sacramentally participating in Christ’s death and resurrection, the catechumens seek a death like Christ’s “so that the death of Christ may be manifest in our body.”78 This death is the “happy” death of Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:16 when the outer man—the “body of death” or our corrupted humanity—decays so “that our inner man may be renewed.” Thus Christ’s death becomes manifest in the believer as we withdraw from the things of the body that “a dwelling place in heaven may be opened to us.”79 When Ambrose says that our dwelling place is where our mind is, he does not simply mean that we have left behind the realm of the transitory for the

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realm of the eternal.80 He closely associates our heavenly citizenship with the life of the resurrection. In his early catechetical homilies on the life of Abraham, Ambrose interprets God’s instruction to “traverse the land, both the length of it and the breadth” (Gen. 13:17) to be an exhortation to “perfect virtue” that leads to the promised land flowing with milk and honey. Illustrating for his catechumens how one can have heaven as one’s dwelling place while still on earth, Ambrose contrasts those whose citizenship is in heaven with the “inhabitants of the earth” who are under God’s judgment (Rev. 8:13). The latter have been conquered by “lusts of earthly citizenship and the chains of this age.” The former are not inhabitants (habitatores) of earth but sojourners (accolae), the difference between which he explains as follows: “[A] sojourner hopes for a temporal dwelling place, but the inhabitant sets all hope and use of his substance there where he thinks he must dwell. Thus, whoso is a sojourner on earth is an inhabitant of heaven, but whoso is an inhabitant of earth is a possessor of death.”81 Here one sees the tension in Ambrose between his realized and his anticipated eschatologies. The former is confident in the power of the mind freed from worldly attachments to ascend to God and so make heaven its dwelling place. The latter realizes that full entry into our heavenly citizenship comes only at the resurrection, which is our hope. Nonetheless, the Christian in the present age can be described properly as an inhabitant of heaven because heaven and not worldly power or pleasure is the object of her hope and is where she directs the substance of her being. Even as Abraham had renounced his citizenship in the land of the Chaldeans and was merely a sojourner in Egypt en route to the promised land, so too the Christian is but a sojourner in the world, which she views as only a temporary dwelling and not her home. The Christian’s mind is able to be directed toward God and so make heaven its dwelling place because of the example of the virtuous patriarchs and saints. In his Hexameron, Ambrose offers an ecclesiastical interpretation of Isaiah 5:1–2: “my beloved had a vineyard on a hill in a fruitful place . . . and I built a tower in the midst thereof.” Not surprisingly, “my beloved” is Christ, the vineyard is the Church, and the individual vines are the souls of Christians. Christ, like the vinedresser digging around and pruning the vines, frees the soul from “earthly anxieties,” “solicitude for the world,” and “desire for wealth or power.”82 The tower in the middle of the garden is a figure of the apostles and patriarchs, whose examples of virtue, such as courage, arouse bravery in their “countrymen” or fellow members of the church, who are “not permitted to lie mean and despised on the ground.” But looking to their exemplary virtue, the Christian’s mind is lifted up to “higher things” and boldly claims, “But our citizenship is in heaven.” Then in his typical fashion of interweaving biblical images, Ambrose interprets Isaiah’s vision of the vineyard together with Jesus’

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metaphor from John 9:15, “I am the vine and you are the branches,” and with the declaration in 1 John 4:16, “God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God.” To prevent the vine “from being bent and battered by the storms and tempests of the world,” Ambrose explains, “the vine holds in the embrace of love . . . all that are near. . . . That is love, therefore, that binds us with things on high and plants us in heaven. Because ‘he who abides in love, God abides in him.’”83 The rectitude of the vine or soul whereby the soul can make heaven its dwelling place is possible only if the soul cleaves to God in love. For by love does the soul abide or dwell in the God who is love. Thus in Ambrose’s account of the catechumen’s turning from the world toward the heavenly commonwealth, the love for God born of baptismal grace is the central disposition of the soul that allows the Christian to attain that heavenly citizenship which she claimed in baptism. Here the logic of Ambrose’s treatment of our heavenly citizenship has brought us full circle. Love for God not only orients the soul to God but also allows the soul to hold fast to God. The love of God that is born in the soul of the thankful sinner whose sins are forgiven in baptism is the very love necessary for the Christian to continue to abide in God and so enjoy proleptically the heavenly citizenship characteristic of the life of the inner man. From Christ’s mercy comes love. From the examples of the apostles and patriarchs come courage and fortitude. Together they enable the believer to persevere amid worldly temptations and overcome the impulses of concupiscence in order to abide in the life of the new humanity that Christ fashioned by his Incarnation and resurrection. This new humanity is the very character of the inner man in which the Christian is regenerated through baptism.

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Epilogue

The Christian life for Ambrose is a virtuous life. The possibility for the true virtue of Christ’s followers is created by the grace of baptism. The conversio of baptism is the entrance to a new conversatio, no longer earthly, but in caelis. This heavenly conversatio is not an escape from the world, but a participation in Christ’s re-creative work of salvation that restores the possibility for fellowship between man and God. The soteriological foundation for the life of virtue has been the subject of this book. The foundation, however, is not the complete structure. But now readers can turn to the actual content of Ambrose’s ethical teachings to examine how the conversio of baptism and the conversatio in caelis effect our conception of the virtuous life. The new question is: Are the Christian virtues, in Ambrose’s preaching, identical with classical pagan virtues or do the Gospel narratives and the Genesis narratives of the lives of the patriarchs change the character of the pagan virtues practiced by Christians? If there is a change in the character of the virtues, how significant is it? Are the virtues essentially the same habits of thought and action simply harnessed to serve Christ? Or does the reorientation of the virtues toward Christ transform the content of the virtues? We have already gotten a hint of how the Gospel changes the virtues in Ambrose’s discussion of baptismal justification. As we have seen, justification (iustificatio), or being made righteous or just (iustus), in baptism is the result of Christ’s revelation of God’s justice (iustitia Dei) in his atoning death and subsequently the Christian’s imitation of Christ’s

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faithfulness to the Father. But how does the Gospel narrative of the iustitia Dei provide the template for Christian iustitia? How, for Ambrose, does the revelation of Christ’s justice inform the Christian vision of the just treatment of people in the present age? Does Christian justice mean rendering to each according to his deserts or does Christ’s unmerited forgiveness create a new paradigm in which to think about practicing justice? Similarly, we have seen that Ambrose views piety as the cause of courage. But what, if anything, is the difference between the character of courage arising from devotion to a crucified and resurrected Messiah and courage arising from the love of honor or love of one’s polis? These are not new questions. But hopefully Ambrose’s ethical teachings can be revisited and reconsidered in the light of baptismal piety that establishes both the efficient and final cause of virtue.

Notes

PREFACE

1. Wayne A. Meeks, The Moral World of the First Christians (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1986), 12. 2. Hauerwas quoted in ibid. 3. Abraham J. Malherbe, Moral Exhortation: A Greco-Roman Sourcebook (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1986), 12. 4. Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996), 18. 5. Wayne A. Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 1–3. 6. Abraham J. Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989), 8. 7. P. de Labriolle, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose, trans. Herbert Wilson (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1928). 8. F. Homes Dudden, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose (Oxford: Clarendon, 1935), 502 n. 2. 9. Pierre Courcelle, “Plotin et saint Ambroise,” Revue de philologie, de littérature, et d’histoire anciennes 76 (1950): 29–56; Pierre Courcelle, “Nouveaux aspects du platonisme chez saint Ambroise,” Revue des études latines 34 (1956): 220–39; Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin, 2nd ed. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1973); Pierre Hadot, “Platon et Plotin dans trois sermons de Saint Ambroise,” Revue des études latines 34 (1956): 202–20. 10. Goulven Madec, Saint Ambroise et la Philosophie (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1974).

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xiii–xvi

11. “Augustine read Neoplatonic works in Milan, among which may have been the De regressu animae of Porphyry, to which he refers in City of God. It is not likely that Ambrose, with his knowledge of Greek and general equipment of a more formal education than Augustine had received, would have been less well read in philosophy at the age of forty than Augustine was at the age of thirty two,” Andrew LenoxConyngham, “Ambrose and Philosophy,” in Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity: Essays in Tribute to George Christopher Stead, ed. Lionel R. Wickham, Caroline P. Bammel, and Erica C. D. Hunter (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), 118. 12. Ibid., 128. 13. Madec, Saint Ambroise et la Philosophie, 236. 14. Goulven Madec, “L’Homme intérieur selon saint Ambroise,” in Ambroise de Milan: XVIe centenaire de son élection épiscopale, ed. Yves-Marie Duval (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1974), 283–308. 15. Craig Alan Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method of Mystagogical Preaching (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 96. 16. Rowan A. Greer, Broken Lights and Mended Lives: Theology and the Common Life in the Early Church (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986), 11. 17. Baziel Maes, La Loi Naturelle selon Ambroise de Milan (Rome: Presses de L’Université Grégorienne, 1967). 18. Marcia L. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005). 19. Hervé Savon, Saint Ambroise devant l’Exégèse de Philon le Juif (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1977); Enzo Lucchesi, L’usage de Philon dans l’oeuvre exégétique de Saint Ambroise (Leiden: Brill, 1977). 20. Yves-Marie Duval, “L’originalité du De viriginibus dans le mouvement ascétique occidental: Ambroise, Cyprien, Athanase,” in Ambroise de Milan: XVIe centenaire de son élection épiscopale, ed. Yves-Marie Duval (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1974), 9–66. 21. J. Patout Burns, “Ambrose Preaching to Augustine: The Shaping of Faith,” in Augustine: “Second Founder of the Faith,” ed. Joseph C. Schnaubelt and Frederick Van Fleteren (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 373–86; J. Patout Burns, “Creation and Fall according to Ambrose of Milan,” in Augustine: Biblical Exegete, ed. Joseph C. Schnaubelt and Frederick Van Fleteren (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 71–97; John C. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine De Bono Mortis,” in The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R. A. Markus, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Mark Vessey (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 232–49. 22. Michele Renee Salzman, The Making of A Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 23. Paulinus, Life of Saint Ambrose 7, in Ambrose, trans. Boniface Ramsey (London: Routledge, 1997), 198. 24. Life of Saint Ambrose 9, in ibid., 199. 25. de Labriolle, Life and Times of St. Ambrose; Dudden, Life and Times of St. Ambrose; Angelo Paredi, Saint Ambrose: His Life and Times, trans. M. Joseph Costelloe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964).

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26. Neil B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); D. H. Williams, Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Arian-Nicene Conflicts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); John Moorhead, Ambrose: Church and Society in the Late Roman World (London: Longman, 1999). It is worth noting that although Paredi’s biography is essentially favorable in its judgment of Ambrose’s life and presents him in a highly sympathetic way, he is not uncritical of the details of Paulinus’s narrative. For instance, he observes that since the story of the bees flying in and out of the infant Ambrose’s mouth finds parallels in Pindar and Plato and later in Isidore of Seville, it should be treated as “a bit of folklore” surrounding Ambrose (Saint Ambrose, 9). Dudden refers to it as an “anecdote” but does not render a judgment as to its historical factuality (Life and Times of St. Ambrose, 3). 27. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 49–51. 28. Ibid., xxii. 29. Williams, Arian-Nicene Conflicts, 117–18. 30. Ibid., 119–20. 31. Ibid., 139. 32. Ibid., 143–44. 33. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs, 46.

PROLEGOMENA

1. Augustine, Confessions I.11.17. 2. James J. O’Donnell, Augustine, Confessions Vol. II Books 1–7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 67–68, describes the catechumen as having an “of-but-not-in” status with respect to the Church. 3. Ibid., 67. 4. Confessions I.11.17. Augustine points out the folly of delaying the grace of baptism that can heal the weakened nature from which sin comes. “Why is it that we still hear nowadays people saying . . ., ‘Let him be, let him do as he likes, he is not baptized yet’ [when] we do not say ‘Let him be, let him go on injuring himself, he is not cured yet.’ How much better would it have been if I had been healed at once, and if everything had been done by my own efforts and those of my family to ensure that the good health my soul had received should be kept safe in the care of you who had given it” (I.11.18). 5. After watching his beloved but unnamed friend baptized while unconscious, Augustine made fun of his involuntary baptism. Confessions IV.4.8. 6. Confessions V.9.16. 7. Confessions IX.1.1. 8. Carl G. Vaught cautions against seeing the retreat to Cassiciacum primarily as a time of convalescence. Focusing on Augustine’s health, he says, one is likely to “mistake a symptom for a cause, where the surface malady of exhausted lungs points to the deeper predicament from which the new garment he is wearing sets him free.” Encounters with God in Augustine’s Confessions Books VII–IX (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004), 108.

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9. Augustine contrasts his, Alypius’s, and Adeodatus’s “uncouth” love for God—given that they were catechumens—with the “virile faith” of the baptized Monica, who united the serenity of old age with maternal love and Christian devotion (Confessions IX.4.8). 10. His reading of the Psalms, Augustine explains, both “inflamed” him with love for God and was “a remedy against pride,” for, as his protracted exposition of Psalm 4 illustrates, he was able to read his life with its vices, pride, folly, and moments of grace back through the psalm’s narrative (Confessions IX.4.8). As with Alypius, who was “already clothed with the humility that befitted [God’s] mysteries” (IX.6.14), the humility inspired by the Psalms cultivated in Augustine’s soul that chief disposition necessary for baptism. 11. Confessions IX.4.12. 12. “[Q ]uo percipiendae tantae gratiae paratior aptiorque fierem” (Confessions IX.5.13). 13. In Rome, these catechumens were called electi. The competentes and electi correspond to the stage of the catechumenate in the Greek churches called the φωτιζόμενοι: the “Illuminated” or “Enlightened.” 14. “We have given a daily sermon on morals, when the deeds of the Patriarchs or the precepts of the Proverbs were read, in order that, being informed and instructed by them, you might become accustomed to enter upon the ways of our forefathers and to pursue their road, and to obey the divine commands, whereby renewed by baptism you might hold to that manner of life which befits those who are washed” (De mysteriis 1.1). 15. Based on Maria Grazia Mara’s assessment of the dates of the patriarchal treatises as ranging from 382–388 (“Ambrose of Milan, Ambrosiaster, and Nicetas,” in Patrology, Volume 4: The Golden Age of Latin Patristic Literature, ed. Johannes Quasten [Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1995], 156–59), scholars have sought to establish a connection between Ambrose’s quotations from Plotinus (Enneads 1.4 in De Iacob I.731ff.) and Augustine’s introduction to Neoplatonism. See Pierre Courcelle, “Plotin et saint Ambroise,” Revue de philologie, de littérature, et d’histoire anciennes 76 (1950): 29–56, Pierre Courcelle, “Nouveaux aspects du platonisme chez saint Ambroise,” Revue des études latines 34 (1956): 220–39, Pierre Courcelle, “De Platon à saint Ambroise par Apulée,” Revue de philologie 35 (1961): 15–28, Pierre Courcelle, Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin, 2nd ed. (Paris: E. De Boccard, 1968); Pierre Hadot, “Platon et Plotin dans trois sermons de saint Ambroise,” Revue des études latines 34 (1956): 202–20; and Maurice Testard, “Saint Ambroise de Milan,” Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé 69 (1992): 367–94. Marcia Colish in Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 25–28, argues that, since these homilies were preached to the catechumens, he could have heard them only if Ambrose had delivered them in Lent of 387. If, however, Ambrose’s use of the martyr narrative of 4 Maccabees in De Iacob reflects the imminent threat of an attack by imperial troops attempting to seize Ambrose’s basilica for the Homoians during Holy Week of 386, Ambrose “in the years immediately following 386 . . . might have thought it important to impress upon his competentes . . . that

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baptism was a serious commitment that might well bring with it the price tag of martyrdom” (26). In this case, De Iacob would not have been preached earlier than 387, since in the crisis of Holy Week 386 Ambrose’s catechetical curriculum had already moved to traditio symboli. While this hypothesis concerning the dating of De Iacob would open the possibility that Augustine heard the homilies on Jacob in which Ambrose makes use of Enneads 1.4, Colish is certainly right that Victorinus’s translations of Plotinus that Augustine says he read before his experience in the Milanese garden had influence on Augustine’s appropriation of Plotinian thought prior to his hearing Ambrose’s homilies (8). 16. Colish (Ambrose’s Patriarchs, 27) argues that Ambrose’s discussion of the fates of the chief butler and the chief baker in De Ioseph may be his explanation of Maximus’s execution in 388 of Calligonus, whom Valentinian II used to resolve the basilica crisis of 386. 17. One example of a catechetical treatise that reflects repetition and compilation of material from several years is Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catecheses. Although the homilies purport to be the transcription of Cyril’s catechetical lectures during Lent 349, the textual variations and Cyril’s reference to what he taught to previous classes of catechumens suggest the final document incorporates material from previous years’ lectures. See Anthony A. Stephenson, “General Introduction,” in St. Cyril of Jerusalem: “Procatechesis” and “Catecheses” 1–12, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 61 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1969), 1–2. 18. Craig Alan Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method of Mystagogical Preaching (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 152. 19. Ibid., 152. 20. Confessions IX.6.14. 21. Augustine might have shared Ambrose’s expressed view that a discussion of the sacraments proper should not be taught to catechumens before initiation when “the light of the mysteries will infuse itself better in the unsuspecting than if some sermon had preceded them” (De mysteriis I.2). 22. During excavation under the Piazza Duomo, archaeologists discovered the foundation of a long hall with two apses. The hall, situated south-southeast of the basilica, may well be the lecture hall where competentes received instruction in addition to that which they received during the daily Lenten worship services. See Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method, 149. 23. De mysteriis I.3 and De sacramentis I.1.2–3. 24. “[R]egenerationis sacrarium” (De mysteriis 2.5). 25. De sacramentis I.1.3 and 2.4. Satterlee (Ambrose of Milan’s Method, 162 n. 91) explains Ambrose’s omission of this detail from De mysteriis, not, as some argue, because it was a Roman rather than a Milanese practice, but as part of the standard omission of certain details proper to the disciplina arcani. That is, his silence on this matter was out of a desire not to scandalize Jews and pagans who would interpret the stripping of women and oiling down their bodies as a sign of Christian immorality. 26. Hugh Riley, Christian Initiation: A Comparative Study of the Interpretation of the Baptismal Liturgy in the Mystagogical Writings of Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom,

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Theodore of Mospuesestia, and Ambrose of Milan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1974), 41. 27. De mysteriis 2.5–6 and De sacramentis I.2.5. 28. De mysteriis 2.7. The turning from the west/the devil as the mark of renunciation (αποτάξις or abrenuntio) and turning to the east/Christ as the symbol of confession of faith (συντάξις or professio) was the dramatic representation of the conversion or reorientation of μετάνοια (Riley, Christian Initiation, 41). 29. De mysteriis 3.10–11. 30. “For water without the preaching of the cross of the Lord is to no advantage for future salvation; but when it has been consecrated by the mystery of the saving cross, then it is ordered for the use of the spiritual laver and the cup of salvation. . . . [I] nto this fountain the priest casts the message of the cross of the Lord, and the water becomes sweet for grace” (De mysteriis 3.14). Ambrose is not usually taken to mean that a homily is inserted at this point of the service. Rather the words of consecration, which identify the waters of the pool with the cross, are the requisite “preaching of the cross.” 31. De mysteriis 4.20 and De sacramentis II.7.20. 32. De mysteriis 6.29–30 and De sacramentis III.1.1. 33. “For since the very Author of salvation has redeemed us through obedience, how much more ought we, his servants, to offer the service of humility and obedience” (De mysteriis 6.33). 34. Ambrose is explicit that this ritual foot washing was contrary to the practice of the bishop of Rome. Yet in fulfilling Jesus’ command to Peter that his feet must be washed, Ambrose explains that he is being more faithful to the tradition of Peter than the bishop who sits in Peter’s chair. “In all things I desire to follow the Church in Rome, yet we, too, have human feeling; what is preserved more rightly elsewhere we, too, preserve more rightly. We follow the Apostle Peter himself; we cling to his devotion. What does the Church in Rome reply to this? Surely for us the very author of this assertion is the Apostle Peter, who was the priest of the Church in Rome” (De sacramentis III.1.5–6). 35. De mysteriis 7.34 and De sacramentis IV.1.5–6 and V.1.4. 36. J. H. Srawley, St. Ambrose: On the Sacraments and On the Mysteries (London: SPCK, 1950), 24. 37. Quoting Isaiah 11:2–3, Ambrose tells the neophytes in his postbaptismal instruction: “So recall that you have received a spiritual seal, ‘the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, the spirit of holy fear,’ and preserve what you have received” (De mysteriis 8.42). It is not clear if Isaiah’s words were part of Ambrose’s invocation or charge to the initiate. Here again Ambrose is as selectively silent about the ritual details of confirmation as he is about other rites, such as the first anointing. Satterlee (Ambrose of Milan’s Method, 176 n. 197) gives three suggestions for this omission: (1) the neophytes remembered the details and so did not need to be reminded; (2) it was a way of preserving the secrecy of the rite; and (3) “there was no ritual action to describe.” Describing Christ’s passion as the sacrifice for the redemption of the people, Ambrose

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explains: “For that bullock was in figure Christ, in whom, as Isaiah said, dwelt the fullness of the seven spiritual virtues” (De Spiritu Sancto I.prologue.4). 38. De mysteriis 7.42. 39. Confessions IX.6.14.

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1. Based on Ambrose’s description of his catechesis in De mysteriis 1.1, De Isaac is supposed by scholars to be derived from those homilies on the patriarchs. See Marcia L. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 14. 2. De Abraham I.1.1. 3. The threefold layers of the spiritual meaning of Scripture (moral, natural, and mystical) are taken from Origen’s interpretation of Solomon’s trilogy of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, which correspond to stages of the soul’s study of and ascent to God. Proverbs is the source of ethical instruction, Ecclesiastes teaches about the nature of the transient world, and Song of Songs provides the mystical knowledge of God “through certain veiled figures of love.” Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, trans. Rowan A. Greer (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1979), 232–35. Ambrose, however, does not assume that the moral meaning is confined to Proverbs, the natural meaning to Ecclesiastes, and the mystical meaning to the Song of Songs. In Ambrose’s interpretation, the Song of Songs contains not only the mystical meaning but the moral and spiritual meanings as well. See Ambrose’s threefold interpretation of Song of Songs 2:1 (De Isaac 4.30). Likewise, Ambrose recognizes key passages of Genesis as having a moral, natural, and spiritual sense. Perhaps his most extended discussion of the threefold spiritual senses of Scripture comes in his interpretation of Isaac’s wells (De Isaac 4.20). 4. Ambrose introduces the discussion of the soul in Isaac immediately following an exhortation against the dangers of bodily pleasures that soften the mind’s firmness (1.2). He begins his exposition on the Song of Songs as the focus for his account of the nature of the soul by exhorting his catechumens to reflect on human nature. “Consider then, O man, who you are and to what end you maintain your life and well-being. What, then, is man? Soul, or body, or a union of both?” (2.3). 5. De bono mortis 7.27. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 3.12. 8. De Isaac 2.5; De bono mortis 3.10 and 9.40. 9. De bono mortis 3.11 and 2.6. 10. Responding to Cebes’s recitation of what he claims is the popular view that the soul ceases to exist at death, Socrates says that the argument for the immortality of the soul is not an idiot’s speculative babbling about wholly esoteric and irrelevant matters. Rather, the question of the immortality of the soul, especially as it is the object of discussion when he is at death’s portal, is a topic of the greatest existential importance because it addresses the question of whether he will soon cease to exist or

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continue to live. The answer to this question determines how he views his life in relationship to death (Phaedo 70a–c). 11. Socrates argues that he has a hope of blessedness among the gods precisely because his soul is immortal (Phaedo 63b, 64a). 12. Ennead IV.7.1 (emphasis mine). 13. For Plotinus’s discussion of the hylomorphic theory of substance, see Ennead II.4.4–5 and IV.7.1. 14. A harsher view is that of John Moorhead, according to whom these passages from Isaac and De bono mortis show no signs of true adaptation that conforms to an orthodox view of the soul and body. “Ambrose’s identification of individuals with their souls and his understanding that these are released by death are views for which there is scarcely any support in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. . . . His view represents the triumph of the Greek speculation over any dignity Christian thought has vested in the body.” John Moorhead, Ambrose: Church and Society in the late Roman World (London: Longman, 1999), 172. 15. See Margaret R. Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999). 16. For a discussion of how the term eclectic can be applied to Christian theologians of the late fourth century, see my discussion of Gregory of Nyssa’s appropriation of non-Christian philosophy in Passion and Paradise: Human and Divine Emotion in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa (New York: Crossroad, 2004), 48–51. See also John Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); and John Dillon and A. A. Long, The Question of “Eclecticism”: Studies in Later Greek Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 17. Indeed, Ambrose offers no philosophical arguments for the soul’s function as the animating principle of the body or its transcendence of the body at death. These claims rest solely upon scriptural warrants. 18. Ramsey MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 12. 19. Moorhead, Ambrose, 177. 20. One impetus for Ambrose writing hymns that gained near-canonical authority (being quoted at the councils of Ephesus in 431 and Chalcedon in 451) was his concern that the Pro-Nicenes needed to have hymns of their own to counter the influence of popular Homoian hymns. See George E. Saint-Laurent, “St. Ambrose of Milan and the Eastern Fathers,” Diakonia 15.1 (1980): 23–24. 21. Moorhead (Ambrose, 126) notes that in his refutation (Ep. 74) of Symmachus’s report on the Altar of Victory, Ambrose opened the letter with polished rhetoric characterized by “more reminiscences of the poetry of Virgil than any other letter he wrote.” Yet at the same time, Ambrose warned the emperor not to be taken in by Symmachus’s eloquent blandishments. 22. Ivor Davidson, “Ambrose’s De officiis and the Intellectual Climate of the Late Fourth Century,” Vigiliae Christianae 49.4 (1995): 316–17. Although Davidson is chiefly addressing the question of why Ambrose retains the structure of Cicero’s De officiis for his own work by that name, his point about the apologetic use of Cicero may well apply to his use of Plotinus.

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23. Lenox-Conyngham puts it well: “Philosophy was . . . [the] legal currency of the time and no educated Christian of Ambrose’s background could have avoided it, however little he may have agreed with it. Ambrose’s knowledge of philosophy, therefore, is not, in itself, a remarkable fact . . . any more than it would be to find a Christian living in the former Communist bloc possessing a knowledge of Marxism.” Andrew Lenox-Conyngham, “Ambrose and Philosophy,” in Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity: Essays in Tribute to George Christopher Stead, ed. Lionel R. Wickham, Caroline P. Bammel, and Erica C. D. Hunter (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), 118. While Lenox-Conyngham disagrees with Madec’s contention that Ambrose learned philosophy during his instruction for baptism at the hands of Simplicianus, he concurs with Madec that Ambrose was openly dismissive and critical of philosophy. Lenox-Conyngham sees Ambrose’s life after baptism and ordination as such a radical shift from his prebaptismal life in the world that it is inconceivable that he would want to create a synthesis of Platonism and Christianity. As an explanation of Ambrose’s continued deployment of philosophy, Lenox-Conyngham writes: “Ambrose’s use of philosophy was probably influenced partly by a wish to show that such a synthesis was impossible because of the immense superiority of the Christian revelation” (128). 24. De Isaac 2.4. Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations I.ix.19–20 carries a similar list of classical theories of the soul: from Empedocles’s view that the soul is blood, to Zeno’s view that the soul is fire, to the musician and philosopher Aristoxenus’s view that the soul is harmony, to the tripartite soul of Plato, and the numerical view of Pythagoras and Xenocrates. While Cicero speaks at some length about associations of the soul with the heart, Ambrose does not include it in his catalog. 25. Plotinus, having argued that the life of material substance must “transcend all bodily nature” since it is naturally in constant flux, proceeds to focus on the Stoic pneuma: “And this universe of ours would be dissolved if one entrusted it to the conjoining power of a body, giving the rank of soul as far as names go to this body, to air and breath which is extremely liable to dispersion and does not have its unity of itself. . . . For what order could there be in a breath, which needs order from soul, or what reason or intelligence?” (Ennead IV.7.3). 26. Plotinus presses that while Stoics claim that some forms of pneuma or pyr are rational, they admit that there are many breaths that are just breath. By arguing that the rational pneuma or pyr have a certain character that makes them the source of life for matter, they necessarily appeal to some rational principle that is not itself breath or fire to provide the pneuma with the distinctive life-giving and rational character of soul. See Ennead IV.7.4. 27. De Isaac 2.4. 28. Ibid., 2.3. 29. Hexameron VI.8.46; De Isaac 2.3. The critical point, as discussed below, is that Ambrose makes a distinction between soul and flesh—the former refers to humanity rightly ordered toward God and the latter refers to humanity in a state of sin. 30. It is worth noting that although Ambrose does argue for the identification of the self with the soul by arguing for the soul’s immortality, this is not his initial argument. Rather he postpones his discussion of the immortal nature of the soul until

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the very end of Isaac—even then his real point is that we need not fear death since our life is hidden in Christ (De Isaac 8.79)—which sets up his longer exploration of death and the immortality of the soul in On the Good of Death. This is a telling move. For it suggests that he is more concerned with describing the soul’s faithful obedience to God—man’s telos, which is the focus of Isaac—than the soul’s survival of the body in death. Nevertheless, the soul’s immortality, in contrast with the body’s transient nature, makes it the locus of the “true” self. 31. De bono mortis 9.42. 32. Ibid., 10.43. 33. See Ambrose’s threefold definition of death, in which he speaks of the death that is fearful to most men because it is a punishment for sin (Ibid., 2.3). 34. Ibid., 10.44. 35. De Abraham II.1.3. Ambrose here rehearses Plato’s argument from Phaedo (65a–67b) that the immortal soul should not fear death because death brings the blessedness of a pure vision of reality; as Ambrose puts it, the soul sees “the living substance of things, inasmuch as [it has] driven out the dark image of the body, the senses, and the voice.” Yet the critical point is that the rational soul or mind, by virtue of its immortal nature, is able to participate in the eternal life and so receive the beatific vision. 36. De Isaac 2.3. 37. While Colish is right that Ambrose subscribes to a psychosomatic view of the person, it is not an Aristotelian form of hylomorphism. Colish claims, “In these two treatises [De Isaac and De Iacob] his injunctions to flee physical pleasures are rooted even more expressly [than in De Abraham] in a hylomorphic conception of human nature. With Aristotle, Ambrose states that our soul is our form and our body is our matter. The two are integrally united and cannot be separated in this life without destroying the human person whom they constitute” (Ambrose’s Patriarchs, 34). While Ambrose does maintain the redemption of the whole person at the resurrection, he does not doubt the soul’s survival of the body in death, as does Aristotle. Early in De anima (I.1; 403a6–13), Aristotle raises the question of whether any affections (ta pathē—like Ambrose, Aristotle includes thinking or to noein among the pathē of the soul) can exist apart from the body. Allowing for the possibility that thinking might be an activity of the soul that does not require the body, Aristotle sets the standard adjudicating the question of the soul’s immortality: “If then any function or affection of the soul is peculiar to it, it can be separated from the body; but if there is nothing peculiar to the soul it cannot be separated.” Although he allows that mind itself is “an independent substance engendered in us, and . . . imperishable” (408b19–20), the powers of thinking and speculation do not themselves decay except because something else in the person decays that prevents thinking and speculation (I.4; 408b25– 27). The analogy he employs is sight and the eye. An old and decaying eye may not be able to see. But if a new eye were given, the power of sight would become active again. Later, using the example of the sailor and the ship (the sailor drowns without the ship and the ship cannot sail without the sailor), he states unequivocally: “It is quite clear, then, that neither the soul nor certain parts of it, if it has parts, can be separated from

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the body” (II.1; 413a4–6). This conclusion rests entirely upon his hylomorphic understanding of the soul-body relationship. “[S]ince the compound is an animate thing, the body cannot be the actuality of a soul, but the soul is the actuality of some body. For this reason those are right in their view who maintain that the soul cannot exist without the body, but is not itself in any sense a body . . . for the actuality of each thing is naturally inherent in its potentiality, that is in its own proper matter. From all this it is clear that the soul is a kind of actuality or notion of that which has the capacity of having a soul” (II.2; 414a19–22 and 26–28). For further discussion, see F. Nuyens’s argument concerning Aristotle and the mortality of the soul in L’évolution de la psychologie d’Aristote (1948), cited in William Guthrie, Aristotle: An Encounter: History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 277–78. 38. “While you share with the rest of creatures your corporeal weakness, you possess above and beyond all other creatures a faculty of the soul which in itself has nothing in common with the rest of created things” (Hexameron VI.1.2). He is not saying that the soul itself is uniquely human, but that the faculty of reason proper to the human soul is the source of humanity’s distinctive nature. 39. Ibid., VI.4.16–17. Specifically, Christians should be as vigilant as watchdogs, warning the Church of the threat of the “wolves” to Christ’s flock. 40. “[O]ne can easily perceive that they [viz., dogs] are able to understand, by the training given by nature, what it has taken a few individuals a long period of time to achieve with the aid of the refinements of syllogistic argumentation acquired in the advanced schools of rhetoric” (ibid., VI.4.23). 41. Ibid., VI.4.21. 42. Although in Hexameron VI.4.21, Ambrose’s comment, “The sweetness of life [which nature instructs us to pursue] is set against the harshness of death,” does not explicitly identify the death that nature teaches us to shun with the death the soul experiences by its alienation from God through sin (see De bono mortis 2.3). Yet given Ambrose’s subsequent interpretation of how human beings should imitate the examples of animals, it is clear that he does not intend that man should do exactly what animals do but should adapt the animal’s intuitive reaction to the distinctive situation of creatures made in God’s image. As an example of how wild animals know remedies that we do not, Ambrose says that we allow ourselves to be taken by surprise by wolves and so are rendered dumb. The remedy, we should know, is that, even dumbstruck, we can still pick up a rock with which to chase the wolf away. The rock, he explains, is Christ. “If you find refuge with Christ, the wolf will take flight and not terrify you” (Hexameron VI.4.27). 43. Hexameron VI.7.42. 44. Within his austere philosophy, Epictetus, a former slave who had endured savage beatings at the hands of his master, emphasizes the individual’s capacity for moral autonomy in the face of suffering. The freedom accessible to all, even abused slaves, is attainable if one recognizes that external things, such as wealth and honor, are beyond one’s control and therefore should not be desired. If, by contrast, one desires only that which is within one’s control, namely to live virtuously, then one avoids suffering caused by loss of externals and derives some degree of happiness from the virtue that is wholly within one’s control:

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[B]e assured it is no easy matter to keep your moral purpose in a state of conformity with nature, and, at the same time, to keep externals; but the man who devotes his attention to one of these two things must inevitably neglect the other. If you make it your will that your children and your wife and your friends should live forever, you are silly; for you are making it your will that things not under your control should be under your control. . . . If, however, it is your will not to fail in what you desire, this is in your power. Wherefore, exercise yourself in that which is in your power. Each man’s master is the person who has the authority over what the man wishes or does not wish, so as to secure it, or take it away. Whoever, therefore, wants to be free, let him neither wish for anything, nor avoid anything, that is under the control of others; or else he is necessarily a slave. (Epictetus, Encheiridion 13–14) 45. Ambrose’s correlation between body size and erect posture is that its massive size requires the animal to walk on all fours and so assumes the hunched-over, servile posture. The erect posture suggests a dignity that is not servile (Hexameron VI.9.54). 46. In contrast with quadrupeds that seek sustenance from eating from the earth, human beings, he implies, are able to look to goods beyond the earth by virtue of their body’s posture (ibid., VI.3.10). 47. Ibid., VI.9.56. “What avail are the strength and vigor of our muscles or the swiftness of our feet without the direction and assistance of the head, its commanderin-chief? From this source comes real support for all the members or their complete abandonment. To what avail is courage in combat without the aid of the eyes? To what avail is flight, if sight be lacking?” (ibid., VI.9.55). 48. Ambrose makes his point with the rhetorical questions: “Is it true that the flesh is made, ‘to the image of God’? In that case, is there earth in God, since flesh is of earth? Is God corporeal, that is to say, weak and subject like the flesh to the passions?” (ibid., VI.8.44). 49. Ibid., VI.1.2. 50. Ibid., VI.7.40. 51. Ibid., VI.7.41 and 8.46. Ambrose qualifies his “image Christology” by appealing to Jesus’ words from John 14:10, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me,” to show that Christ is not the image of God in the Arian sense of being other than God. Rather, Christ is the visible image of the Father bearing the divine virtues and wisdom proper to the plentitude of the divine nature. 52. “The ‘image’ of God is wisdom. The ‘image’ of God is he alone who has said: ‘I and the Father are one,’ thus possessing the likeness of the Father so as to have a unity of divinity and of plentitude. . . . [W]hen he says in the Gospel: ‘I and the Father,’ there is no reference to one sole person. But when he says: ‘We are one,’ there is no distinction either in divinity or in operation” (ibid., VI.7.41). 53. Ibid., VI.7.42. 54. Ibid. I have modified Savage’s translation slightly. Savage translates the first line, “Illa anima a deo pingitur, quae habet in se virtutum gratiam renitentem splendoremque pietatis,” as “That soul of yours is painted by God who holds in himself the flashing beauty of virtue and the splendor of piety.” Yet the antecedent of quae is anima.

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Although God is indeed the source of the grace of virtue and piety, it is the soul that holds onto these qualities. The last line, “Secundam hanc imaginem quae refulget, picture pretiosa est,” Savage renders, “Precious is that picture which in its brilliance is in accord with that divine reflection,” interpreting pictura as the antecedent of the relative quae and the subject of refulget. I have taken imago as the subject of refulget and construed the prepositional clause more closely with the main copula, pretiosa est. 55. Ibid., VI.8.47. 56. “Set above the world as if she were in the upper parts of her house—that is, her body—she [the soul] gazes on things divine and raises herself to things eternal, so that she may be with God; now she displays the light of her works, just as the moon displays its surface, over the whole world” (De Isaac 7.62). 57. Hexameron VI.6.39. 58. Ibid., VI.8.45. 59. Ambrose offers a more literal account of communion with the dead in his eulogy of his brother Satyrus. Initially, Ambrose implies that his departed brother is in some sense actually alive. “For when are you separated from me, since you are present again in so many of my occupations? You are here, I say, and you are ever presenting yourself at my side. With my whole mind and soul I embrace you, I gaze upon you, I speak to you, I caress you, and I am aware of your presence in the very quiet of the night or in the clear light of day.” The logic seems to be that Satyrus is present with him in the same way that Ambrose can be present with God in heaven even while still in the body. For he goes on to say, “But if in the quiet of the night souls still held by the chains of the body, and fettered, as it were, behind the prison bars of their members, can nevertheless discern higher and more hidden things, how much more do they see these, when they now enjoy pure and ethereal mental powers and no longer suffer from the disabilities of bodily corruption?” Satyrus’s mind in the purer heavenly state can have knowledge of his brother and be with him even as his mind ascended to heaven before his death. But then Ambrose offers a less radical view of Satyrus’s abiding presence: “But even when we were not together physically, our images were always present in each other’s minds. These have not disappeared even now, but they constantly recur, and with greater frequency and clearness the more they are longed for” (De excessu fratris I.72–73). 60. Hexameron VI.8.45. 61. Ibid., VI.7.42. 62. Ibid., VI.8.49. 63. De Isaac 2.4. 64. Hexameron VI.7.43. 65. Gregory of Nyssa, speaking in the persona of his sister Macrina, used the notion of essence as lying in the idia, that is, the unique features of human nature— the divine image—to exclude the emotions of desire and anger from the definition of the soul: [W]e base our argument on the inspired scripture which decrees that there is nothing in the soul which does not reflect the divine nature. For the one who says that the soul is “the image of God” affirms that what is alien to God is outside the definition of the soul. So if some quality is not recognized as part

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of the divine nature, we cannot reasonably think that it is part of the nature of the soul. . . . [T]he definition given by scripture would not be applicable to our nature if we conceive of anger and desire and such qualities as being essential to it. In any case, you would not give an essential definition of anything by speaking of the general rather than the specific. . . . How could part of a nature undermine the definition, since every definition of essence looks to what is proper to the subject? Whatever is outside of the specific difference is rejected as being alien to the definition. (Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione, in Virginia Woods Callahan, St. Gregory: Ascetical Works, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 58 [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1967], 217–18; PG 16, 52A–53A) 66. Hexameron VI.7.43. 67. Ibid., VI.7.43. 68. De Isaac 2.3. 69. Origen integrates 2 Cor. 4:16 with Rom. 7:22 to argue that the two stories of the creation of humanity describe the creation of two men or aspects of human nature: the inner man made after the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26) and the man “formed from the dust of the earth” (Gen. 2:7) as the external man, which, in the saint’s words, is “wasting away and growing weak” (Origen, “Prologue,” Commentary on the Song of Songs, 220). Origen goes on to equate the inner man made in the image of God with the soul, which, like the bride in the Song of Songs, is wounded with heavenly love and desire for the Word who is the Bridegroom (223). Given Ambrose’s ensuing discussion of the soul’s ascent in the Song of Songs, his appeal to Origen’s commentary is not surprising. Although Origen does identify Paul, along with other saints, with the inner man, Ambrose shows his independent thought when he equates the speaker of Rom. 7, who desires to be freed from the body of death, with the true Paul, who is the inner man who hates the conflict between the inner and outer man. 70. De Isaac 2.3 (based on Rom. 7). 71. “[T]here are in us two νόες, viz., two minds; perhaps, because there is one of the outward man, which is corrupted and another of the inner, which is renewed through the Sacraments” (Expo. Luc. VIII.49). 72. Ibid., VIII.49. 73. See Augustine’s argument in De civitate Dei XIV that the body cannot be the cause of evil since the devil did not possess a material body as do human beings. 74. De Isaac 4.16. 75. De Iacob I.3.10. 76. Expo. Luc. II.63. 77. The biblical passage from which he derives the association of anima with iustitia is Prov. 11:25 (LXX), “A soul is blessed which is altogether sincere.” The pejorative use of caro comes in his discussion of Gen. 6:3, which has already been discussed. See De Isaac 2.3. 78. De Iacob I.5.17 (emphasis mine). 79. De Abraham II.6.27. This interpretation comes in the context of Ambrose’s explanation of “herdsmen of cattle” (Gen. 13). The herdsmen symbolize the mind and

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the cattle represent the senses and affections of the soul: “[W]e take the cattle to signify the irrational senses of the body.” Ambrose amplifies the metaphor of the herdsman and his flock: “The herdsmen are in charge of the flocks, either sober and diligent, not allowing tilled fields to be trampled underfoot . . . or careless and neglectful since they do not restrain their herds, so that they feed on grass and meadows, but permit them to roam at will” (De Abraham II.6.27). Although he places responsibility for controlling the appetites with the rational soul, the flesh is “the irrational senses of the body.” 80. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs, 35–36. If, when she says that Ambrose views the body as “ethically neutral,” Colish understands Ambrose to affirm the intrinsic goodness of the material embodiment, then she is certainly right. Yet, what is problematic is her claim that although Ambrose employs the Platonic imagery of the soul as imprisoned in the body, he understands this to mean that the soul is imprisoned by sin. “For Ambrose the real prison of our souls is not our bodies but our ‘flesh,’ that is, our sinfulness” (36). However, Colish does not explain what Ambrose means by saying that we are imprisoned in our sin, nor is there an account of how the body of fallen humanity with its appetites and nonrational senses is the source of temptation and distraction for the soul that would seek God. 81. De mysteriis 9.59 and 6.41. 82. Ibid., 9.58 and 9.55. 83. Commenting on Ps. 24:4, “He has not taken his soul in vain,” Ambrose writes: “[T]he man has taken his soul in vain who is constructing the things of the world and building the things of the body” (De bono mortis 7.28). His expression “building the things of the body” is curious since we are not creators of our own body. It is quite possible, especially since among the vanities he enumerates is silver, that he may be offering a critique of the ornamentation of the body with silver. 84. Having argued for the soul’s immortality and the blessedness of its repose in fellowship with God, Ambrose offers this moral critique of ancient funerary practices: “And so men build rich tombs in vain, as if they were receptacles for the soul and not just for the body” (ibid., 10.44). 85. This concern among the wealthy and powerful for the dubious motives of people seeking to form friendships is reflected in the importance placed on the necessity of social equality as one of the chief criteria for friendship. If individuals are equals in wealth and dignitas, they can trust that the other person, by virtue of being self-sufficient in material resources and social standing, has no reason to see them as forming a relationship for the sake of ascending the social and political ladder. Rather, with the person who is one’s equal there is the confidence that he or she is attracted to us by a genuine affinity of the soul. In this context, the good of friendship is an end in itself and not a means to any other end except virtue.

CHAPTER

2

1. De anima (II.1; 412a) provides Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory of substance. He proceeds to define the soul as “the first actuality [entelecheia hē protē] of a natural body possessed of organs” (II.1; 412b5). Given his act ontology—a thing is what it

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does—he explains the form or action that makes a thing what it is obviously resides in the soul that animates the body. In the case of the eye (or vision), the activity of an eye is the entelechy of the eye even when the eye is sleeping and not actively seeing. Thus, he makes a distinction between two types of potentiality: the potential of the eye of a dead person that cannot see (unless transplanted into the body of a living person) and the potential of a sleeping eye that retains the power to see. 2. Ibid., II.4; 415b9. 3. “[Q ]uae velut praeclara artifex quo vult obsequium corporis ducit, et effingit de eo speciem quam elegerit, et eas quas voluerit, facit in eo resonare virtutes, pangens nunc modulos castitatis” (De bono mortis 6.25). It is worth noting the context of this discussion of his hylomorphic anthropology. Ambrose begins by explaining Rom. 8:7 that we must die to the world and the flesh, which are hostile to God. Dying to the world and the flesh means that “our soul is subject to Christ alone” (ibid., 6.25). One who is greedy or indulges in luxuries is not submissive to Christ. Only the just and temperate man is submissive to Christ. Thus, the soul that submits to Christ does not follow the impulses of the body that lead to excess but governs and orders the activities of the body according to the will of Christ. 4. Ennead IV.7.1. Perhaps Plotinus’s clearest account of his appropriation of Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory of substance appears in Ennead II.4. Matter, he explains, as distinct from ideas, is that substratum that receives form (II.4.1 and II.4.4). Body is matter (darkness) plus idea (light). Mind apprehends the idea or reason principle (ho logos). Matter provides mass and magnitude while form provides quantity and shape (4.6). Since matter is undifferentiated, having spatial extension only (4.11), matter per se is grasped, not by the eye (since matter lacks color), but only by the mind (4.12). For human beings, the body, which is a compound of form and matter, owes its existence to the form of the reason principle being communicated to matter by the soul (IV.7.2). 5. Ibid., V.3.11. For a very helpful discussion of the One and the Intellect, see A. H. Armstrong’s “Plotinus,” in Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), esp. 238–42. 6. Ennead VI.4 and 11. Although both nous and psychē are rational, Plotinus distinguishes between the contemplative intellect of nous and the seeking intellect of psychē. This “seeking” on the part of psychē reflects its intermediate or mediatorial relation between the intelligible realm of the forms and the material, sensible things that soul creates and animates. To understand the nature of psychē as desiring and creative intellect, see Plotinus’s account of the emanation of soul from nous in Ennead IV.7.13. 7. Ibid., IV.8.6. 8. The nous, as the emanation from the One, is the preeminent manifestation of the Beautiful and the Good. Consequently, the soul is beautiful when it cleaves to the nous. When it does, the soul is a fragment of Primal Beauty (Ennead I.6.6). The rational soul communicates the beauty of the Form to matter (ibid., I.6.2). Plotinus makes the soul’s governance of the body by the communication of Form to matter in Ennead IV.8, “The Soul’s Descent into the Body.” Having summarized Plato’s view of the soul’s descent into matter, “the soul was given by the goodness of the Craftsman, so that this All might be

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intelligent . . . and this could not be without soul” (IV.8.1), Plotinus explains the relation of the soul’s transcendence of the body and governance of the body: “For there are two kinds of [the Soul’s care for the universe], the general, by the inactive command of one setting it in order with royal authority, and the particular, which involves actually doing something oneself and by contact with that is being done. . . . [T]he divine soul is always said to direct the whole heaven in the first way, transcendent in its higher part but sending its last and lowest power into the interior of the world” (IV.8.2). 9. Ibid., I.6.2. “[E]very shapeless thing . . . is ugly and outside the divine formative power as long as it has no share in formative power and form.” 10. Ibid., I.6.2. Man’s ugliness, that is, of the soul and body, results from a fixation upon what is base (I.6.5). 11. Plotinus explains that the soul can be purified of the corrupting influence of matter by sōphrosynē, or moderation, in which one does not take part in bodily pleasure. Thus, the soul is freed from the sensual desires that result from immediate contact with matter (ibid., I.6.6). 12. De bono mortis 6.25. Comparing the soul’s compassion with the body to the musician’s compassion with her instrument, Ambrose admonishes: “Therefore play what is honorable, that your compassion may be honorable. For one who sees is much affected by what he sees.” 13. Ibid., 7.26. 14. In contrast to the Valentinians’ view of creation as the product of the fallen World-Soul, Plotinus insists that the World-Soul is not declining but inclining to its source. The fall happens only to individual souls that are guilty of self-centered desire (Ennead V.1.1). The individual soul’s fall into the material realm is inevitable. The key question is whether the soul, having declined into a body, becomes self-absorbed in the body, forgetting its source, or whether it returns to the source. See John M. Rist, Plotinus: Road to Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 121. 15. De bono mortis 7.26. 16. Ibid., 7.27. 17. Theodosia Tomkinson’s translation of De Abraham I.2.4 renders irrationabile “irrational.” Given the ability of reason to domesticate the appetites and direct their impulses toward higher goods, the appetites are not inherently irrational, contrary to reason, but merely nonrational, without the capacity for critical evaluation of ends and means. 18. Expo. Luc. VII.135. 19. Ibid., VII.136. Ambrose’s reconciliation of these passages follows the logic that the honor due to one’s parents follows the honor due to God. If we should honor our parents who gave us birth and provided for our welfare, how much more honor is due to God who is our creator? Yet honor is only due to one who is worthy of honor. We give honor in the form of righteous and holy worship to the One who is righteous and holy and the cause of our righteousness and holiness (ibid., VII.134). Therefore, if one’s parents fail to recognize God and give him honor, they forfeit the honor due them. Thus, Christ does not forbid loving and honoring one’s parents so long as such love does not supersede our love for God.

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20. Ibid., VII.138 and VII.141. 21. Ibid., VII.138. Ambrose’s comment that these are dispositions of the soul “in the body” is curious. It was common among some Christian and non-Christian philosophers to distinguish between those faculties of the soul proper to the nature of the intellectual soul and those faculties that are necessary for bodily needs, such as acquiring food, protecting oneself, and procreating, proper to the present age. Yet here Ambrose treats the rational (rationabilis), the appetitive (concupiscibilis), and the impetuous (impetibilis) faculties as the soul’s affectiones while in the body. 22. Phaedo 77d–79b. 23. Socrates explains that the philosopher’s whole life is devoted to the soul’s separation from the body so that the soul’s pursuit of knowledge might not be hindered by the body. Socrates says that the body is an impediment in four ways: (1) sense data are deceptive and misleading; (2) the body’s senses cannot apprehend intelligible realities; (3) providing for the needs of the body diverts the soul from contemplation; and (4) the soul can be enslaved by the body’s desires (Phaedo 65b–66c). 24. Republic IV, 439d–440b. Plato calls the appetitive faculty nonrational (alogistikon) because its impulses of hunger, thirst, and desire are “companions” of pleasure and abundance. Yet Plato is not clear whether irascibility is to be associated with the nonrational appetites or should stand as a third thing. Socrates’ conclusion is that “the principle of anger sometimes fights against desires as an alien thing against an alien” (440a), which is the foundation for his view that the spirited faculty is an ally of reason that restrains the impulses of the appetites. 25. Republic IV, 441a and 440a. 26. Phaedrus 253d. 27. Ibid., 253e–254a. 28. De Abraham I.2.4. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., II.1.2–3. 31. Ibid., I.4.29. Colish’s translation more fully captures the point: “The whole person is saved, in body and soul, not just one part.” Marcia L. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 33. 32. “Fittingly was Abraham rich because he mastered his nonrational senses. Thus he conquered and tamed them in order that they might become rational [ut fierent rationabiles]” (De Abraham II.5.20). 33. “The herdsmen are in charge of the flocks, either sober and diligent, not allowing tilled fields to be trampled underfoot . . . or careless and neglectful since they do not restrain their herds, so that they feed on grass and meadows, but permit them to roam at will. . . . So who are the herdsmen of the senses, if not their preceptors [praeceptores] and, as it were certain teachers and guides [rectores et duces], the counsellors of our speech [monitores alicujus sermonis] and the thoughts of our mind [mentis nostrae cogitationes]? . . . [W]ith prudent leadership [they] apply the reins of reason, and curb those who resist” (ibid., II.6.27). There is a slight ambiguity in the expression monitores alicujus sermonis. If sermonis were taken as an objective genitive, it would

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mean that the preceptors that control the senses are those who counsel or control speech. This seems unlikely since Ambrose is explaining what the preceptors are. Therefore, monitores alicujus sermonis should be viewed as paralleling mentis nostrae cogitationes, meaning that the preceptors that guide the senses are the counsels given in speeches and the thoughts of the mind. 34. De officiis I.47.227. This discussion of the domestication of the passions comes in the context of Ambrose’s instructions on the importance of a priest’s reputation, especially in the eyes of “the best sort of man” (vir optimus). In this Ambrose is following Cicero’s “preoccupation with social image” (De officiis I.99 and II.43), which build upon Panaetius’s discussion of approbatio. Ivor J. Davidson, De officiis, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 653. 35. “This way, our attachment to a particular object does not mean that reason is banished from the scene; instead, reason weighs up which course of action will be most conducive to maintaining honourable standards” (De officiis I.22.98). 36. “Therefore the prudent mind can restrain and keep in check the assaults of the passions, even the severe passions, and cool all the heat of the most burning concupiscence, channel the emotions elsewhere, and by the use of right reason scorn passions” (De Iacob I.1.4). 37. Ibid., I.1.4. 38. “Passio autem gravissima culpae concupiscentia est, quam ratio emollit et comprimit.” There is an ambiguity in the significance of the word culpae. Is it an objective genitive with concupiscentia or a descriptive use of the genitive modifying passio? I have modified the wording slightly but follow the logic of McHugh’s rendering, for it seems unlikely that Ambrose believes we can never eliminate a love of sin. Rather, he likely means that of sinful passions concupiscence is the most serious (ibid., I.1.1). 39. Ibid., I.1.2. 40. Expo. Luc. V.54. 41. De officiis I.21.90. 42. Commenting on Jesus’ admonition against taking the seat of honor at a party before being invited (Luke 14:12–14), Ambrose explains: “[H]umility is taught, when at that feast the longing for a more exalted seat is withstood, but gently, so that the humanity of persuasion excludes the harshness of coercion, reason promotes the effect of persuasion, and correction chastises pride” (Expo. Luc. VII.195). 43. “Therefore right reason proceeds entirely from other considerations, does not originate in itself, and thus is always a follower. For it has its beginnings either from what is natural or what is advantageous. Then it either restrains what is natural or champions what is advantageous. Further, it does not cut out concupiscence from the soul but brings it about that we are not subject to the concupiscence” (De Iacob I.1.2). 44. The Egyptians were commonly used as figures of lust and immorality. For example, in the Hymn of the Pearl from the Acts of Judas Thomas, the youth is warned not to consort with the unclean Egyptians. Similarly, Evagrius in Ad Monachos 126 condemns the false teachers who are Gnostics of Egypt. I am grateful to Kyle Smith for this suggestion.

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45. De officiis I.24.108. 46. Plato, Republic IV.429c–430c. 47. De Iacob II.12.54 (emphasis mine). I have modified McHugh’s translation slightly to render the sense of the Latin more closely. 48. Ibid., II.12.55. 49. Ibid., II.12.56. Not only does she refrain from visible displays of grief, but she also exhibits her lack of concern for the death of the body by not closing the eyes or mouth and washing the body. The dismembered bodies were evidence of the brutality of torture they endured and thus the greater glory of their martyrdom. “She knew that her sons would be in greater glory, if they appeared torn to pieces and jumbled together with dust and blood. In such condition, generally, are conquerors on their return from war, when they bring back the trophies taken from the enemy” (II.12.56). The bodies of the sons caked with dust and dried blood are like the blood-smeared bodies of soldiers just returned from battle. But Ambrose implies that the bodies themselves are like “trophies taken from the enemy” in the sense that they are evidence that Antiochus did not get what he wanted, namely the brothers’ submission to his will and apostasy. 50. Alluding to 4 Macc. 14:4–5, Ambrose correlates the single-mindedness of their devotion with the speed with which they pursued martyrdom: “[N]one of the many brothers went to his death very slowly, rather they all ran to death through bitter torments as if running to the road of immortality” (De Iacob II.12.55). 51. De officiis I.25.119. 52. For a fuller comparison of Ambrose’s uses of Abraham in De officiis and in De Abraham, see Raymond Berton, “Abraham dans le De Officiis Ministrorum d’Ambroise,” Revue des sciences religieuses 54 (1980): 311–22. Commenting on Ezekiel’s vision (1:15) of the wheel drawn into heaven by the movement of four winged creatures, Ambrose identifies the wheel and four creatures with the chariot of Aminadab from Song of Songs 6:11 (LXX). Each of the creatures is a type of a different faculty of the soul: the man is reason (logikon), the lion is gumption (thymikon), the ox is desire (epithymētikon), and last the eagle is clear-sightedness (dioratikon), which was not among the primary faculties of Plato’s soul. Each of these faculties, Ambrose explains, allows the soul to ascend to God when disciplined by the four cardinal virtues represented by the four creatures’ wings (De Abraham II.8.54; see Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs, 45–46). Of these four powers of the soul, reason leads and the others follow. Presumably, the virtue that allows reason to guide the soul to God is wisdom. 53. De Isaac 8.65. See Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs, 38. 54. De officiis I.21.96. 55. Ibid., I.21.90. Ambrose illustrates the reciprocity of the virtues by explaining how tranquillitas is the result of temperance and fortitude. This reflects Ambrose’s adaptation of Cicero and Panaetius’s views of rightly governed thymos (euthymia). See Davidson, De officiis, vol. 2, 530. 56. De officiis I.47.228. 57. Ibid., I.21.97.

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58. Ibid., I.47.229. 59. Expo. Luc. VII.142.

CHAPTER

3

1. See J. Patout Burns, “Creation and Fall according to Ambrose of Milan,” in Augustine: Biblical Exegete, ed. Frederick Van Fleteren and Joseph C. Schnaubelt (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 71–97. 2. Origen offers an allegorical reading of Genesis that emphasizes man’s own responsibility for his present circumstances. He narrates the rational being’s fall from the blessed heavenly classroom where all the logikoi, who had been created equal, enjoyed equally the vision of God revealed by the Word until, satiated by the beatific vision, they turned their attention from God. Having cooled in their love of God, they fell from heaven into material embodiment, with varying degrees of happiness or hardship according to their degree of merit or demerit. See Origen’s De principiis I.4–8; II.8–9. From early in his literary career, Augustine attempted to write commentaries on Genesis, the chief aim of which was to refute the Manichaean dualistic cosmology that explained sin in terms of the conflict between the white or good elements and the dark or evil elements in the soul and body. Mature accounts of the creation and fall that remained his views during his dispute with Pelagius and his disciples came in Confessions books XII–XIII and City of God book XIV. In the latter he describes Adam and Eve’s turn from God in self-complacency that led to the devil’s deception and their disobedience. As Patout Burns argues in The Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative Grace (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1980), Augustine originally explained the corruption of human nature as a consequence of the punishment of Adam in whom all humanity were seminally present. When he was punished with disorder between the soul and body and with mortality, all his descendants inherited this disordered relationship. Later, during his dispute with Julian of Eclanum, Augustine explained that concupiscence was transmitted through sexual intercourse. For a discussion of late antique views of conception and the sexual transmission of human nature, see Elizabeth A. Clark, “Vitiated Seeds and Holy Vessels: Augustine’s Manichean Past,” in Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity, ed. Elizabeth A. Clark (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon Press, 1986), 291–349. 3. “Fuit Adam et in illo fuimus omnes; periit Adam et illo omnes perierunt. Homo igitur et in illo homine qui perierat reformatur et ille ad similitudinem dei factus et imaginem diuina patientia et magnanimitate reparatur” (Expo. Luc. VII.234). 4. Although Ambrose does not comment on the origin of the soul per se, the logic of his view presupposes that Adam is the source of our human nature and therefore that our corrupted nature is derived from Adam. What is not clear is whether or not, for Ambrose, the corrupt nature is passed from Adam to successive generations by means of the soul’s derivation from a prior generation. The clearest description of the traducianist theory of the soul is found in Tertullian’s De anima 26. Ambrose and Tertullian differ in that Ambrose, as we have seen, rejects a materialist view of the soul such as Tertullian’s, which equates the soul with the pneuma or spiritus—the warm

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breath that God breathed into Adam and that goes out of a man when semen is ejaculated. A traducianist view of the soul is not dependent upon a materialist view of the soul’s substance. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, shares Ambrose’s view that the soul is nonmaterial and yet subscribes to a traducianist theory of the soul’s origin. See Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione PG 46, 125c; in Virginia Woods Callahan, St. Gregory: Ascetical Works, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 58 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1967), 254–55. 5. Augustine’s treatise De natura et gratia, written in 415, provides an outline of Pelagius’s views laid out in De natura written three years earlier. According to Augustine, Pelagius wrote De natura to attack those who abdicate moral responsibility by blaming nature for their sin (1.1). Reasoning that God fashioned human nature so that it might fulfill the law (2.2), Pelagius contends that sin is contracted, not by nature, but by imitation (9.10). Pelagius does not deny that all have sinned; instead he contends that Adam’s descendants could have been without sin (7.8). The reason each person has the possibility of not sinning is that nature was not corrupted by sin (51.59). Since sin is not a substance but a privation, sin cannot change or weaken human nature (19.21). 6. “To Ambrose’s more straightforward, practical Roman mind it would have appeared absurd to say that we are guilty of something we have not actually done ourselves”; Andrew Lenox-Conyngham, “Sin in St. Ambrose,” Studia Patristica 18.4 (1985): 174. 7. Explanatio psalmi 48.8–9, Lenox-Conyngham, “Sin,” 174–75. 8. De mysteriis 6.32. 9. “Credit autem etiam catechumenus in crucem Domini Jesu, qua et ipse signature: sed nisi baptizatus fuerit in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti, remissionem non potest accipere peccatorum nec spiritualis gratiae munus haurire” (De mysteriis 4.20). 10. R. W. Muncey’s reconstruction of Ambrose’s text of the New Testament is based on all the New Testament quotations in Ambrose’s writings. Ambrose quotes Rom. 5:4–5, 14, 19–20 but not v. 12. See R. W. Muncey, The New Testament Text of Saint Ambrose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 62. Muncey, however, misses the one place in Ambrose’s corpus where he explicitly quotes Rom. 5:15, in Expo. Luc. IV.67. 11. Expo. Luc. IV.60. 12. Ibid., IV.67. 13. “Illius igitur culpa mors omnium est” (ibid., IV.67). 14. See Rowan A. Greer, “Sinned We All in Adam’s Fall?” in The Social World of the First Christians, ed. L. Michael White and O. L. Yarbrough (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995). 15. Expo. Luc. VII.234. 16. “Here [in the soul and mind] only is the fullness of wisdom, the plenitude of piety and justice of which God speaks—for all virtue comes from God: ‘Behold, Jerusalem, I have painted thy walls.’ That soul of yours is painted by God, who holds in Himself the flashing beauty of virtue and the splendor of piety. That soul is well painted in which shines the imprint of divine operation” (Hexameron VI.7.42).

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17. Ibid., VI.7.42. 18. In Ennead I.6 “On Beauty,” Plotinus explains that the soul is like a house that has the inner ideal of House stamped upon it (I.6.3) and is beautiful when it clings to the good or beautiful preeminently manifest in nous or the intellectual principle (I.6.6). The soul’s ugliness comes from its fixation with what is base rather than with the good and beautiful (I.6.5). 19. Plotinus explains that our attraction to beautiful objects is the result of our recollection of the primal beauty proper to the soul’s nature by virtue of its emanation from the nous that manifests the beauty of the One (Ennead I.6.6). The beauty of a material object is derived from the soul, which communicates the beautiful form from nous to matter. As long as the soul contemplates and reflects the beauty of nous, it gives form and beauty to the body. Thus the soul is the conduit by which beauty flows from the ideal and heavenly to the material and earthly. Ugliness, however, results when the soul fails to contemplate the divine beauty but focuses upon the earthly. Then the soul cannot communicate form to matter and the body returns to its own formless and chaotic state, which the soul, now focused on the body, begins to mirror (I.6.2). Gregory of Nyssa employs the Plotinian hylomorphism to describe the body as the “mirror of the mirror” in that the body reflects whatever the mind mirrors. If the rational faculty mirrors the divine beauty, then the body derives its beauty from the soul (Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio 12.9–10). 20. By virtue of being made like the God who is nonmaterial spirit, the soul, unlike the body, is capable of transcending the empirical and mundane to “[cross] boundaries and [gaze] intently on what is hidden” and so possess “our citizenship [that] is in heaven” (Hexameron VI.7.40 and 8.45). 21. “For the man who cleaves to the good takes from it what is good, . . . for with persevering imitation a kind of image and likeness develops. And so further: ‘You indeed give light to my lamp, O Lord.’ For one who draws near the light receives the light more quickly, and the splendor of the everlasting light shines more in him from nearby” (De bono mortis 9.41). 22. By virtue of the capacity to approach God and be ever in his presence, the soul is made into God’s likeness such that the soul is a mirror that reflects the glory of God and is transformed from glory to greater glory (2 Cor. 3:18; Hexameron VI.8.45). 23. De bono mortis 11.49. 24. Ambrose uses this description of the corruption of sin that is an impediment to the proper vision of God to exhort the catechumens that Christians should not fear death, which frees us from the corruption of sin. See De bono mortis 11.50. 25. In his discussion of the soul’s advance toward perfection, which is identified with Christ’s finding rest within the soul, Ambrose interprets Song of Songs 7:12 (“Come, my brother, let us go out into the field, let us find rest in the villages”) to describe the work of the Word as both resting in the perfect soul and then going out to reclaim the lost. The villages in which the Word finds both rests and labors is where “Adam had been exiled when he was cast out of paradise” (De Isaac 8.69). 26. Expo. Luc. VII.73.

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27. Ambrose identifies them as “angels of night and darkness, who sometimes transform themselves into angels of the light,” which is an allusion to 2 Cor. 11:13–15: “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.” 28. In his explication of the Adam-Christ typology in Romans, Ambrose expressly attributes the fall to Satan’s deception of Eve and he says that Christ, in choosing the good, did “annul the tricks of the terrible serpent.” Thus, as the first human beings fell through deception, the new humanity in Christ is freed from the devil’s deception (Expo. Luc. III.49). 29. Ibid., IV.62. 30. Ibid., IV.63. 31. De Isaac 2.5. 32. For an expanded discussion of Ambrose’s interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan and of the nature of faith, see chapter 4. 33. “These [thieves] first steal the garments of spiritual grace which we have received and are thus wont to inflict wounds, for if we preserve inviolate the garments which we have donned, we cannot feel the robbers’ blows. Therefore, beware lest you are first stripped as Adam was first stripped of the heavenly command, defrauded of protection, divested of the garment of faith, and thus received a mortal wound, whereby the whole human race would have fallen if that Samaritan, on his journey, had not tended his grievous injuries” (Expo. Luc. VII.73). 34. Ibid., II.56. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., VII.142. 38. Ibid. The ambiguity in the passage is that Ambrose is initially speaking about the “flesh” or the “body” that shall “return to its nature” and, laying aside its obstinacy, submit to the soul. Yet it does not make sense that the body can lose memory of the divine precepts since memory is a faculty of the soul. Moreover, he says specifically that the memory of the divine precepts is “innate in the senses of the soul.” Thus, it seems unlikely that the “body” forgets the divine precepts. Either Ambrose has shifted from a discussion of the body’s alienation from its nature to the condition of fallen humanity or he is speaking of the body’s having “lost the memory” as a figurative expression of the disharmony between the soul and the body. Thus, when the body resists the rule of the mind, the body is not governed by the soul’s knowledge of that law innate to it. It is as if the body had “lost the memory” of the innate law. 39. “What a splendid thing, then, justice is. Born for others rather than itself, it aids the community and fellowship that exist between us. It . . . [can] bring help to others, give them money, never refuse to fulfill its duties towards them, and assume other people’s dangers for them” (De officiis I.28.136). 40. Ibid., I.28.137 (emphasis mine).

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41. De Isaac 4.14. 42. Having posed the rhetorical question, “On what account were the disciples so called, and what did they learn from Christ other than to practice the precepts of the virtues?” Ambrose issues his admonishment for the study of Jesus’ example of obedience: “Therefore teaching brings it about that we can come to justice; thus justice can be gained by learning. And so in our study let us direct our attention to the form of the Gospel’s teaching. Even a little study often counts for a great deal” (De Iacob I.3.9). 43. Ibid., I.3.10. 44. Ibid. I have modified McHugh’s translation slightly to more closely reflect the Latin. 45. Ibid., I.4.15. “Sed quia carnalis sum ego, venumdatus sub peccato trahor invitus ad culpam. Etenim quasi servo culpa dominatur.” 46. Ibid. 47. When Ambrose speaks of “bodily desires” that oppose and overpower the mind, he does not speak of concupiscentia but corporis appetentia (ibid.). But in the next paragraph, when he describes the sin that is exposed by the law, he identifies this hidden sin with “my concupiscence [concupiscentia], which I did not suppose to be sin” (ibid., 1.4.16). 48. See Expo. Luc. IV.62. 49. “The mind is first distressed by the Devil’s art . . . [by] the enticing words of spiritual wickedness, which through allurement of the flesh is straightway unmanned by the feminine inconstancy. . . . So you will not love what you have not seen, but when the flesh feels desire, the constancy of the spirit, suffering with it, wanes too, and the mind is perverted by the fellowship of love” (ibid., IV.63). 50. Ibid., IV.64. 51. Ibid., IV.65. 52. Marcia L. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 36–37. 53. Although Tertullian and Cyprian avoided amor because of its erotic connotations, Ambrose revived the term in theological nomenclature, giving it a redemptive meaning. Because of its association with the nonrational faculties of the soul, amor was, in Ambrose’s mind, of a lower order than caritas. Likely due to the influence of Origen’s explanation of the mystical meaning of erōs in his Commentary on the Song of Songs, Ambrose employs amor over dilectio because the former expresses the impassioned character of divine love. When he links amor with miseratio and clementia (as in Expo. Luc. VII.148 and 230), it expresses the character of caritas caelestis. See Robert T. Otten, “Amor, Caritas, and Dilectio: Some Observations on the Vocabulary of Love in the Exegetical Works of St. Ambrose,” in Mélanges offerts à Mlle. Christine Mohrmann, ed. E. J. Engels et al. (Utrecht/Anvers: Spectrum Editeurs, 1963), 73 and 82. 54. Expo. Luc. VII.113. 55. Ibid., cf. Origen, De principiis II.8.3. Origen explains the fall of rational beings by explaining that God, who is “a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29), “makes his angels and his ministers a burning fire” (Heb. 1:7). The rational beings “who have fallen away from the love of God must undoubtedly be said to have cooled in their affection for him

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and to have become cold.” Thus the soul (psychē) is the fallen form of a mind (nous) that has lost its fiery love for God. 56. De Isaac 2.5. 57. Ambrose’s discussion of Ulysses and the sirens arises in the context of his warning against seeking rest now. This is in part because such rest is only for those who have completed their voyage (Expo. Luc. IV.1). Commenting that many are tempted to come to party by the sirens’ “loveliness,” Ambrose quotes Isa. 13:21, “The daughters of the Sirens shall dwell there.” Then he enumerates the temptations that diverted the Lotus-Eaters. The greatest of the potential distractions was the sirens: “[They] finally had almost entreated him, allured by their singing, to that renowned shipwreck of pleasure, if he had not closed with the wax the ears of his men and the sounds of their seductive song” (Expo. Luc. IV.2). 58. It is more common in Ambrose’s corpus for him to speak of pleasure as a cause of desire. Desire aroused by pleasure he describes as a fever or a fire. See Expo. Luc. IV.63. 59. De Isaac 1.1. 60. Ibid., 1.2. 61. Expo. Luc. X.15. 62. Ibid., IV.3. 63. Ibid., IV.63. 64. De Isaac 4.13. 65. “The death of one has built up the life of so many peoples. And so he teaches that such a death should be sought by those who dwell in this life. . . . And so a man prefigures death when he withdraws from the sharing of this body and frees himself from the fetters” (De bono mortis 3.9). 66. “Indeed his meditation was in heaven, and the dwelling of his soul was there. His wisdom was there, for it generally did not remain within the confines of this flesh” (ibid., 3.10). 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., 3.11. 69. Ibid., 3.10. 70. Ibid., 3.10–11. 71. Ibid., 3.9. 72. Expo. Luc. IV.63. 73. De bono mortis 9.39–40. 74. Ibid., 9.40. 75. Ibid., 3.11. 76. Ibid.

CHAPTER

4

1. De Iacob II.2.9. 2. Ibid., I.6.20. 3. Ibid., I.2.8.

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4. Ibid. 5. “Moreover, Scripture gives witness that temperance, wisdom, and discipline are taught—in the law as regards temperance, but as regards the other virtues, in the book of Job, in which it is written, ‘Is it not the Lord who teaches understanding and discipline?’” (ibid.). 6. Expo. Luc. II.67–68. 7. De Iacob I.4.13. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., I.4.16. 10. Expo. Luc. III.29. 11. De Iacob I.4.14. 12. Ibid. 13. Expo. Luc. II.67–68. 14. Of the woman, Ambrose writes, “For if sin had not abounded in that woman, grace would not have abounded, for she acknowledged her sin and brought down grace [detulit gratiam]” (ibid., VI.35). 15. “The commandment [mandatum] to which I consent is good, and the mind which chooses what is good, is good—good for judging [ad iudicandum], but often weak for making resistance, because the body’s desire opposes it and leads it captive to the enticements of error” (De Iacob I.4.15). 16. Ibid., I.4.16. Ambrose sums up the irony of the law: “mandatum mihi Legis mors non est, etsi mortem operetur.” 17. De Ioseph 11.64. 18. “Nemo tibi Christum potest auferre, nisi te ipse auferas. Non te auferat iactantia tua, non te auferat adrogantia nec tibi de lege praesumas; non enim vocare iustos venit, sed peccatores” (Expo. Luc. V.20). This is a confusing passage. Having said that nothing can take us away (auferre) from Christ except ourselves, he then appears to list things that do not take us away: arrogance, boasting, and presuming in the law. The list makes no sense given that he says in the next section that the righteous whom Christ does not call to him are the ones “who presume from the law [qui ex lege praesumant] and do not require the grace of the Gospel.” Therefore, I am inclined to take the negatives in the sentence “Non te auferat . . .” to continue the force of the nisi in the previous clause. Thus the sentence beginning “Non te auferat . . .” provides examples of how we take ourselves away from Christ. 19. Expo. Luc. V.21. 20. The “usurpers of righteousness” (usurpatores iustitiae) who trust in their own righteousness according to the law do not see the need for repentance or grace, for “surely he who scorns penitence renounces grace.” Such failure to repent and seek righteousness through grace causes the self-righteous to inflict a wound upon themselves (ibid., V.22). 21. Ibid., V.21. 22. The righteousness in which Christians participate Ambrose grounds in Christ’s atoning death. For having said that the justice of the law is empty without Christ, Ambrose immediately says, “So although righteousness [iustitia] is in the law,

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yet righteousness is not by the law. ‘For if righteousness come of the Law, then Christ died in vain.’ For Christ died to fulfill righteousness. . . . Therefore, Christ did not die in vain, but he died for us, so that the righteous shall shine as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father” (ibid., V.22). 23. Ibid., V.22. 24. De Iacob I.6.21. I have provided a correction to McHugh’s translation. Where the text reads “I will not glory because I am just [non gloriabor quia justus sum], but I will glory because I have been redeemed [sed gloriabor quia redemptus sum],” he translates “I will not glory because I have been redeemed.” 25. Ibid., II.5.25. 26. Expo. Luc. V.93. Although John’s question, “Are you the one who is to come?” is asking whether Jesus is the Messiah rather than the “Son of God,” Ambrose construes the question of Jesus’ identity to refer to his divinity, rather than his messianic mission. 27. Ibid., V.94. 28. Ibid., VII.98. 29. Immediately before quoting Psalm 119, Ambrose exhorts his readers to transfer their faith, or trust, from the synagogue to the Church since the Church is the source of the Word that is the “lamp unto our feet.” 30. Expo. Luc. VII.98. 31. Ibid., V.15. 32. Ibid., V.17. I have chosen to retain Tomkinson’s somewhat literal translation of vestigium mentis as “footprint of the mind.” Certainly, vestigium means “track” or “footprint,” but by metonymy it can also simply mean “foot”; see Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956). Clearly within the context of Levi’s following after Christ, vestigium must mean a “foot” capable of action rather than an inert “footprint.” Nevertheless, Ambrose could have opted for the more quotidian pes without damaging the metaphor and therefore it seems clear that he meant to evoke the imagery of following and leaving tracks to suggest both the image of Jesus as exemplar and the process of the individual’s habituation through following Jesus. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. See D. H. Williams, “Hilary of Poitiers and Justification by Faith according to the Gospel of Matthew,” Pro Ecclesia 16.4 (2007): 445–61. 36. De sacramentis III.2.12. Ambrose makes the curious comment here that even if someone who comes to be baptized has not made a confession of all sins, the act of seeking baptism is tantamount to a full and sufficient confession of sins. 37. Ibid., III.2.14–15. 38. When Ambrose speaks of the “cross,” he is most often thinking of Christ’s death. Yet, as Rowan Greer rightly pointed out to me, in De sacramentis II.17 and 20 Ambrose does not divide the redemptive significance of death and resurrection as Augustine does in De Trinitate 4 and 13, but sees the cross as a sign of Christ’s victory over sin and death.

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39. De mysteriis 3.14. 40. De sacramentis II.7.23. 41. Ibid., II.2.6. The Latin text for the first two sentences reads: “Vide ubi baptizaris. Unde sit baptismus, nisi de cruce Christi, de morte Christi?” Deferrari translates this as, “Behold where you are baptized, whence the baptism is, if not from the cross of Christ, from the death of Christ.” Presumably he is taking vide to introduce a relative clause (ubi baptizaris) and an indirect question (unde sit baptismus). However, videre is scarcely used in this sense and the syntax is then strained by the following clause introduced by nisi. Furthermore, there is no reason that sit cannot function as the verb in the apodosis of a future less vivid conditional, e.g., “unde sit baptismus, nisi [sit] de cruce Christi.” This is the way I take the Latin and I have modified Deferrari’s translation accordingly. 42. De Iacob I.5.18; Ambrose repeats the image of the blood of Christ as washing the world of sin when he explains the meaning of Song of Songs 2:7: “I have adjured you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and virtues of the field, not to rouse or waken love as far as it wishes.” “In this field the grape is found that was pressed and poured out blood and washed the world clean” (ibid., II.1.3). 43. Expo. Luc. III.47. 44. De Ioseph 2.6. 45. Expo. Luc. VII.24. Presumably when Ambrose says that humanity “could not see the image of God,” he means that we could not see the divine image in humanity because sin had distorted the natural likeness to God. Ambrose sets up an outline of history based on the hours of the workday in Jesus’ parable of the hiring of workers at various hours of the day. He describes the period of Israel after David as the ninth hour, “[W]hen the age is now setting and the light of virtue is, as it were, fading, the Law and the Prophets censured the tarnished conduct of men” (ibid., VII.223). 46. Ibid., VII.223. 47. De officiis III.15.94. 48. “[S]usceptionem pro nobis infirmitatum obnoxii iam corporis peccati carnalis assumpsit” (De incarnationis sacramento 6.60). “‘Behold he has taken away your sins,’ not because Christ put aside his sins, who did no sin, but because in the flesh of Christ the whole human race was absolved [absolveretur] of its sins” (De Spiritu Sancto I.10.114). 49. De incarnationis sacramento 5.38. 50. “The staff became a serpent, since he who was the Son of God, born of God the Father, became the Son of Man, born of the Virgin, and lifted up on the cross like the serpent, he poured his healing balm into the wounds of mankind” (De officiis III.15.94). 51. “Come, all ye who have fallen among different passions of sin, use the strange remedy whereby the poison of the serpent is removed, which has not only taken away the scar of the passions, but also cut out the cause of a terrible wound. This remedy did not stop the hunger, but provided food for the soul” (Expo. Luc. V.19). 52. De Ioseph 3.14. 53. Ibid., 4.19.

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54. Expo. Luc. II.91. 55. I am not here suggesting that Ambrose holds to what Anselm will call the “ransom” theory of the atonement. Rather he merely uses images suggestive of Christ’s death as the payment that frees the Christian from the devil, who holds the bond. That said, Ambrose’s preference is to speak of Christ’s death as paying the debt of sin. 56. “Ille propter te dispendia nostra suscepit, ut te divinis insereret, coelestibus consecraret” (De Iacob I.6.25). Ambrose’s comment, “He came close to endangering what was his,” is curious, for it suggests that the divinity was made vulnerable to harm as a result of the passion. As we shall see, Ambrose repudiates any such suggestion, instead holding fast to the impassibility of Christ’s divine nature. 57. Expo. Luc. VII.76–78. 58. De Ioseph 4.19. 59. “Ergo ex nobis accepit, quod proprium offerret pro nobis, ut nos redimeret ex nostro: et quod nostrum non erat, ex suo nobis divina sua largitate conferret. Secundum naturam igitur se obtulit nostram, ut ultra nostram operaretur naturam” (De incarnationis sacramento 6.54). 60. Ibid., 4.23. 61. “But of the Son the same Apostle said: ‘Who is made to us wisdom from God, and justice, and sanctification, and redemption.’ Do you see that he was made sanctification? But he was made for us, not that he might change what he was, but that he might sanctify us in the flesh” (De Spiritu Sancto III.4.26). 62. De incarnationis sacramento 7.65 and 72. 63. De mysteriis 6.33. 64. Expo. Luc. IV.14. 65. De Iacob II.2.9. 66. The relegation of the law to the “shadow” has a double sense. First, as seen in chapter 3, the law is but a figure of the covenant that Christ establishes. Thus, like the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave, the law without Christ remains an unclear and imperfect image of that which is made clear when Christ reveals the new covenant. Thus second, the meaning of the law remains in the “shadows” of obscurity for the Jews since they do not believe in Christ, whose fulfillment of the law is essential for right and clear understanding of the law. 67. De Iacob II.2.9. 68. Ibid. 69. De Abraham I.2.3–4. 70. “Pater fidei, pater piae confessionis” (ibid., II.10.77). 71. Ibid., I.8.66. 72. “Ideo reputatum est illi ad justitiam, quia rationem non quaesivit, sed promptissima fide credidit.” Ambrose goes on to link Abraham’s faith that justifies him before God such that his heirs will fill the earth with the meekness praised in the Beatitudes that is rewarded with the inheritance of the earth: “So let us imitate Abraham, that we may be heirs of the earth through the righteousness of faith whereby he became heir of the world” (ibid., I.3.21).

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73. “What did he believe? That through the Incarnation, Christ would be his Heir. That ye may know that he believed this, the Lord said, ‘Abraham saw My day and rejoiced’” (ibid.). 74. Ibid., I.3.15. 75. Ibid., II.8.48. 76. Diotima explains to Socrates that love is not the desire for the beautiful itself, but for the effects of the beautiful, as is the case when a man loves the beauty of his pregnant wife. Since love is not just the desire to have the good but to have it forever, the desire for children is a desire for immortality. “Love is a longing for immortality” (Symposium 207a). Those who have children according to the body believe that “by getting children they acquire an immortality, a memorial and a state of bliss, which in their imagining they ‘for all succeeding time procure.’” By contrast, there are those who seek immortality by becoming pregnant in their souls with the children proper to the soul, for example wisdom (phronēsis), virtue (aretē), moderation (sōphrosynē), and justice (dikaiosynē) (209a–b). Such children of the soul are preferable to human children born of the body since the former provide “a far fuller community” and “a far surer friendship” being “fairer and more deathless” (209c). Offspring of wisdom and virtue give their progenitor “a glory immortally renewed in the memory of men” (209d). 77. De Abraham I.5.33. 78. “[M]ajorque ambitioso eloquentiae mendacio simplex veritatis fides. Itaque cujusmodi fuerit in eo viro devotio, consideremus” (ibid., I.2.3). 79. The fides of the martyrs is the paradigmatic example of the subordination of self-interest to God’s will (ibid., I.4.30). Ambrose also uses Lot’s coming out to face the mob as an example of faith that does not run from personal danger (ibid., I.6.53). 80. Ibid., II.10.77. 81. Ambrose’s praise of Abimilech’s faith manifest in his obedience to God’s command not to have sexual relations with Sarah (Gen. 20:2–3) is an example of fides carrying the moral sense of “obedience” rather than the epistemic sense of “believe.” 82. De Abraham II.2.5. 83. “Hoc loco autem satis est illud admonere solum, quod mens plena prudentiae justitiaeque devotior sit erga Dei cultum, et decimas terrae gignentia in fructibus, juxta altiorem prudentiam in eo solvat . . . quae se regere non potest, divino nisi favore fulta sit” (ibid., II.8.45). 84. “Pulcherrimus est hic locus ad incitandum studium devotionis, quod is qui Deum sequitur tutus semper est” (ibid., I.2.9). 85. Ibid., I.2.9. 86. Expo. Luc. VII.118. 87. De Isaac 1.1. 88. Neil B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 158–219; Angelo Paredi, Saint Ambrose: His Life and Times, trans. M. Joseph Costelloe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), 244–55; D. H. Williams, Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Arian-Nicene Conflicts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 210–17.

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89. Ambrose does treat faith as an epistemic category. He contrasts those who see in Jesus nothing more than what is visible—a mere man—with those who have faith that discerns the Divine Word. “You believe that he is engendered by avirgin, little by little, faith imparts to you that he was born of the Spirit of God, you will begin to ascend the mountain. If you see him on the cross, triumphant over death, not slain . . . if you see this mystery, you have ascended the high mountain, you perceive the other glory of the Word” (Expo. Luc. VII.12). 90. Ibid., II.32; De Ioseph 11.64. 91. “Credamus et nos igitur, ut loquamur, ut lingua nostra, quae incredulitatis uinculis est ligata, rationis voce soluatur” (Expo. Luc. II.32). 92. De Ioseph 11.64. 93. Expo. Luc. VII.109–10. 94. “[C]redidit, nec fide haesitavit, qui posset haesitare ratione sterilitatis aut senectutis” (De Abraham I.8.66). 95. “And, indeed, we are taught by this example that whoso is proven by the truth is tempted by the counterfeit and fictitious [compositis et fictis]” (ibid., I.8.66). 96. “[S]ed tentabat affectum patris, si Dei praecepta praeferret filio, nec paternae pietatis contemplatione vim devotionis inflecteret” (ibid., I.8.66). 97. Ambrose interprets Abraham’s “running” to greet the three strangers as an example of “swift piety” (celerata devotio) (ibid., I.5.33). 98. Ibid., I.5.38. 99. The standard meaning of conspergere, according to Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short in A Latin Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956) is to moisten or sprinkle with water or scatter. But Tomkinson’s translation of “kneading” is based on Ambrose’s translation of the Greek imperative phyrason (Gen. 18:6 LXX) from phyrein meaning “to hide or mix in” leaven. In fact, the kneading of flour into dough entails the mixing of water, leaven, and other ingredients with the measure of flour. If Ambrose is taking consperge in the sense of “moisten,” the point of the metaphor is the same, except now with the addition of possible baptismal imagery. It is the addition of a nurtured faith in the Trinity that allows devotio to be shaped into a sacrifice acceptable to God. I have chosen, therefore, to retain “kneading” but have modified Tomkinson’s “inmost heart” to “inmost spirit” to better reflect the Latin intimo . . . spiritu. 100. Based on Ambrose’s praise of Abraham’s faith (De Abraham I.2.3–4), as well as his prudence, justice, charity, and chastity, Colish comments: “These [virtues], however, are only some of the additional virtues that Ambrose finds in Abraham, virtues that must be acquired in the course of Abraham’s moral instruction as a convert. . . . But, Ambrose maintains, Abraham possesses faith from the start. This is not a virtue that he has to learn; it is inborn. Ambrose understands Abraham’s faith less as an epistemic state . . . than as complete and unquestioning obedience to God’s commands.” Marcia L. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 48. The logic of Colish’s view is that Ambrose does not present Abraham as coming to or acquiring faith, but faith is his disposition toward God from the beginning. Since even God’s call to leave the land

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of his fathers is but a test of an already existing faith, faith cannot be for Abraham learned, but is inborn—an inherent quality of his soul. 101. De paradiso is structured in a question-and-answer format, the questions being objections raised by Apelles and the answers being Ambrose’s replies. J. Patout Burns says that while some of the replies are “properly expository,” others are merely apologetic arguments intended “only to turn aside or disable a challenge.” Thus, Burns concludes that it is hard to determine Ambrose’s own view of human nature. See “Creation and Fall according to Ambrose of Milan,” in Augustine: Biblical Exegete, ed. F. Van Fleteren and J. C. Schnaubelt (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 72. I suggest, however, that an argument, though it is deployed tactically to counter an opponent’s position, may reflect the author’s own view. Two criteria may be used to separate mere polemical arguments from Ambrose’s own views. First, the argument cannot be incompatible with views expressed by Ambrose in nonpolemical contexts. Second, the argument must be consistent with positions repeated elsewhere in Ambrose’s corpus. 102. De paradiso 6.32. I have modified the translation slightly to better preserve the nuance of the Latin. 103. “[D]um id quod malum est, naturaliter intelligimus esse vitandum, et id quod bonum est naturaliter nobis intelligimus esse praeceptum” (ibid., 8.39). 104. Ibid., 8.39. 105. Lest his language be misconstrued as a form of Origen’s account of the fall of rational beings from heaven, Ambrose explains that this exile was not a change of place, but of conduct. As a result of Adam’s disobedience, “he was far changed from that Adam who enjoyed eternal blessedness when he turned aside to worldly sins, fell among thieves, among whom he would not have fallen if he had not strayed from the heavenly command and rendered himself vulnerable to them” (Expo. Luc. VII.73). In his discussion of the soul’s advance toward perfection, which is identified with Christ’s finding rest within the soul, Ambrose interprets Song of Songs 7:12 (“Come, my brother, let us go out into the field, let us find rest in the villages”) as describing the work of the Word as both resting in the perfect soul and then going out to reclaim the lost. The villages in which the Word finds both rest and labor is where “Adam had been exiled when he was cast out of paradise” (De Isaac 8.69). 106. Expo. Luc. VII.73. 107. “Omne autem genus videtur immortale, ut homo genus est, ut ullus species est. Homo semper dicitur, ullus non semper, immo non deficit ullus. Deficit qui fidem non habet, persona deficit unius, conditio vel nomen hominum non deficit” (De Abraham II.11.85). 108. “Therefore, because training [exercitatio] cannot of itself confer perfection without the gift of nature [sine dote naturae], and the grace of nature [naturae gratia] wanes if the training cease—for diligence is the stay of the clever man—the text describes the man whom you are fashioned to imitate; through training added to the grace of nature. . . . [T]he soul of the venerable Abraham was not bowed by the storms of this age, but remained upright, so that he raised himself from earthly concerns to the height of Divine knowledge. Then, God appeared to him forthwith” (ibid., II.3.8). 109. Expo. Luc. VII.142. For an extended discussion of this point, see chapter 1.

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110. Expo. Luc. II.75. 111. Ibid. 112. Ambrose says that Jesus himself institutes this “mystery” or mysterium (De mysteriis 1.3–4). 113. De sacramentis I.1.3. It is not clear whether fides here refers to the epistemic category of belief or the moral quality of fidelity. Indeed, it may be both. Its conjunction with devotio may suggest that pietas is both the cognitive assent to the truth revealed and fidelity in conduct. 114. Expo. Luc. IV.51. 115. De mysteriis 1.2. 116. De Ioseph 5.25. 117. Expo. Luc. X.38. Tomkinson translates sacri fontis as “of the Holy Spirit.” While in Ambrose’s conception of baptism the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the waters of baptism efficacious, there is nothing in the passage that specifically mentions the Holy Spirit as the one that bedews the soul. 118. Ibid., VII.19–20. 119. Ibid., IV.45. 120. “You see that the Trinity is co-eternal and perfect. Scripture speaks of Jesus himself, God and man, perfect in both; it speaks of the Father and the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit is shown as partner when it descends in bodily shape as a dove on Christ, when the Son of God was baptized in the river, and the Father spoke from Heaven. So what greater testimony do we seek, than that he signified with his own voice that he himself spoke in the prophets” (ibid., IV.44–45). 121. Ibid., X.38. 122. De Ioseph 13.80. Ambrose sees parallels between Jesus’ healing of the woman with the issue of blood and Jairus’s daughter and between Christ’s resurrection and the general resurrection of the dead. Even as Christ prepared the believer for the raising of Jairus’s daughter by creating faith through stopping the woman’s hemorrhaging, so too “the temporal resurrection is celebrated in the Lord’s Passion, in order that the eternal resurrection too may be believed” (Expo. Luc. VI.60). 123. De Isaac 5.43. 124. De mysteriis 6.29. 125. De Iacob II.2.9 (emphasis mine). 126. Expo. Luc. VI.14. 127. Ibid., VII.176–77. 128. Ibid., X.153–54. 129. “[N]ow, she who had first tasted death was the first to see the resurrection, the first in order for a remedy to guilt. And lest she who had imparted sin to the man should bear among men the shame of eternal guilt, she also imparted grace, and by the disclosure of the resurrection recompenses the calamity of the ancient fall. Death had before issued through the mouth of a woman, life is restored through the mouth of a woman” (ibid., X.156). 130. Although the Matthean Mary’s faith has enabled her to transcend her gender, Ambrose does not conclude from this that women of faith have really become “perfect

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men” so as to be allowed to preach. That Ambrose is conscious of the implication of his claim about transcending gender is evidenced by his protracted explanation of how, though the woman is the first to proclaim the resurrection, only men can and should preach the Gospel. “But because their steadfastness for preaching is less and womankind is weaker in performance, the duty of proclaiming the Gospel is entrusted to men” (ibid., X.157). 131. De mysteriis 7.34. 132. De Isaac 6.55. 133. A stricter and more hopeful view of man’s capacity through grace to be free from sin comes in Ambrose’s interpretation of Luke’s description of Zechariah and Elizabeth as “just before God . . . [and] without blame.” Critiquing those who “present indemnifications for their own sins, who think that a man cannot exist without frequent sin, and who [quote] . . . Job, ‘None is pure from uncleanness,’” Ambrose, referring to Zechariah and Elizabeth, says, “to be without sin means to have ceased to sin . . . for ‘all have sinned and do need the glory of God.’ . . . [Such a one] has corrected his old error and transformed himself in that quality of life whereby he refrains from sin.” Then, commenting on the description of the church in Ephesians 5:27 as “holy and without blemish,” Ambrose writes, “[W]hen the Church is assembled from the nations, i.e., from sinners, how can she be without blemish from the defiled unless she is first cleansed of her sin by the grace of God, and, then, through the attribute of not sinning, abstain from her transgressions?” (Expo. Luc. I.17). Although this cleansing is through grace—presumably in baptism—the purity rests upon a cessation of sin. 134. De mysteriis 7.35. 135. Similarly, Ambrose speaks of grace pardoning the guilt. “And so, in the case of the patriarchs, enmity is repaid through grace, for they are both excused from their guilt and made holy by the gift of revelation” (De Ioseph 3.13). 136. De mysteriis 7.37. 137. De Isaac 3.9. 138. Ibid., 4.32–33. 139. De sacramentis I.2.4. 140. Expo. Luc. VII.83. 141. Ibid., VII.208. 142. Ibid., IV.4. 143. “For nothing is so secret as the danger of worldly sweetness, which when it soothes the spirit, overwhelms life, and dashes out the mind’s understanding onto the corporeal rocks” (ibid., IV.3). See Craig Alan Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method of Mystagogical Preaching (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 151–52. 144. De sacramentis I.1.3 and 2.4. 145. Ibid., I.2.4. 146. “For in this hope we are saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom. 8:24–25). Augustine gives hope a twofold aspect with reference to Gal. 5:5:

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This, again, is the faith by which we procure that largess of the Spirit, of which it is said: “We indeed through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.” But this admits of the further question, Whether he meant by “the hope of righteousness” that by which righteousness hopes, or that whereby righteousness is itself hoped for? For the just man, who lives by faith, hopes undoubtedly for eternal life; and the faith likewise, which hungers and thirsts for righteousness, makes progress therein by the renewal of the inward man day by day, and hopes to be satiated therewith in that eternal life, where shall be realized that which is said of God by the psalm: “Who satisfieth thy desire with good things” (De spiritu et littera, 56). I appreciate David Fink’s directing me to this passage. 147. Expo. Luc. V.27. 148. “She still seeks, she still rouses his love [adhuc quaerit, adhuc suscitat charitatem] and asks that it be roused for her by the daughters of Jerusalem, by whose grace, that is, the grace of faithful souls, she desires that her spouse be provoked to a richer love for her. Therefore, the Lord Jesus himself, invited by the zeal of such great love, by the beauty of elegance and grace, because now no sins of defilement were among the baptized. . . . [Their] faith may shine with the fulness of the sacrament” (De mysteriis 7.40–41). 149. “Therefore if any soul searches for him with greater zeal, she hears his voice from afar. . . . She sees that he is coming bounding to her. . . . Then, by reading the prophets and remembering their words, she sees him looking through their riddles, looking, but as if through a window, not yet as if present” (De Isaac 4.32–33). 150. The “wall of separation” is an allusion to Song of Songs 2:9 (LXX)—“Behold, he stands behind our wall, leaning through the windows, peering through the lattice”—which for Ambrose represents the antagonism of the soul and body. See De Isaac 4.32. 151. De Isaac 8.71. 152. Ibid. 153. Ambrose’s description of the soul “still rising . . . always undergoing all advance” echoes Gregory of Nyssa’s theory of epectasy, the soul’s eternal movement into God’s infinite being. See J. Warren Smith, Passion and Paradise: Human and Divine Emotion in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa (New York: Crossroad, 2004), 124, 202–16. 154. Prayer is a sign of humility which does not presume that healing is something God owes, for Ambrose says: “Learn to ask for what you wish to obtain: the benefits of heavenly gifts are not conferred upon the arrogant” (Expo. Luc. IV.49). 155. Ibid., V.10. 156. Ibid., VI.2. 157. “Eadem diuini operis misericordia, sed diuersa pro meritis nostris gratia” (ibid., VII.208). 158. Ibid., VII.83.

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159. De Iacob I.3.11. 160. Based on a tomb inscription in Olympus in Asia Minor, a managerial slave who had amassed enough wealth to erect a tomb for himself allowed a freeman named Hermes, as well as Hermes’s wife and children, to be buried with him and his family. Since Hermes was not the slave’s master, the slave’s generosity suggests that Hermes was his social inferior. See Dale B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 17–18. A contrary view of slavery called the “social death hermeneutic” maintains that the distinguishing feature of slavery—in the ancient or modern world—is not the legal status of slave as property, but as “socially dead” in the sense of being “figuratively dead at the hands of his or her master . . . permanently rootless and alienated within the culture in which they function.” I. A. H. Combes, The Metaphor of Slavery in the Writings of the Early Church: From the New Testament to the Beginning of the Fifth Century (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 22. Combes sees the ancient world divided radically and absolutely between slave and free such that “individual dignity was based in the first place on a person’s freedom, rather than his or her economic status” (27). Yet the weight of public inscriptions, which show the complicated relations between slave and free, challenges Combes’s strict dichotomy between slave and free. Far from living in social obscurity, slaves used their funerary inscriptions to project their identity by giving testimony to their relations with their masters, their families, freemen, and society at large. 161. A pragmateutēs named Agathopous, without mention of his wife or children’s names, included his master’s name on his tomb inscription. Martin (Slavery as Salvation, 18) explains that through the identification of his master, Agathopous sought to gain for himself some of his master’s dignitas. 162. Keith Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 175. 163. “Who claims that Paul is an illiterate, so to speak, in the law itself? He knew how to distinguish between a freedman and a free man, and so he did not speak carelessly” (De Iacob I.3.12). 164. Ibid. 165. Digest XXXVII.15.9. “Libero et filio semper honesta et sancta persona patris ac patroni videri debet,” quoted in A. M. Duff, Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), 36–37. 166. Bradley, Slavery and Society, 165. 167. During the social reforms of Augustus, the Lex Aelia Sentia of A.D. 4 set punishments for ingratitude. Claudius set the loss of manumission as the punishment for ingratitude. This move was controversial because it threatened the whole class of freedmen, making them vulnerable to the caprice of the former master. Consequently, the Senate, during Nero’s reign, modified Claudius’s law to limit the loss of manumission to only cases involving the gravest offenses (see Duff, Freedmen, 41). 168. Ibid., 42. 169. It is not clear if Ambrose’s call to humility is aimed at catechumen freemen who thought themselves superior because they had never been slaves. His comment

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“as for the man who has been called a freeman” suggests that he is speaking hypothetically since no one is called to Christ (i.e., called into the faith) as a freeman but as a slave in bondage to sin. Thus, in the Church the freeman should be humble knowing that he himself was a slave to sin and now is a slave to Christ. Moreover, the liberty he enjoys is not his possession or right but the gift of Christ, his master. This is the meaning of Ambrose’s conclusion, “we are all freedmen of Christ. . . . [W]e have all been procreated in servitude.” The servitude into which all are born and from which Christ manumitted us is sin. 170. “[R]egiae libertatis insigne” (Expo. Luc. III.20). 171. Pallas’s net worth was projected at three million sesterces and Narcissus’s at four million (see Duff, Freedmen, 177). 172. De Iacob I.3.12. 173. Duff, Freedmen, 58. 174. Although Ambrose says nothing about neophytes in Milan wearing a cap signifying their status, Susan Keefe made the helpful suggestion that the cap of the neophyte required in the Ordines Romani might be a Christian appropriation of the pilleus by which the neophytes would think of themselves as freedmen. 175. De Iacob I.3.12. 176. Expo. Luc. VI.24. 177. “Ergo id pretium debes quo emptus es; et si ille non semper exigat, tu tamen debes” (De Ioseph 7.42). 178. De Iacob I.6.23. 179. Expo. Luc. VI.26. This comment comes in the context of Ambrose’s discussion of Jesus’ explanation to Simon that love is proportionate to the magnitude of our debt that God has forgiven (Luke 7:42–43). 180. Paul here quotes Job 41:11: “‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things.” 181. Expo. Luc. VI.26. Tomkinson translated “gratiam pro sanguinis pretio” as “grace for wealth.” I have modified this part of the translation to convey the Latin more accurately. 182. Ibid., VI.25. 183. Ibid., V.74. 184. Ibid. 185. Ibid., V.75. 186. Ambrose’s explanation of the Golden Rule as an expression of the love of virtue is problematic in that it allows for the love of the virtuous stranger but not the love of the scoundrel who is devoid of any apparent virtue. Moreover, one might well be able to love the virtues of one’s enemies (e.g., their facility with language, their teaching skills, their courage) but by virtue of the fact that they possess an enmity toward us, they lack the supreme virtue of love. 187. Contra Colish, I do not see Ambrose saying explicitly or implicitly that Abraham’s faith is “inborn” simply because he is described as having faith at the beginning of the narrative—particularly a narrative that picks up when he is in his seventies.

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1. De sacramentis III.1.2. 2. “[C]redentes in Patrem et Filium et Spiritum sanctum, recipimur et demergimur et surgimus, hoc est, resuscitamur . . . ubi gratiam acceperit sapientia, tunc opus ejus incipit esse perfectum. Haec regeneratio dicitur” (ibid., III.1.1). 3. “[S]ecundum interpretationem apostoli Petri sicut illa resurrectio regeneratio fuit, ita et ista resurrectio de fonte regeneratio est” (ibid., III.1.2). Deferrari reasonably enough explains Ambrose’s attribution of Paul’s use of Ps. 2:7 to Peter because he confused Paul’s prayer (Acts 12:15–41) with Peter’s in Acts 2:14–36 as a “lapse of memory”; Roy J. Deferrari, Saint Ambrose Theological and Dogmatic Works (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1963), 289 n. 4. 4. De sacramentis III.1.3. 5. Ibid., II.6.17. 6. De bono mortis 11.48. 7. Oddly enough, here Ambrose appeals to Jesus’ description to Nicodemus of the mysterious movements of the Spirit to describe the free-floating movements of the disembodied soul. See De excessu fratris II.20, in Funeral Orations, trans. Leo P. McCauley, John J. Sullivan, Martin R. P. McGuire, and Roy J. Deferrati, Fathers of the Church vol. 22 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 205. 8. Expo. Luc. II.81. 9. De bono mortis 5.16. I have modified McHugh’s translation slightly. Where the Latin reads “ablevemus animam nostram ex istius carnis cubili,” his translation reads, “let us . . . raise up our bodies from this fleshly couch.” 10. Ibid. (emphasis mine). 11. Origen does not use Ambrose’s phrase “new skins,” but his interpretation of the “spiritual body” of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:44) that is “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” conveys much the same sense. “From this statement we may then form a conjecture of what great purity, what extreme fineness, what great glory is the quality of that body, by comparing it with those bodies which, although heavenly and most splendid, are yet made with hands and visible. . . . But we must not doubt that the nature of this present body of ours may, through the will of God who made it what it is, be developed by its Creator into the quality of that exceedingly refined and pure and splendid body, according as the condition of things shall require and the merits of the rational being shall demand” (De principiis III.6.4). 12. De principiis II.10.5–6. 13. John C. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine De bono mortis,” in The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R. A. Markus, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Mark Vessey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 243. 14. Ibid., 237. 15. De excessu fratris I.43. For a helpful summary of the debate concerning the date of Satyrus’s death, see John Moorhead, Ambrose: Church and Society in the Late Roman World (London: Longman, 1999), 36 n. 45. 16. De excessu fratris I.44.

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17. Ibid., II.1. 18. “Should we keep within ourselves or repress all grief? Why should not reason rather than time lighten sadness? . . . Truly, in my opinion, it is nothing short of an act of impiety toward the memory of those whose loss we mourn to prefer to forget them rather than to have our sorrow allayed by consolation” (ibid., II.8). Here the cause of grief that memory eases is anxiety about their loved one’s punishments after death. 19. Ambrose introduces the theme of patience in the opening paragraph of the oration and stresses that patience is the corollary of hope. Thus patience and hope are the virtues that characterize the Christian’s attitude toward the loss of loved ones. See De excessu fratris II.1 and II.10–11. 20. Ibid., II.50. 21. The clearest example of the Christian narrative changing the conventional Stoic argument about death as a part of nature comes in Ambrose’s warning not to “arrogate to ourselves some higher and exceptional nature and to refuse to accept the common law.” But he immediately explains that our unexceptional nature refers to the lot of Adam’s fallen race and the common law is the death sentence we all have as a result of Adam’s sin. Then, appealing to the second Adam typology of Rom. 5, Ambrose says, “[H]im whom we do not refuse to acknowledge as the father of the human race we cannot refuse to acknowledge also as the author of death. And just as we have death through one, so also through one we have the resurrection. Let us not refuse tribulation if we wish to gain the divine reward” (ibid., II.6). 22. Expo. Luc. V.30. 23. Ambrose gestures in precisely this direction when early in the oration he says, “But now, since we are returning to the grave on the seventh day, a day symbolic of the future repose, it will be helpful to turn my mind from my brother for a short time and devote my attention to a general exhortation applicable to all” (De excessu fratris II.2). 24. Ibid., II.51. Experience, reason, example, and fittingness are not a set of epistemological criteria. For although Ambrose is confident that one can give arguments from all four that support the belief in resurrection, one does not need to offer successful demonstration in each kind to prove the truth of the belief. 25. Ibid., II.52. 26. Ibid. 27. “It is in full accord with the nature and course of justice that, since body and soul possess activity in common, the body carrying out what the mind has planned, both should come into judgment and both be committed to punishment or preserved together for glory. For it would seem almost absurd that, whereas the law of the mind strives against the law of the flesh and under pressure of the sin dwelling in man often does what is odious to it, the mind, guilty only through another’s fault, should be subject to punishment, while the flesh, the author of evil, should obtain rest” (ibid., II.88). The incoherence of this passage is difficult to explain. Either the mind in its plans is the chief instigator of sin and the body its instrument in carrying out the plan, or the flesh—here caro does not simply refer to sin but is synonymous with corpus—is the instigator that makes the mind its instrument in carrying out sin. One is tempted

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to attribute such contradictory views to Ambrose’s immaturity as a theologian. After all, at the time of this oration, Ambrose had been out of the catechumenate and in the purple only two years. Yet it does point to a tension that remains in Ambrose’s thought between the sovereign autonomy of the mind over the body and the weakness of the intellect overpowered by corrupt concupiscence to resist the law of the flesh. 28. Ibid., II.88. 29. Ibid., II.67. 30. Ibid., II.126 (emphasis mine). The next rhetorical question, “What justice, if death as the end of natural existence is common to saint and sinner?” cannot rightly apply to the Platonic view of the soul’s immortal nature. Rather, his criticism is leveled against either the Stoic view of the survival of all pneumata or the Epicurean view of the annihilation of all at death. 31. De incarnationis sacramento 2.11. 32. Expo. Luc. V.13. 33. De Abraham II.9.62. 34. Ibid., II.9.63. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. De excessu fratris II.43. 38. De Abraham II.11.86. 39. De incarnationis sacramento 4.23. 40. Ibid., 2.11. 41. Against the heretics and diverse opinions of various sects, the Church confesses “that Christ is the Son of God, and eternal from the Father, and born of the virgin Mary. The holy prophet David describes him as a giant for the reason that he, one, is of double form and of twin nature, a sharer in divinity and body. . . . [A]lthough he was always God eternal, he assumed the sacrament of the Incarnation, not divided, but one, because he, one, is both, and one in both, that is, as regards both divinity and body. For one is not of the Father, and the other from the virgin, but the same is of the Father in one way, and from the virgin in the other” (ibid., 5.35). 42. Ibid., 6.49. 43. Ibid., 6.54. 44. Ibid., 7.64. 45. Ibid., 7.65. 46. “If anyone has put his trust in him as a man without a human mind, he is really bereft of mind, and quite unworthy of salvation. For that which he has not assumed he has not healed; but that which is united to his Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole”; Gregory of Nazianzus, “To Cledonius against Apollinaris, Epistle 101,” in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward R. Hardy (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954), 218–19. 47. De incarnationis sacramento 7.67–68 (emphasis mine). 48. Ibid., 7.69.

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49. Ibid., 7.71. 50. Explaining Paul’s arguments that Christ became sin and bore the curse of sin though he himself was without sin (2 Cor. 5:21 and Gal. 3:13), Ambrose offers this interpretation of John 1:14: “Do you wonder, then, that it is written: ‘The Word was made flesh,’ since flesh was assumed by the word of God, when of the sin which he did not have, it is written that he was made sin, that is, not by the nature and operation of sin, namely, made into the likeness of sin of the flesh; but that he might crucify our sin in his flesh, he assumed for us the burden of the infirmities of [a] body already guilty of carnal sin” (De incarnationis sacramento 6.60). This passage is troubling. Here Ambrose tries to explain how Christ took on the likeness of sinful flesh. But instead of saying that Christ took on the likeness of sinful flesh in that he assumed the infirmities of an inherently mortal body, he says that the infirmities of Christ’s body were “the infirmities of a body already guilty of carnal sin.” In other words, the body Christ assumed appears to be a corrupted body rather than merely a mortal body. Perhaps Ambrose simply means that Christ, though sinless, bore our physical infirmities that are the consequence of sin. 51. De Isaac 4.22. 52. De incarnationis sacramento 7.65. 53. “For, if he did not rise for us, he did not rise at all, because there was no reason why he should rise for himself. . . . Furthermore, what need had he of resurrection who was not bound by the chains of death? For, even though he died as man, he was free even in hell itself” (De excessu fratris II.102). 54. “Why would he have died, unless he also had a reason for rising again? For, since God could not die, Wisdom could not die. Yet what had not died could not rise again. So our mortal flesh was assumed, which could die, so that, while that died which was wont to die, that which had died might rise again” (ibid., II.90). 55. Ibid., II.91. 56. Ibid., II.83. 57. Ibid., II.54. 58. “‘He humbled himself, becoming obedient to death,’ so that precisely through that obedience we might see his glory, ‘the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,’ as St. John says. For thus the representation of Scripture is preserved, since the glory of the only-begotten and the nature of perfect man are thus preserved in Christ” (De excessu fratris II.103). 59. De incarnationis sacramento 7.68. 60. De excessu fratris II.83. 61. Ibid., II.84. 62. Ibid., II.69. 63. Ibid., II.114. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., II.74. 66. Ibid., II.102. 67. Ibid., II.87. 68. Ibid., II.4.

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69. Ambrose’s point is that the jilted lover would at least have the good sense not to grieve the unrequited love publicly since such grieving serves only to expose the foolishness of their love. See De excessu fratris II.17. 70. Ibid., II.46. 71. “By the death of the martyrs, religion has been defended, the faith spread, and the Church strengthened” (ibid., II.45). 72. Ibid., II.49. 73. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.30. 74. Ambrose uses the expression jura naturae twice. See De excessu fratris II.41 and 50. 75. Ibid., II.49. 76. “The pagans usually console themselves either by the thought that death is a common calamity, or by a recognition of the rights of nature, or by a belief in the immortality of the soul. I wish that their opinions were consistent, and that they did not convert the unfortunate soul into many ridiculous monstrosities and forms. What, therefore, ought we to do, whose reward is the resurrection?” (ibid., II.50). 77. Ibid., II.3. 78. Ibid., II.47. 79. “Here [in death] we have freedom from punishment, for these words contain the penalty decreed against the thorns of this life, the cares of the world, and the pleasures of riches which shut out the word. Death has been given as a remedy, as an end of evils” (ibid., II.38). 80. Ambrose goes on to ask rhetorically, “For what adversity do we not experience in this life? What storms and tempests do we not endure? By what troubles are we not disturbed? Whose merits are spared?” (ibid., II.22). 81. Ibid., II.30. 82. Ibid., II.29. 83. Ibid., II.47. 84. Ibid., II.48. 85. De incarnationis sacramento 6.60. Here Ambrose refers to the body Christ assumed in the Incarnation, which stands in contrast with the glorified body of the resurrection. 86. De excessu fratris II.111. 87. Ibid., II.77. 88. Ibid., II.78–79. 89. Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione; PG 46, 104B–C; in Virginia Woods Callahan, St. Gregory: Ascetical Treatises, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 58 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1967), 244. He goes on to explain that once God becomes all things, then evil is dispelled and no longer brings corruption. 90. De excessu fratris II.53. 91. Ibid., II.54. 92. Ibid., II.57. 93. Ibid., II.68.

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94. Ibid., II.60. 95. Ibid., II.64. 96. Ibid., II.70. Here Ambrose may in part be seeking to distinguish resurrection from the transmigration of the soul, which elsewhere he critiques as confining the rational soul that bears the divine image to the body of a nonrational beast. For the objections against the transmigration of souls, see ibid., II.65 and 126–27. 97. Ibid., II.48. 98. Indeed, if God can create ex nihilo or refashion stones into bread, regenerating the body is an easier task. Ibid., II.85. 99. Ibid., II.6. 100. Ibid., I.70–71. 101. “Let idolaters mourn over their dead, convinced they have perished forever. Let them not cease from weeping, let them obtain no rest from sorrow, who believe that there is no rest for the dead” (ibid., I.70). 102. This characterization of the transmigration of the soul is described in Plato’s Phaedo and Republic book X. In the latter, Plato implies that Socrates, by virtue of the separation of his soul from his body in this life through self-control (sōphrosynē) and contemplation, had merited liberation from the cycles of incarnation so that his soul might enter the heavenly realm and permanently dwell among the perfect heavenly realities. In Republic, Plato does not suggest that the lover of wisdom is freed from the cycles of return to the material world, but simply is able to choose wisely the best sort of life possible, that is, the life of the common citizen. 103. De bono mortis 5.16. 104. “[T]he same nature will rise again, all the more distinguished for having completed its service to death. Accordingly, ‘the dead in Christ will rise up first. Then we who live, who survive, shall be caught up together with them in clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so we shall ever be with the Lord’ (1 Thess. 4:16–17). The dead will be first, and the living will be second” (De excessu fratris II.48). Ambrose’s appeal to the rapture of the dead and the living from 1 Thessalonians illustrates both that the resurrected body is of the same nature as the present body but that it will pass through the air. 105. Expo. Luc. II.81. 106. De bono mortis 4.15. 107. Plotinus, Ennead I.7.3. 108. De bono mortis 4.13. Plotinus writes, “But if life and soul exist after death, then there is good, in proportion as [the soul] pursues its proper activity better without the body” (Ennead I.7.3). 109. De bono mortis 4.14. 110. Ibid., 4.15. 111. Plotinus, Ennead I.7.3. 112. See De excessu fratris I.29–32; II.19; II.33; II.95–96. 113. De sacramentis III.1.2. 114. De sacramentis I.6.22; De mysteriis 3.13. 115. De mysteriis 3.14.

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116. Ibid., 8.47–48. 117. Ibid.; De sacramentis I.5.13–15. 118. De sacramentis II.2.3. 119. De mysteriis 9.50. 120. Ibid., 3.8. 121. De sacramentis I.3.9–10. The irony in the comparison lies in Ambrose’s anticipation of doubt by the neophytes who may see only water when he says, “Lest, perchance, someone say: ‘Is this all?’—yes, this is all.” He expects some of them to share Naaman’s disbelief. 122. Ibid., I.3.10. 123. Ibid., II.1.2. Ambrose does distinguish the baptisms of Gentiles from those of the Jews in that Jewish baptisms prefigure the Christian baptism and as such reveal truth, and so are beneficial for Christians. Of all events in Israel’s history that are figures of Christian baptism, the Israelites’ salvation from the army of Pharaoh by passing through the Red Sea and the cleansing of Naaman’s leprosy are the ones linked in Ambrose’s mind with the salvific and cleansing character of Christian baptism. Yet, even the deliverance of Israel from Pharaoh illustrates the superiority of Christian baptism to those Old Testament types. 124. Ibid., I.4.12. 125. De mysteriis 3.15. 126. Ibid., 4.22. 127. Ibid., 4.23. 128. De sacramentis II.5.15. 129. “Therefore, that pool also is by way of a figure, that you may believe that the power of God also descends into this fountain” (De mysteriis 4.23). 130. De sacramentis I.5.15. 131. De mysteriis 4.20. 132. Ibid., 9.50. 133. Ibid., 9.51. 134. Ibid., 9.52. I have modified Deferrari’s translation to better reflect the Latin. 135. “Christ is in that sacrament, because the body is Christ’s. So the food is not corporeal but spiritual. Therefore the Apostle also says of its type, ‘Our fathers ate the spiritual food and drank the spiritual drink,’ for the body of God is a spiritual body; the body of Christ is the body of the Divine Spirit, for the Spirit is Christ, as we read: ‘The Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord’” (ibid., 9.58). 136. “[U]bi accesserit consecratio, de pane fit caro Christi” (De sacramentis IV.4.14). 137. “[Q ]uanto magis operatorius est, ut sint quae errant, et in aliud commutentur” (ibid., IV.4.15). I have modified Deferrari’s translation slightly. 138. “Because you have been baptized in the name of the Trinity, in all that we have done the mystery of the Trinity has been preserved. Everywhere the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one operation [una operatio], one sanctification, although they seem to be, as it were, certain special things” (ibid., VI.2.5). 139. Ibid., VI.1.2. 140. “[U]t possit mutare et convertere genera instituta naturae” (ibid., VI.1.3).

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141. Ibid., VI.1.4. 142. Ibid., VI.1.3. 143. On the enclosed garden, De mysteriis 9.55. Ambrose interprets the ritual of being sealed with the Holy Spirit as shining in the image of the Triune God (ibid., 7.41–42). 144. De sacramentis VI.1.3. 145. Ibid., IV.4.19. 146. Ibid., IV.4.20. 147. There is a problem involving the dove as a type and likeness of the Holy Spirit. According to Luke’s (3:22) and John’s (1:33) accounts of the baptism, the Spirit descended from heaven “in the likeness of a dove.” So Ambrose, anticipating the objection of an astute neophyte that Noah’s dove is the real thing while the dove at the baptism is the likeness, argues that the difference between likeness and reality corresponds to the categorical difference between Being and becoming. Reality corresponds to Being, which is eternal, while the likeness corresponds to creatures that occupy the ever-fluctuating realm of becoming. Thus, even though the dove Noah released was a real dove and the dove at the baptism of Jesus was only the likeness of a dove, the thing represented by the type is real and the type is only a likeness. When the difference is between the eternal Spirit of God and the short-lived dove, the Spirit is true and the dove must be treated as a mere likeness. See De mysteriis 4.25. 148. Ambrose introduces his explanation of Rom. 6 by reminding the neophytes of what they heard “in lectione praesenti” (De sacramentis II.7.23). 149. Ibid., II.7.23. I have modified Deferrari’s translation slightly to preserve better sense. 150. De mysteriis 7.37. 151. “Christus autem videns Ecclesiam suam . . . vel animam regenerationis lavacro mundam atque ablutam, dicit: Ecce formosa es, proxima mea, ecce es formosa, oculi tui sicut columbae; in cujus specie Spiritus sanctus descendit de coelo. Formosi oculi sicut columbae quia in ejus specie Spiritus sanctus descendit de coelo” (ibid.). 152. Ibid., 9.59. 153. Ibid. 154. “Finally the course of nature does not always produce generation; we confess that Christ the Lord was conceived of a virgin and we deny the order of nature [naturae ordinem]. For Mary did not conceive of man, but received of the Holy Spirit in her womb” (ibid.). 155. To illustrate how Christ changes nature for his purpose, Ambrose points to the normal manner of human procreation and then says, “But because the Lord wished, because he chose this sacrament [sacramentum], Christ was born of the Holy Spirit and a virgin” (De sacramentis IV.4.17). 156. “Ipse dixit, et factum est, ipse mandavit, et creatum est” (ibid., IV.4.16). Here Ambrose applies Ps. 32:9 (LXX), which speaks of the creative power of God’s Word and which Ambrose cites in the previous section on the transformation of the nature of the eucharistic elements. 157. De sacramentis IV.4.16.

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6

1. Expo. Luc. V.23. This discussion of the purity of the inner man who has put off the works of the old man comes in the context of Ambrose’s analysis of the call of Levi and his leaving his former life as a tax collector to follow Christ (Luke 5:27–32), which follows the discussion of the healing of the leper and the paralytic. Thus Ambrose sees in these pericopes the baptismal themes of healing and of transformed lifestyle. 2. “Thus, through the exercise of spiritual understanding and the disposition of humility, that good husbandman thinks that even the Jews will be fruitful for the Gospel of Christ . . . by its [the Church’s] grace, through the sanctification in baptism, the peoples of the Jews and of the Gentiles [can] possess the fruit of their own merits” (Expo. Luc. VII.169). 3. Ibid., VII.170. Ambrose issues a warning to Christians that because they are people who enjoy the power of the Gospel and have been born anew in the grace of baptism, they are under greater judgment if they do not bear fruit. “I think that all, and especially we, should be wary of this saying about the Jews, lest devoid of merits, we occupy the fertile place of the Church” (ibid., VII.171). Although the language of “cutting down” when applied to a synagogue sounds like rhetoric intent upon inciting his congregation to perpetrate violence against the local synagogue or members of the Jewish community (as happened to the synagogue at Callinicum in December 388), this is not Ambrose’s intention. Since there was no synagogue in Milan by the time of the Callinicum affair, Ambrose’s language cannot be construed as an implicit injunction literally to “cut down” the synagogue. It is merely Jesus’ language in Luke that Ambrose is quoting. 4. Ibid., V.24–25. I have modified Tomkinson’s translation, which renders initiavit as “consecrated.” 5. Ibid., V.23. 6. Ambrose does not follow the logic of Jesus’ caution about not sewing an old garment on the new as the unshrunken new garment will tear the old garment when the patch is washed. Instead he speaks about the color of the garment. The new piece or patch on the old garment, far from making the old garment look beautiful, adds only a mottled, patchwork appearance. Rather one should simply wear a new garment that is free of blemish. He concludes that the new garment must be the same color as Christ. Here Ambrose fits the parable to the logic of the baptismal ritual. The white garment of the newly baptized symbolizes putting on Christ. Therefore, the soul of the baptized should be of the same color as Christ, meaning that the soul should have the whiteness of Christ’s purity and glory. 7. Ambrose in Expo. Luc. VIII.50–51 grounds his discussion of the “two minds” in Rom. 7:22 but also Eph. 4:23 where the author speaks of the “old man” and the “new man.” 8. Expo. Luc. V.23. 9. Ibid., V.24. 10. “The garment is soon torn if our actions are not fitting; it is soon weakened by the moths of the flesh and stained by the error of the old man” (ibid., V.25).

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11. Interpreting Gen. 4:7 (LXX), “If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, you have sinned,” Ambrose explains the distinction between “offering rightly” and “dividing rightly” as corresponding to the difference between following the proper form of the ritual of the sacrament and having a proper understanding about God. For example, the Jews do not divide rightly (i.e., distinguish rightly) when they “separate the son of Mary from God the Father,” and the Sabellians do not divide rightly because they “confuse the Father and the Son” (De incarnationis sacramento 2.6–11). 12. De incarnationis sacramento 2.13. 13. Ambrose expands the parallel between the heretics and Cain by arguing that the heretics fail to divide rightly and thus make their sacraments the occasion for sin because, like Cain, they have a corrupt disposition toward God. That is, they are predisposed not to believe the plain sense of Scripture: “For the flesh does not err, which performs its function and receives what is heard, but the mind is a perverse interpreter of good hearing, which refuses to hear what is said, and to understand what is read” (ibid., 3.14). 14. Ambrose continues in the same paragraph to clarify the indictment against the Apollinarians: “they do not know how to distinguish the character of human from that of divine nature; for God’s is a simple nature, man consists of a rational soul and a body. If you take away one, you have destroyed the entire nature of man” (ibid., 2.11). 15. Ibid., 7.67. 16. De mysteriis 9.50. 17. Ibid., 8.45–47. 18. Ambrose and Nazianzen differ significantly in their description of the union of the divine and human in Christ. While Nazianzen calls the union a “blending” or “mixing” (μίξις), Ambrose expressly rejects the language of mixing. Nazianzen’s insistence upon single predication model in which all predicates are predicated of one subject reflects his reaction against Diodore’s Antiochene division of Christ into two subjects. This Christopher Beeley calls Nazianzen’s “economic paradigm” for Christology (122). He describes Nazianzen’s preservation of the tension between the unity of Christ and the distinction between the humanity and divinity: “In other words, Gregory’s rule of Interpretation is as much a definition of the unity and unchanging identity of the Son of God in his eternal and incarnate states as it is a distinction between those states, in keeping with the narrative statements of the divine economy” (133). See Christopher Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 19. De incarnationis sacramento 3.18. 20. De virginibus III.1.2–3. 21. “Do not ask about the kind of nature. I am far more ignorant of this than I know. This only do I know well, that I do not know what I cannot know” (De incarnationis sacramento 3.21). 22. Ibid., 3.19. 23. De virginibus III.1.2. 24. Although Origen distinguishes the Father or “the God” (ho Theos) from the Son or Word who is “God” or “divine” (theos) (Comm. John II:12–18), he nonetheless maintains that the Son as the Wisdom and Power of God is intrinsic to the being of the

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Father. See De principiis I.2.2. Lewis Ayres argues that although Origen did have a hierarchical view of the relation of the Father and Son, it is inaccurate to label him a subordinationist. For unlike Arius’s ontological subordination of the Son that is condemned, Origen insists upon the coeternality of the Father and the Son on the grounds that the Son, as the Father’s wisdom and power, is intrinsic to the Father’s nature. See Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 22–23. For the place of the Son or the Power of the God in Gregory of Nyssa, see Michel Barnes, The Power of God: Δύναμις in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000); and on Gregory of Nazianzus, see Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, 132–36. 25. De virginibus III.1.4. 26. The scholarly debate about Ambrose’s commitment to Nicene Christianity and the strength of the Homoians in Milan at the time of Ambrose’s election has been extensive. Fortunately, my argument in this book does not depend on the adjudication of these questions. Whatever his relation to the Nicene faith on the eve of his ordination, by the time of his writing of De fide, De incarnationis sacramento, and De Spiritu Sancto, and of the Empress Justina’s arrival in Milan in 378, Ambrose had become aggressively pro-Nicene. My own view is that laity and priests in Milan adopted a laissez-faire attitude toward doctrine and tended to follow—or at least accede to—the theological sensibility of their bishop. This would explain why Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of Tours failed to rally a large contingent of pro-Nicene Milanese to turn against Auxentius in their attempts to depose the Homoian bishop. That Ambrose likely chose Simplicianus, a Milanese pro-Nicene, to baptize him suggests that (a) there was a pro-Nicene faction in Milan at the time of Auxentius’s death, and (b) that Ambrose had pro-Nicene sympathies. Yet, I am persuaded by D. H. Williams’s argument that Ambrose did not establish himself as champion of the pro-Nicenes aggressively suppressing Homoians immediately upon becoming bishop. Rather, the early years of his episcopacy were devoted to learning his office and establishing his position among his parishioners. He did not go on the offensive against the Homoians until Justina and her fellow Homoians fled to Milan following the Battle of Adrianople and Gratian requested an account of the Nicene faith in 378. See D. H. Williams, Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Arian-Nicene Conflicts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); and Neil McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 27. Ambrose reasons that, since the Father is incorporeal, he has no beginning in time and so has no plurality: “But, if there is no time of beginning in the Word, surely there is neither number nor degree of the Word.” The conclusion is that, unlike human speech, which has many words, the Father has one Word (De incarnationis sacramento 3.20). 28. Ibid., 3.22. 29. Ambrose makes this distinction. The spirit descended as a dove. The Son descended not as flesh but in flesh. “As” suggests the mere appearance of embodiment. See De sacramentis I.5.17. 30. Athanasius, De incarnatione 11–15. Also see Khaled Anatolios’s account of Athanasius’s argument of the mediatorial role of the Word in Orations against the

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Arians in Anatolios, Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought (Oxford: Routledge, 2009), 100–116. 31. “Shall not God much more spare his own creatures, that they not be led astray from him and serve things of nought[?] . . . What, then, was God to do? or what was to be done save the renewing of that which was in God’s image[?] . . . But how could this have come to pass save by the presence of the very image of God, our Lord Jesus Christ?” (Athanasius, De incarnatione, 13). Christopher Beeley, following Norman Russell, contends that divinization was not central to Athanasius’s soteriology and so argues that Gregory of Nazianzus was the first Greek to make theōsis the central model for thinking of Christ’s saving work. See Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, 117–19, and especially 119, n. 21. 32. De incarnationis sacramento 8.82. 33. “Then there is no doubt that he grants from that which he has, and so he has divine nature who grants participations in divine nature” (ibid., 8.85). 34. He introduces this discussion of the two natures by appealing to Peter’s confession in Matt. 16:16–18. This confession of faith is the foundation of the Church that will allow it to prevail against hell, that is, against heresies that buffet the Church. See ibid., 5.34. 35. Ibid., 5.35. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 9.103–4. 38. “Intende Qui Regis Israel,” 5. 39. Philo, De gigantibus XV.65 and XIII.60. See Brian E. Daley, “The Giant’s Twin Substances: Ambrose and the Christology of Augustine’s Contra sermonem Arianorum,” in Collectanea Augustiniana: Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, ed. J. Lienhard, E. Muller, and R. Teske (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 481. Daley also notes that giants in Latin literature were commonly thought to have a compound nature. 40. “Surely the Son of God is like to us not according to the fullness of divinity, but according to our rational soul, and, to speak more clearly, according to the truth of our human body” (De incarnationis sacramento 9.104). 41. Ibid., 7.67. 42. “But what need was there to take up flesh without a soul, since, surely, insensible flesh and an irrational soul is neither responsible for sin nor worthy of reward” (ibid., 7.68). 43. De virginibus III.5.21. 44. Ibid., III.5.22. Ambrose proceeds to explain that the water from Christ’s wounded side and weeping are signs of the washing of faith in baptism, and the blood represents the blood we drink in the Sacrament, which represents charity. To these experiences of passion, he adds Christ’s breathing the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, which represents Christ’s conferral of the hope of resurrection. 45. Ibid., III.5.23. 46. De incarnationis sacramento 6.60. I have modified the translation; Deferrari renders “utpote in similitudinem carnis peccati factus” as “namely, made into the likeness of sin of the flesh,” as if glossing “by the nature and operation of sin.” That is,

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he translates carnis as a subjective genitive governing peccati, which is, in turn, the genitive indicating the possessor of similitudinem. However, “similitudinem carnis peccati” is the wording given by Romans 8:3 in the Vulgate and which was present in the Vetus Latina version that Ambrosiaster used in preparing his commentary on Romans (Commentaria in Epistulam ad Romanos 8.3). This is usually translated as “in the likeness of sinful flesh” where peccati is taken as a genitive of quality with carnis, which is then the possessor of the similitudinem. I therefore take this clause to be epexegetical of the entire clause “he was made sin . . . not by the nature and operation of sin” and have translated utpote as “inasmuch as.” Ambrose is contrasting the natural operation of sin that makes humans actually sinful with Christ’s assumption of the curse of our sin by being made in the likeness of sinful humanity. 47. De paenitentia I.3.12. 48. Ibid., I.3.13. 49. De incarnationis sacramento 7.67. 50. Ibid., 7.64. 51. “He has redeemed me entirely, because the faithful one rises again into the perfect man not in part, but entirely” (ibid., 7.68). 52. Ambrose’s discussion of this text in De incarnationis sacramento 7.72–74 immediately follows his repeated statement that Christ assumed our perfect humanity. He ultimately explains the Lucan passage through a divided predication: the increase in wisdom does not apply to the divine Word who is the perfect wisdom of God, but to the humanity of Christ, which is mutable: “For future and hidden things do not escape the wisdom of God, but childhood, lacking knowledge, through human ignorance, of course, does not know what he has not yet learned” (ibid., 7.74). 53. Ambrose, again appealing to Romans 7:24–25, reminds the reader that Paul answers his own rhetorical question: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God by Jesus Christ our Lord.” Had the Word feared being “overcome by the domination of this flesh,” then he should not have assumed human flesh “lest he be dragged to the hazardous condition of sin” (De incarnationis sacramento 7.64–65). 54. “So he took on flesh that he might raise it up again; he took on a soul, but he took on and received a perfect soul, rational and human” (De incarnationis sacramento 7.65). 55. Ibid., 7.71. 56. Ibid., 5.35. 57. Daley (“The Giant’s Twin Substances,” 482–83) quotes Augustine: “And let them admit that Christ [is] not just flesh, but soul and also that humanity has been joined to the unbegotten Word, with the result that he is one person (una persona), since Christ is Word and human being, the man himself being soul and flesh, Christ is Word, soul, and flesh. And I see in this way understanding the twin substance (intelligendus geminae substantiae) to be divine and human” (Contra sermonem Arianorum IX.7). 58. Augustine in Contra sermonem Arianorum VII.6 distinguishes Christ’s twofold substance from his unitary persona: “Since he is, therefore, a certain twofold

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substance [gemina quidem substantia], but one person [una persona].” Also in a passage that repeats the argument that Ambrose makes in De incarnationis sacramento 7.77, Augustine describes Christ as a single person, consisting of a twofold nature: “Indeed he is revealed to be one person [unam personam] in a double nature [in utraque natura], of God and of man, for if there had been two [persons], there would have come to be a quaternity, not a trinity” (Contra sermonem Arianorum VII.6). Here Augustine, like Ambrose, uses the terms natura and substantia as synonyms. 59. Ambrose stresses the necessity of a proper delineation between the divine and human in Christ in order for the sacrament to be valid: “For, although you believe that true flesh was assumed by Christ, and you offer his body to be transfigured on the altar, yet if you do not distinguish between the nature of his divinity and that of his body, to you also it is said: ‘If you offer rightly; but do not divide rightly, you have sinned’” (De incarnationis sacramento 4.23). 60. “Suscepit quod meum est, ut impertiret quod suum est; suscepit non ut confunderet, sed ut repleret. Si credas susceptionem, affingas confusionem; Manichaeus esse desisti, nec tamen Ecclesiae filius esse coepisti” (ibid.). 61. “So he received from us what he offered as his own for us, that he might redeem us from our own, and that he might confer upon us what was not our own from his divine liberality. According to our nature, then, he offered himself, that he might do a work beyond our nature. From that which is ours he took the sacrifice, from his is the reward” (ibid., 6.54). What he “offered as his own” is that which he “received from us,” namely, our mortal nature. In doing so, he redeems us “from our own,” which may refer to sin or the debt of sin, or death. Ambrose’s insistence that the Word offered himself even though what was sacrificed was what he took from humanity illustrates his conception of the unity of Christ in the Incarnation in which the Word offers himself up through his union with his mortal body. 62. “Suscepit quod meum est, ut impertiret quod suum est; suscepit non ut confunderet, sed ut repleret” (ibid., 4.23). This sentence is really a parallel compound sentence beginning with suscepit, followed by the object of suscepit, and then a purpose clause that explains why the Word assumed what the Word assumed. In the first clause, “Suscepit quod meum est,” “what is mine” is the object of suscepit and the purpose of the assumption is the conferral of “quod suum est.” The second section of the sentence follows the same pattern beginning with suscepit but leaves off the object. The object is implied by the object of the first part of the sentence. There he explains that the Word assumed “what was mine” to give to us “what was his own.” Following the logic of the parallel structure, “quod meum est” is the implied object of suscepit in the second part of the sentence. Likewise, “quod meum est” is also the likely object of confunderet and repleret. Furthermore, Ambrose is setting a direct contrast between God’s intention to complete (replere) rather than confuse (confundere). Thus the second part of the sentence amplifies the first point. By imparting (impertire) to us what was “his own,” the Word restores or completes (replere) what is in us, that is, a nature that lacks purity, incorruptibility, immortality, etc. If we assume that “quod meum est” (human nature) is the object of repleret, then it is likely the object of confunderet. Thus

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Ambrose means that Christ assumed human nature to complete it, not to create a confusion of the human and the divine natures. 63. “At vero posteaquam Dominus in corpus hoc veniens contubernium divinitatis et corporis sine ulla concretae confusionis labe sociavit, tunc toto orbe diffusus corporibus humanis vitae coelestis usus inolevit” (De virginibus I.3.13). The “custom characteristic of the heavenly life” to which Ambrose is referring is the angelic, virginal mode of life. 64. “[I]n his power [he recalls] his Father. He is . . . only-begotten in heaven, God from God . . . the righteousness of his Father, power from power, light from light, not unequal to his begetter, not divided in power, not confused when the Word is projected or uttered, as if mixed with the Father, but as distinct from the Father by reason of the law of generation” (ibid., III.1.2). Here “confused” is synomomous with “mixed,” which means creating a unity without distinction. As explained above, Ambrose is here countering a modalistic view of the Son that conflates Father and Son into a single person. 65. “If you believe the assumption of the body, and join compassion to divinity . . . you do not believe what is worthy of God” (De incarnationis sacramento 4.24). 66. Appealing to Mal. 3:6, “See me, see me, that it is I, and I am not changed,” and Heb. 13:8, “Jesus yesterday and today and the same forever,” Ambrose insists that the Word “is always unchangeable . . . is not changed according to the nature of the flesh, but . . . remained unchangeable even in the changeable quality itself of the human condition” (De incarnationis sacramento 6.55). When Ambrose says that the Word “non secundum naturam mutatus est carnis,” he does not mean that even Christ’s humanity became immutable (the next clause clearly affirms the mutability of Christ’s humanity) but that the divine nature of the Word is not subject to change in the manner of the human nature. 67. De incarnationis sacramento 7.75. 68. Ibid., 7.77. 69. R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 671. 70. De incarnationis sacramento 7.77. 71. Ibid., 6.54. 72. Ambrose elucidates his point that Christ did not need to be raised for himself since the Word did not require resurrection to liberate him from “the chains of death” since even in hell he was free (De excessu fratris II.102). 73. Ibid., II.103. 74. De fuga saeculi 9.57. 75. Expo. Luc. VII.187. 76. Ibid., VII.190. 77. De Isaac 4.24. The three wells that Isaac dug represent three stages of training and illumination that the Christian’s intellect must undergo to attain spiritual wisdom. The wells correspond to the three categories of figurative meaning: the moral, the natural, and the mystical. This interpretation is based on Origen’s adaptation of the threefold structure of a Hellenistic moral curriculum—ethics, natural sciences,

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and enoptics—to depict the spiritual paideia by which the soul ascends to God. This tripartite curriculum corresponds for Origen with Solomon’s trilogy: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. Proverbs provides the moral preparation necessary to purify the soul for illumination. Ecclesiastes corresponds to the natural or physical sciences in that here Solomon teaches the vanity of all that is transitory. Once the pupil knows that all creation, which will pass away, cannot be the highest good that humans should seek, she is ready for the Song of Songs, which, like enoptics—the study of metaphysical judgments about what has real being—trains the pupil to see, love, and seek union with the God who alone is true and eternal Being. See Commentary on the Song of Songs, trans. Rowan Greer (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1979), 231–36. 78. “For what is a well of living water but a depth of profound instruction?” (De Isaac 4.21). 79. Ibid., 4.22. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid., 4.24. 82. Ibid., 4.22. 83. “We often understand the soul and the body as two. But if there has been agreement on earth between two, it has made both one” (Expo. Luc. VII.138). 84. Ibid., VII.141. Here Ambrose is following the stock Platonic interpretation of the nonrational faculties as being inherently oriented toward the things of the body and sensual pleasure that do not always correspond with the goals of virtue. Nevertheless, the rational faculties can restrain the natural gravitation of the nonrational impulses of desire and spirit to the sensual so that the person can fulfill the duties of virtue. 85. Ibid., IV.58. 86. Ibid., VII.141. 87. See De incarnatione 7.69; De sacramentis V.4.29. 88. Expo. Luc. VII.139. 89. De sacramentis I.5.16. 90. Ibid., I.4.11–12. 91. It is widely recognized that Ambrose drew extensively upon Basil’s On the Holy Spirit and Didymus the Blind. We know this from Jerome’s translation of Didymus and Basil into Latin in order to correct, in Jerome’s judgment, Ambrose’s “flaccid and spiritless” (Rufinus, Apol. adv. Hieron. II.23–25) translation and adaptation of these excellent Greek writers. F. Homes Dudden offers a more moderate assessment: “If Ambrose borrowed largely from the writings of the Greeks, he at any rate did so with discrimination, selecting his material carefully, altering the order and arrangement, and adding a good deal of his own. . . . The logic is, perhaps, less cogent than Didymus, and the exposition is marred by redundancies and other blemishes. Yet the treatise furnishes a clear, straightforward statement of the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and is particularly important as the first attempt made in the West to deal systematically and exhaustively with this great topic”; F. Homes Dudden, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose (Oxford: Clarendon, 1935), 197–98. This present study is not chiefly concerned either with the search for Ambrose’s sources or judging the

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originality of Ambrose’s appropriation of his sources. The former has been adequately treated by other scholars and the latter reflects a peculiarly modern criterion for assessing the value of an individual’s thought. Moreover, it misses the point. Ambrose was not interested in being an original thinker but in deploying the strongest argument possible to combat a serious threat to the Catholic Church and his authority in Milan as well. (Defending one’s theological commitments and protecting one’s episcopal authority need not be mutually exclusive motives.) For the purposes of this study, what is interesting is how his adaptation of Basil’s and Didymus’s views is woven into the fabric of his teachings about baptism and the work of the Spirit in that regenerative process. This is seen in a comparison of De Spiritu Sancto with his discussion of the Spirit in De mysteriis, De sacramentis, and Hexameron. 92. De Spiritu Sancto I.3.40. 93. Ibid., I.14.144. 94. Ibid., I.14.145. 95. Ibid., I.14.148. 96. Ambrose insists that the Spirit is necessary for baptism to convey the sanctifying power of God. Quoting 1 Cor. 6:11, “But you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God,” he asks, “For how could the type of the sacrament have been without the operation of the Holy Spirit, whose entire truth is in the Spirit?” (De Spiritu Sancto III.4.23). But he also insists that the work of sanctification is not the exclusive domain of the Spirit but of the whole Trinity. For “the Father operates in the Son and the Son operates in the Spirit” (ibid., III.4.24). Having cited passages that speak of Father, Son, and Spirit sanctifying, Ambrose concludes: “Therefore, the Father sanctifies, the Son also sanctifies, and the Holy Spirit sanctifies, but the sanctification is one, because the baptism is one, and the grace of the sacrament is one” (ibid., III.4.28). 97. De Spiritu Sancto II.11.129. 98. “And so, what the Son says the Father also says; and what the Father says the Son also says, and what the Father and the Son say the Spirit also says” (ibid., II.12.130). 99. Ibid., I.14.140. 100. Ambrose paraphrases Ps. 35:9 (LXX): “That is, that with Thee, God Omnipotent Father, who are the Fount of Life, in thy light the Son, we shall see the light of the Holy Spirit” (ibid., I.14.142). 101. Ibid., III.12.87. 102. Ibid., III.12.88. 103. Ibid., I.3.44. 104. Ambrose is quick to explain that at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan the Spirit descended upon and remained upon Christ in his humanity or as “son of man” but not upon Christ in his divinity or as “Son of God.” “For according to Godhead the Spirit is not upon Christ but in Christ, because, just as the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, so the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ is both in the Father and in the Son, for he is the Spirit of His mouth” (ibid., III.1.6). 105. Ibid., I.5.66.

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106. Ibid., I.3.44. When Ambrose includes the proviso that one name is inclusive of the other persons if “you also comprehend it in your heart,” he is repeating an earlier argument that a baptism is invalid if one does not believe in the Trinity. “But baptism is full, if you confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. If you deny one, you will ruin the whole” (I.3.42). 107. De sacramentis I.5.15. Although I have said that the water signifies the Spirit’s operation, Ambrose does not call baptism a sign. Rather he distinguishes a sign (signum) from a sacrament (sacramentum). Signum refers to the corporeal way that the Spirit revealed himself among the “unbelievers” so that they might see the Spirit through a miraculous occurrence. Now the Church, because it has faith, does not need the mysterious physical phenomenon. Faith allows the Christian to apprehend the Spirit’s operation without an accompanying visible miracle. See ibid., II.5.15. 108. De Spiritu Sancto I.prologue,18. 109. Hexameron I.8.29. 110. Although Ambrose is not clear that “new birth” refers to the new creation, as opposed to the ongoing process of natural procreation, the prophetic character of the text to which Ambrose appeals, Ps. 103:30 (LXX), “Send forth thy Spirit and they shall be created and thou shalt renew the face of the earth,” suggests that he is linking the Spirit’s creative work at the beginning with the salvific renewal of the world. 111. De Spiritu Sancto II.5.34. 112. Ibid., I.6.76. 113. “So we were sealed with the Spirit by God. For just as we die in Christ, that we may be born again, so, too, we are signed with the Spirit, that we may be able to possess his splendor and image and grace, which surely is the sign of the Spirit” (ibid., I.6.79). 114. Ibid., I.6.77–78. 115. Ibid., I.4.61. 116. Ibid., I.5.62. 117. Ibid. 118. Ibid., I.5.63. 119. Ibid., I.5.64. 120. Ibid., I.7.88. Animus likely refers to the intellect or mind while anima refers to the soul generally that animates the body. 121. Ibid., I.7.89. 122. Ibid., III.10.64. 123. Ibid., III.10.68. 124. Ibid., III.10.68. 125. Ambrose, paraphrasing John 1:5, “John said that God is light and that in him there is no darkness,” concludes that each person of the Trinity is light (De Spiritu Sancto I.14.140). 126. De Spiritu Sancto I.14.142. Although Ps. 35:9 (LXX), “For with thee is the fountain of life and in thy light we shall see light,” distinguishes between light and life, Ambrose appeals to John 1:4, “The life was the light of men,” to argue that the light of the Son flows from the Father, who is the fount of life.

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127. De Spiritu Sancto I.14.144. 128. Ibid., I.14.145. 129. Ibid., I.8.93. 130. Ibid. 131. Ibid., I.8.94. 132. Ibid., I.9.100. 133. Ibid., I.9.101. 134. Ibid., I.9.102. Ambrose goes on to explain that oil is an appropriate metaphor for speaking of the Spirit’s divine nature, “since the nature of oil is lighter than others, while other materials settle, it rises and is separated. . . . [So too] corporeal things cannot be mixed with the incorporeal, nor created things with the uncreated.” 135. Ibid., I.9.103. 136. Ibid., I.11.116. 137. Ibid., III.12.90–91. 138. Hexameron VI.6.39. 139. Quoting 1 Cor. 3:16–17, “You are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you,” he explains the meaning of the text, “that is to say, in those who have experienced new birth and in the faithful in whom the Spirit of God dwells. It does not dwell among the carnal, for it is written: ‘My spirit shall not remain in these men forever, because they are flesh’” (Hexameron VI.6.39). 140. Expo. Luc. X.7. 141. Hexameron VI.7.42. 142. De paradiso I.2–4. 143. De Spiritu Sancto I.15.152, 154, and 158. 144. Ibid., I.15.155. 145. Ambrose makes “the river of the water of life . . . flowing from the throne of God” (Rev. 22:1) into multiple rivers by equating the river of Revelation with the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit, “for by these sanctifications of the gifts of the Spirit, as Isaiah said, is signified the fullness of the virtues: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness, the spirit of the fear of God” (De Spiritu Sancto I.15.158–59). 146. De Spiritu Sancto I.11.121. 147. De paradiso I.5. 148. Ambrose, following Judges 7:1 in the Septuagint, identifies Jerubaal with Gideon. 149. De Spiritu Sancto I.prologue, 2–3. 150. “For the flesh of the kid is referred to the fault of the deed, the broth [referred] to the enticements of desires, as it is written: ‘For the people burned with excessive desire’” (ibid., I.prologue.3). 151. Ibid., II.7.65. 152. Expo. Luc. I.37. Ambrose explains that John is a forerunner of the Lord in that “[t]he power of John precedes our soul when we prepare to believe in Christ, to prepare the ways of our soul for the Faith, and from the tortuous bypath of this life, straighten the paths of our communication, lest we fall by the digression of error” (ibid., I.38).

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Here Ambrose suggests that the power of John, that is, the power of the Spirit, both works to prepare the catechumen with the moral rectitude necessary to receive the faith in baptism and then gives power that restores the will in baptism. 153. Expo. Luc. VII.232.

CHAPTER

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1. De officiis III.18.108. 2. Ibid., III.18.109. 3. Expo. Luc. IX.36. 4. De paradiso 14.71. 5. De paenitentia II.7.53. 6. De interpellatione Iob et David IV.9.35. Ambrose goes on to explain the renewal as the purification that results from the cleansing of grace: “Learn the manner of our renewal: ‘You shall sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be cleansed, you shall wash me and I shall be made whiter than snow.’ . . . One who changes from the darkness of sin into the light of virtue and into grace is properly renewed. Thus, one who earlier was stained with foul defilement may shine with a brightness that is whiter than snow.” The “brightness that is whiter than snow” may well refer both to the purity conferred by grace and to the regeneration that awaits the Christian at the resurrection. 7. Ibid., IV.10.36. 8. Ambrose explains that penance demonstrates the God-fearing orientation of the soul in the very time that “the heat of luxury and sin is giving way.” Therefore, he asks, “how much more [than Moses] must we free the feet of our soul from the bonds of the body, and clear our steps from all connection with this world” (De paenitentia II.11.107). 9. De interpellatione Iob et David III.1.1. 10. De paenitentia II.10.96. 11. Ibid., II.10.97. 12. In the context of Abraham’s solicitation of Rebekah for Isaac with the gift of a golden nose ring and two bracelets, Ambrose offers the moral interpretation about Christian marriage: “Indeed, moral simplicity is expressed, because . . . the Lord as patron of the marriage would fulfill the petition” (De Abraham I.9.87). 13. De paenitentia II.1.4. 14. “The saint speaks as if aware of his own worth, and yet, the more saintly he is the humbler he is. But if the saint speaks with great difficulty, what am I, a sinner, to say . . . ‘[W]hat is man except that you visit him? Therefore do not forget one who is weak. Remember, Lord, that you have made me weak, remember that you have fashioned me as dust. How will I be able to stand, unless you direct your care always so as to strengthen this clay?’” (De interpellatione Iob et David IV.6.22). 15. Ambrose is explicit that, although we approach God in faith believing that we must repent and that God will then forgive us, faith does not “presume to claim a right.” Rather, we approach God “with the disposition of an honest debtor” (De paenitentia II.9.80).

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16. Ibid., I.7.31. 17. De officiis I.18.70. 18. De Nabuthae historia 15.65–66. 19. De officiis I.45.221. 20. De paenitentia II.9.81. 21. Ibid., I.16.91. 22. De Ioseph 10.59. Cf. De paenitentia II.8.71. 23. De paenitentia II.7.54. 24. Ibid., II.8.70. 25. Ibid, II.8.71. 26. De Abraham I.9.87. 27. De interpellatione Iob et David IV.2.7. 28. De paenitentia II.10.93. 29. De fuga saeculi I.3. 30. “These expressions are not redundant, for life is related to death and death to life, because everyone living dies while he is alive and lives when he dies. We find, therefore four categories: to live in life, to die in death, to die in life, to live in death” (De paradiso 9.43). 31. The converse of “live in life” is “die in death,” which means that at the death of the body the soul “is unable to partake in life eternal” (ibid., 9.44). 32. Having explained Gal. 2:20, “To sin he [Paul] is dead, but he lives for God, that is, death in him is dead, but living in him is that life which is the Lord Jesus,” Ambrose goes on to comment that this is the meaning of death as we have it in the sacrament of baptism (De paradiso 9.45). 33. Warning against “false prophets” who weaken the soul by pointing us to the transitory things of the body, he reminds his audience, “Thus, you are not flesh alone. What is flesh without the guidance of the soul and the vigor of the mind? . . . You are not, therefore, a garment, but one who puts on a garment for use. And so you are told to ‘strip off the old man with his deeds and put on the new’—you who are renewed not in the quality of the body, but in the spirit and affirmation of the mind” (Hexameron VI.6.39). 34. Ibid., VI.6.39. 35. Expo. Luc. VII.36–37. 36. See Virgil, Aeneid VI.956–59. 37. Plato, Republic X.621a–b. 38. De fuga saeculi 1.2. 39. “Warned by that example, the apostle, forgetting what was behind and seeking for what is before, hastened on to the prize and deserved to attain it. For he saw Christ before him, and was called by Christ to the crown of justice; but he who attained it denied himself to himself in order to gain Christ. Indeed, he did not live, but Christ lived in him” (ibid., 1.2). 40. Ibid., 2.7. 41. De paenitentia II.6.42. 42. Ibid., II.6.40–41.

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43. Ambrose likely misapplies the cryptic words from Luke 7:32. Jesus does not criticize the Jews for not responding to his call to dance. Rather, he attributes the children’s taunt to “this generation,” which demands contradictory things of John the Baptist and himself. Whatever Jesus meant in verse 32, “We piped to you and you did not dance; we wailed and you did not weep,” Ambrose’s interpretation is clear: “This, then, is the mystery. ‘We piped to you,’ singing in truth the song of the New Testament, ‘and you danced not.’ That is, did not raise your souls to the spiritual grace. ‘We wailed, and you wept not.’ That is, you did not repent. And therefore was the Jewish people forsaken, because it did not repent, and rejected grace” (De paenitentia II.6.44). 44. De paenitentia II.6.43. 45. De interpellatione Iob et David III.11.29. 46. De excessu fratris II.117. 47. Ibid., II.110. 48. Ambrose immediately links the trumpet of belief with justification by quoting Rom. 10:10: “‘For with the heart a man believes unto justice, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.’ Accordingly, with these twin trumpets we arrive at that holy land, namely, the grace of resurrection” (De excessu fratris II.112). 49. De excessu fratris II.113. 50. Expo. Luc. VI.34. 51. De Isaac 8.76. 52. “Therefore we find that Joseph was bought for twenty gold pieces by one account, for twenty-five by another, and thirty by another, because Christ is not valued at the same price by all men” (De Ioseph 3.14). Here Ambrose is relying upon the Septuagint, which says (Gen. 37:28) that Joseph was sold for gold. 53. De Ioseph 3.14. 54. Ibid. 55. Expo. Luc. VII.147. I have modified Tomkinson’s translation somewhat. I construe ex peccato with the main verb impellat rather than with the participle orta. I am taking the phrase “cupiditatem gratiae spiritalis” to be a use of the objective genitive. Thus the passage means that repentance marks a change of one’s purpose and the desire for spiritual grace. 56. Ibid., VII.147–48. 57. De Isaac 3.7. 58. In this dispute with the disciples of Novatian about the pardoning of apostasy, Ambrose asks how he can remove the pollution “which I by my deeds have caused on your steps” (De paenitentia II.8.67). Ambrose’s sins have corrupted “your steps,” which refers to the common human nature which Christ assumed and purified in the Incarnation or to Christ’s indwelling of Ambrose since his baptism. For in the previous sentence, Ambrose implores Christ to “reserve for me the washing off from your feet of the stains contracted since you walked in me.” Even as Christ soiled his feet coming to pardon the woman in the house of Simon, so Ambrose has soiled Christ as a result of his sins “since [Christ] walked in [him].” Therefore, even as the woman washed off the dirt from the feet of her savior, so Ambrose wishes to know how he might remove the filth Christ endured by assuming Ambrose’s nature and dwelling in him.

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59. Ibid., II.8.67. 60. Ibid., II.8.73. 61. De excessu fratris II.116–17. 62. Ibid., II.118. 63. Expo. Luc. VII.32. 64. De mysteriis 4.24–25. Ambrose also here quotes Luke 3:22: “Be wise as serpents, but as guileless as doves.” The simplicity of the dove corresponds to the guilelessness of the Christian who has no mixed motives nor is the cause of deception. 65. Commenting on the fig tree of Song of Songs 8:5, “There your mother brought you forth, there she brought you forth who bore you,” Ambrose treats the fig tree as a figure of the Church and more specifically of the baptismal font: “For we are born there, where we are born again. Moreover, they were brought forth in whom the image of Christ is formed” (De Isaac 8.74). 66. Song of Songs 8:6 (LXX): “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death.” 67. Ambrose repeats the identification of the seal of Song of Songs 8:6 with baptism in his postbaptismal instruction (De mysteriis 7.41). 68. De Isaac 8.75. 69. Ibid., 8.77. 70. Ibid. 71. De excessu fratris II.109. 72. Ibid., II.110. 73. Hexameron VI.9.74 74. Ambrose introduces this discussion by asking whether the body is made in the image of God. After putting forward a number of possible instances of bodily manifestations of the divine image, such as the lofty positioning of the head, he concludes that the body, which is “fixed and enclosed in a narrow space,” cannot be like the omnipresent deity. By contrast, the mind is “free to wander far and wide in acts of reflection and of counsel” and so shares God’s transcendence. While the rational soul’s capacity for transcendence does not make it omnipresent as is God, it does allow human beings to be on earth and in heaven, conscious of God’s presence, at the same time. See Hexameron VI.8.44–45. 75. Abraham I.2.4. 76. Ibid., II.1.2. 77. De Ioseph 12.73. 78. De bono mortis 3.9. 79. Ibid. When Ambrose says that the “earthly dwelling is being dissolved” by the death of the outer man, he likely has in mind a double sense of death. First, the outward man that is oriented sinfully to the base things of the material world is figuratively put to death by the soul’s renunciation of earthly pleasures and its reorientation toward the things of God. Second, he may have in mind the literal death and decay of the material body so that it may be remade in the resurrection. 80. Again quoting Phil. 3:20–21, Ambrose says that we enter into our heavenly dwelling place “through elevation of soul and humility of heart,” seeking what is true,

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what really exists, and what endures rather than the transitory things associated with this body of death. 81. De Abraham II.7.41. 82. Hexameron III.12.50. Ambrose compares drooping vines weighted down by “earthly anxiety” with the woman in Luke 11:28 whom Jesus healed of her stooped posture. Again, Ambrose plays with the theme that the outward form of the body discloses the inward condition of the soul. “Bent over, in fact, was her soul, which inclined to terrestrial rewards and possessed not heavenly grace.” Upon being seen by Jesus, she laid aside her burdens. Thus her soul was liberated from its curvatura and finally could gain the rectitudo of orientation toward the heavenly things. 83. Hexameron III.12.51.

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Scripture Index

Genesis 1:2 189 2:7 15 4:7 134 6:3 20, 22 6:4 167 6:5–7 22 12:1 35 13:2 36 13:17 220 18:6 93 24:65 105 26:18–33 180 26:46 15 27:1–29 86, 103 27:15–16 88 27:27–29 88 Exodus 3:5 146 3:15 186 15:23 80 33:20 46 Leviticus 20:18 58 Deuteronomy 4:9 17, 205 4:24 186

Judges 6:11ff 195 Job 19:26 131 Psalms (LXX) 2:7 126 4:4 38 4:5 38 6:6 168 18:6 166–7 35:10 187 32:6 189 41:3 168 41:4 204 41:6 210 43:4 201 48 44–5 50:5 169 55:4 135 61:2 31 73:26 209 107:6 135 113:5 196 115:15 139 119:109 16 141:4 31 143:4 141 144:4 19

310

SCRIPTURE INDEX

Song of Songs 1:2–3 101, 107 1:5 106 1:6 51, 59 1:8 22 4:1 106, 154 8:1–2 109–10 8:5 106 8:6 216 Isaiah 10:17 192 25:8 139 Jeremiah Ezekiel 33:14–16 205 Hosea 13:24 139 Zechariah 3:3 154 2 Maccabees 7:27 39 4 Maccabees 8:3 39 8:7–8 39 8:9 39 Matthew 6:12 83 10:28 16 13:33 179 18:21–34 83 22:12–13 105, 161 26:38 32 27:52 136 Mark 7:33–35 99 14:34 32 Luke 4:31–37 183 4:33 45 5:17–26 132 5:27–9 109 5:33–39 161 5:35 75

7:17–26 78, 113 7:27–32 78 7:35 111 7:36–50 102 7:41–43 113, 117 7:47 212 9:60 206 11:33 77 12:13–21 16 12:51–53 34, 181 13:6–9 159 13:20–1 179 15:4–7 112 15:11–32 44 17:35–6 22 22:35 146 23:28 171 John 1:3 186 1:14 168 3:8 191 8:56 89 9:1–12 79 9:15 221 14:9 18 14:15–17 192 14:27 34 17:3 192 20:2 187 Acts of the Apostles 13:33 126 Romans 1:20 149 5:1 88, 102 5:12 45 5:12–21 83 5:20 74, 212 6:3–8 x 6:4 103 6:11–14 x 6:23 83 7:4–5 72 7:8–9 72 7:14–15 20–1, 52 7:22–24 20–1, 24–25, 31–2, 72, 159, 161, 169 8:3–4 167–8 8:6 191 8:7 31 8:10–23 x

SCRIPTURE INDEX

8:22 133 10:4 88 12:5 x

2:14 34, 181–2 4:4 x 5:23 x

1 Corinthians 2:9 150 2:12 187 5:5 186 6:15 x 6:17 163 6:20 91, 163 7:22–23 113, 117 12:13 190 12:27 x 15:1ff 43 15:22 44–5 15:28 142 15:35–36 137 15:54–5 139

Philippians 1:23 211 3:13–14 207 3:13–21 218 3:20 64

2 Corinthians 3:3 95 4:10–12 62 4:16 21, 60–1, 219 4:18 60, 149 5:18 186 7:5 132 12:4 176

2 Timothy 2:5 108

Galatians 2:10 205 4:28–29 195 5:16–26 22

1 John 4:16 221 5:7 191

Ephesians 1:23 x

Colossians 1:9 191 1:18 126 2:21–22 60–1 3:3 64 3:9–10 159, 161 1 Thessalonians 4:13 144

Hebrews 4:15 167 2 Peter 1:3–4 166

Revelation 3:20 110 8:13 220

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Subject and Name Index

Abraham 180 as example of harmony of soul and body 35–6, 238n79, 244n52 faith of 38–41, 88–94, 123, 254n72, 255n81, 256n100, 262n187 prophecy of 98, 255n73 as type of catechumen 132, 201, 219 virtues of 33, 202, 220 Ambrose and the Altar of Victory 14 his baptism xvi and the Bible xiii–xiv his election as bishop xvi–xvii Paulinus’ biography of xv practice of catechesis 5, 11 relation with Arians/Homoians xvi style of exegesis 11 Antiochus of Ascalon 14 Antiochus Epiphanes 39 Aristotle different than Ambrose 31, 234n37, 239n1 hylomorphic theory 29 Arius 165, 166 Atonement 81–6 and Christ’s merits 103 Augustine as aspirans 4 on his baptism 7

as a catechumen 4–5 and Monica’s refusal to baptize 4 Auxentius of Milan xvi–xvii, 273n26 Baptism confession of need for 79–80 as conversion 223 as death to sin 205–10 desire for God 101 difference from miracles 148–9 difference from Jewish mysteries 150 and Eucharist 152, 155 as forgetting 206–10 forgiveness of sin 105–7, 212–13 gift of faith 99–102, 149 and grace 151, 204 and the “inner man” (Col 3:4–10) 159–62, 199–221 order of the rite 6–7, 149 participation in new humanity 160–4 participation in resurrection 125–6, 155–6 postbaptismal instruction 125–6, 149 as rebirth, see Regeneration reception of Christ’s merits 105 and repentance 200–10, 214 as sacrament of justification 69, 70, 79, 201

314

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

Baptism (continued) sacrament of cross 80 as sacrament of regeneration 125–6, 148–57, 191 as similitudo of death 152–4 transformation of desire 199, 210–21 work of Holy Spirit 179–85, 189–97 Basil of Caesarea and De Spiritu Sancto 185, 278n91 Body “body of death” (Rom 7:24) 20–1, 24–5, 31, 43 corruption through sin 20, 47 death 127–8 distinction between body and flesh 21–4 instrumental view of 17–19 in paradise 43–4 in Plotinus 14, 30 restoration of harmony with soul 180–5 Burns, J. Patout xiv, 226n21, 245n1–2, 257n101 Calmness (tranquilitas) 37, 41, 244n55 Cavadini, John xiv, xviii, 128–9, 226n21, 263n13 Christology Apollinaris 177–78 “confusion” of natures 174–5 Cyril of Alexandria 178–9 Gregory of Nazianzus 164–5 likeness of sin 167–8 sinlessness 169–71 the Son as Word 165–6 “twin natures” 166–7, 171–4, 176–9 virginal conception 169–70 weakness of body 168–9 Cicero, Marcus T. xii on death 139 de Officiis xiii, 232n22, 244n55 on passions 243n34 on soul 16, 233n24 Colish, Marcia xvii–xviii, 55, 228n15, 229n16, 244n52 on Ambrose’s view of “flesh” 239n80 on faith 94, 256n100, 262n187 on hylomorphism 234n37, 242n31 Contemplation xii, 91, 146, 183 body as impediment to 63 means of participation in God 18–19 in Platonism and Neopaltonism 27, 30, 46, 60, 242n23, 247n19, 268n102 Courage (fortitudo) 56, 65, 171, 220–221, 262n186

dependence on other virtues 236n47 faith and 38–41, 91–2, 101–103 from Holy Spirit 281n145 Courcelle, Pierre xii–xiii de Labriolle, P xii David 81, 253n45 and grace 208 and Psalms 139, 141, 184, 209, 265n41 and repentance 169, 201–2, 204, 282n6 as type of Messiah 86 Death Christian life as form of 127 difference with Plotinus 147–8 as a good 145, 147 and grief 138–41, 143–5 as remedy for sin 141–2 of Satyrus 129–30 Debt Christ’s payment of 80–1, 83–4 of creature 118 of freedman 116–17 and grace 120 of sin, death 83 Dudden, F. Homes xii, xv, 227n26, 278n91 of virtue 120–2 Duval, Yves-Marre xiv Eschatology beatific vision 217 goal of catechumen 219 heavenly commonwealth 218–21, 223 perfection of human nature 136–8, 218 resurrection bodies 128, 145–6 Faith (fides) Abraham’s 88–90, 92–4 cause of virtues 91–2 epistemic character of 88–90, 103–5 given at baptism 99–102 as imitation of Christ’s faith 108–9 lost in Fall 96–8 merit of 102–7, 109, 111 and meritorious desire 109–10 not natural capacity 77–8, 94–102 need to be given 98 of Israel 86–7 and regeneration 126 relation to devotio 90–4, 95, 103, 113 Freedom (libertas) as being under obligation 116–17 of freedmen (1 Cor 7:22) 113–22

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

natural xviii and new birth x, 113–117, 156, 184, 200 reason’s control over emotions 37 from sin 154 from debt 113 and obedience 118–19 Grace, (gratia) x, xvii–xx, 230n30, 237n54 in baptism 3–6, 99–102, 151, 204, 227n4 of Christ 73, 76, 80, 149–53, 217 and Holy Spirit 149, 151, 190–200 and the Law 71–79, 251n18 lost in fall 49–51, 248n33 and merit 105–113, 120 obligations resulting from 120–23 in paradise 46 regenerative work of 42–3, 125–27, 141 and repentance 251n14, 251n20 resisting sin 55, 63, 116 Greer, Rowan xiv, xxi, 252n38 Gregory of Nazianzus Christology 135, 265n46 on the Trinity 164–6, 272n18, 272n24, 274n31 Hadot, Pierre xii–xiii, xviii Hauerwas, Stanley ix, xxi Hays, Richard x Holy Spirit and baptism 185, 189 in creation 189–90 and grace 186–7, 190 indwelling of 194 and illumination 191–3 and love 186, 193 revealing the Son 187–8 role in regeneration 189–97 unity of operations 185–9 Incarnation allegory of Good Samaritan 96 divinization 84–6 “Great Exchange” 84 likeness of sin 81–2 see also Christology Jesus apocalyptic sayings 22, 75, 171 as Bridegroom 160–3 as a boy in the temple 24 and his disciples 78, 146

315

as embodiment of virtue 11, 81, 91–2, 107–9, 120, 135 emotions 32, 170 healings 45, 78, 79, 99, 132 on the Mount of Transfiguration 187–8 and Nicodemus 191–3 parable of the Fig Tree 159–60 parable of the Good Samaritan 47 parable of the Leaven 179 parable of the Lost Sheep 112 parable of the Rich Fool 15–16 parable of the Two Sons 44 Passion 6–7, 33, 70, 80, 81–4, 101, 104, 126–7, 132, 137, 153, 211 on peace 34, 181 and Philip 18 raising Lazarus 141, 203–4 virginal conception 23, 49, 136, 169–70, 182 warnings of persecution 64, 91 and woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee 74, 102, 117, 212, 214 Justice, (iustitia) eschatological 131 and God 18, 223–24 Joseph as exemplar of 88 of the Law 75–6 and moderation 65 and new birth 196 and piety 90, 249n42 of repentance 201 corrupted by sin 50–1, 59–60 Justification, see Baptism Law disposition of soul 78–9 impotence of 70–9 increases sin 72 instrument of grace 75 natural law 70 Paul’s view of 72–5 prepares for grace 74 spiritual meaning 77 teaching temperance 70–1, 75 without Christ 75–6 without grace 71–2 Lenox-Coyngham, Andrew xiii, xviii, 44, 226n11, 233n23, 246n6 Love (caritas, amor) and baptism 210, 213 born of gratitude 213 from forgiveness 74, 102, 117, 212, 214 from Holy Spirit 186, 193

316

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

Love (continued) image of God 215 as mark of new birth 216–17 replacing love of the world 211 Lucchesi, E. xiv Madec, Goulven xii–xiii, xviii, 233n23 Maes, Baziel xiv Malherbe, Abraham x–xi McLynn, Neil xvi–xvii Meeks, Wayne ix, xi Merit Christ’s 103 conferring benefits on others 111 of faith 102–7 grace differs according to 112–13 of holy desire 109–10 Moderation (modus, moderatio, modestia, temperantia) and emotions 41 health of body 31–2 and Law 70–1, 75, 251 loss of 48 Plotinus 241n11 renunciation of luxury and pleasure 64–5, 88, 127 condition for other virtues 69 Moorhead, John xvi, 232n14, 232n21, 263n15 Morality and Paul ix–x Origen on the body 137, 143 on death 145–6 difference from Ambrose 13, 43 on the Fall and return of souls 47, 56, 128–9 influence on Ambrose xiv, xviii, 21, 56, 113 on Paul 21 on philosophy xiii on the Song of Songs 25 on the Trinity 165, 184 Paredi, Angelo xv, 227n26 Passions (affectiones) 34, 55 apatheia 39 and baptismal grace 100–1 crying 203–5 desire (concupiscentia) 38, 53, 55–6 not locus of sin 52 and pleasure 56–8, 60

reformulation of Platonic view 60–1 relation with intellect 34–8 restraint of 38–41 and senses 56, 59, 61–3 spirited faculty (iracundia) 58–9 Stoic views of 55 training of 41–2 Paulinus of Milan xiii, xv–xvii, 277n26 Philo 167 on giants 274n39 on the Patriarchs xiv Piety (pietas or devotio) Abraham 88 and faith 90, 93, 103 impiety 202 Nicene 166 obligation of freedman 115 and wisdom 18–19, 38–41 Plotinus Ambrose’s use of xii, xiv and Augustine 228n15, 229n16 difference from Ambrose 27, 129 on the soul xix, 12–13, 15–16, 30–2, 147–8, 247n18–19, 268n107–8, 268n111 Porphyry xii, 226n11 Repentance, see Baptism Resurrection 127–44 and baptism 148–57 continuity between present and eschaton 143 Jesus’ resurrection 131, 133–40 “new skins” 128, 145–6 orations on 130 Origen on 128–9 as redemption of material creation 137–8 as redemption of whole person 132–3 as participation in divine life 141–2 as perfection of human nature 136–8 Righteousness see Justice Salzman, Michele Renee xv Satterlee, Craig Alan xiii, xvii, xxi, 229n25, 230n37 Savon, Herve xiv Sin concupiscence 48 corruption of human nature 47–51 debt of 83 deception of intellect 53–4 diminished capacity for justice 50

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

the Fall into 47, 53 hereditary 44–5 loss of faith 47–9 loss of grace 49 loss of imago Dei 46–7 loss of knowledge of God 50 loss of fellowship with god 51 and passions 55–63 in Romans 52 slavery to 51–5 in the will (voluntas) 51–3 Skepticism x Stoicism 14 Ambrose’s difference from xv, 139–44 on death 130, 139–44 Epictetus 114–15 and idea of self 17 on the passions 55 on the soul 15, 233n26 Socrates death of 12, 242n23 and immortality of soul 17, 231n10, 232n11 immortality and virtue 255n76, 268n102 on the passions 242n24 Soul in Aristotle 29–30 identification with “inner nature” (2 Cor 4) 24–7, 199–221 as image of God 18–20, 44, 46 immortality of 13, 15–17 incorporeal nature of 15 in Plato 12, 14, 17, 34–6 in Plotinus 13, 30 as the self 12–13, 17–18, 26–8 self-transcendence 19 sympathy with the body 31–3, 36–8, 180–83

317

as temple of God 205–6 tripartite structure 33–36 Symmachus 14, 232n21 Valentian I xvi Victorinus, Marius xiii, 229n15 Virtue (virtus) of Abraham 33, 202, 220 courage 38–41, 56, 65, 91–2, 101–103, 171, 220–21, 236n47 faith 91–2, 102–7 Holy Spirit 186, 193 Jesus’ 11, 81, 91–2, 107–9, 120, 135 justice 18, 75–6, 88, 90, 196, 223–4 love 210, 213, 216–7 moderation 31–2, 41, 70–1, 64–5, 69 and passions 34–41 piety 18–9, 38–41, 90, 93 immortality of 255n76, 268n102 wisdom 37, 87, 89, 105, 181 Will (voluntas) 51–52, 70 Williams, D.H. xvi–xvii, xxi, 273n26 Wisdom (sapientia or prudentia) Abraham and 89 and baptism 7, 105 Christ as 87, 170 and faith 77 God’s 18, 100, 125 and Law 107 necessary for fellowship with God 105 ordering of emotions 37 and piety 38–41 in Platonism and Neoplatonism 34, 60, 128 quality of inner man 22 and tranquility 181