Edition Masquer
De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XVII: Ad consequendam uitam beatam, quae in participatione est summi boni, non tali mediatore indigere hominem qualis est daemon, sed tali qualis est unus Christus.

Miror autem plurimum tam doctos homines, qui cuncta corporalia et sensibilia prae incorporalibus et intellegibilibus postponenda iudicauerunt, cum agitur de beata uita, corporalium contrectationum facere mentionem. ubi est illud Plotini, ubi ait: fugiendum est igitur ad carissimam patriam, et ibi pater, et ibi omnia. quae igitur, inquit, classis aut fuga? similem deo fieri. si ergo deo quanto similior, tanto fit quisque propinquior, nulla est ab illo alia longinquitas quam eius dissimilitudo. incorporali uero illi aeterno et incommutabili tanto est anima hominis dissimilior, quanto rerum temporalium mutabiliumque cupidior. hoc ut sanetur, quoniam inmortali puritati, quae in summo est, ea quae in imo sunt mortalia et inmunda conuenire non possunt, opus est quidem mediatore; non tamen tali, qui corpus quidem habeat inmortale propinquum summis, animum autem morbidum similem infimis - quo morbo nobis inuideat potius ne sanemur, quam adiuuet ut sanemur - , sed tali, qui nobis infimis ex corporis mortalitate coaptatus inmortali spiritus iustitia, per quam non locorum distantia, sed similitudinis excellentia mansit in summis, mundandis liberandisque nobis uere diuinum praebeat adiutorium. qui profecto incontaminabilis deus absit ut contaminationem timeret ex homine quo indutus est, aut ex hominibus inter quos in homine conuersatus est. non enim parua sunt haec interim duo, quae salubriter sua incarnatione monstrauit, nec carne posse contaminari ueram diuinitatem, nec ideo putandos daemones nobis esse meliores, quia non habent carnem. hic est, sicut eum sancta scriptura praedicat, mediator dei et hominum, homo Christus Iesus, de cuius et diuinitate, qua patri est semper aequalis, et humanitate, qua nobis factus est similis, non hic locus est ut conpetenter pro nostra facultate dicamus.

Traduction Masquer
The City of God

Chapter 17.--That to Obtain the Blessed Life, Which Consists in Partaking of the Supreme Good, Man Needs Such Mediation as is Furnished Not by a Demon, But by Christ Alone.

I am considerably surprised that such learned men, men who pronounce all material and sensible things to be altogether inferior to those that are spiritual and intelligible, should mention bodily contact in connection with the blessed life. Is that sentiment of Plotinus forgotten?--"We must fly to our beloved fatherland. There is the Father, there our all. What fleet or flight shall convey us thither? Our way is, to become like God." ¹ If, then, one is nearer to God the liker he is to Him, there is no other distance from God than unlikeness to Him. And the soul of man is unlike that incorporeal and unchangeable and eternal essence, in proportion as it craves things temporal and mutable. And as the things beneath, which are mortal and impure, cannot hold intercourse with the immortal purity which is above, a mediator is indeed needed to remove this difficulty; but not a mediator who resembles the highest order of being by possessing an immortal body, and the lowest by having a diseased soul, which makes him rather grudge that we be healed than help our cure. We need a Mediator who, being united to us here below by the mortality of His body, should at the same time be able to afford us truly divine help in cleansing and liberating us by means of the immortal righteousness of His spirit, whereby He remained heavenly even while here upon earth. Far be it from the incontaminable God to fear pollution from the man ² He assumed, or from the men among whom He lived in the form of a man. For, though His incarnation showed us nothing else, these two wholesome facts were enough, that true divinity cannot be polluted by flesh, and that demons are not to be considered better than ourselves because they have not flesh. ³ This, then, as Scripture says, is the "Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus," ⁴ of whose divinity, whereby He is equal to the Father, and humanity, whereby He has become like us, this is not the place to speak as fully as I could.