Augustine of Hippo

Accordingly, there is no doubt that human wills cannot resist the will of God, “who has done whatever he pleased in heaven and on earth,” and who has even “done the things that are to come.” Nor can the human will prevent him from doing what he wills, seeing that even with human wills he does what he wills, when he wills to do it. Take, for instance, the case of Saul. When God willed to give the kingdom to Saul, was it in the power of the Israelites to subject themselves to him or not to subject themselves? In a sense, yes; but not in such a way that they were able to resist God himself. As a matter of fact, God carried the matter through by means of the wills of people themselves, having, as he undoubtedly does, the almighty power to bend human hearts in whatever direction he pleases. So it is written: “And Samuel sent away all the people, everyone to his own house. Saul also departed to his own house in Gibeah; and there went with him a part of the army, whose hearts God had touched. But the children of Belial said, ‘Shall this fellow be able to save us?’ And they despised him, and brought him no presents.” Surely, no one will say that any of the children of Belial, whose hearts God had not so touched, did go with him.

You ask, “Why did the Lord, undoubtedly having foreknowledge of the future, say ‘I choose David according to my own heart,’ although this very man committed such serious sins?” As a matter of fact, if we understand this statement concerning David himself, who was king of Israel after Saul had been condemned and slain, it was especially because God has foreknowledge of the future that he foresaw in him such great holiness and such true repentance, that he numbered him among those of whom he himself said, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one to whom the Lord has not imputed sin.” Therefore, since God foreknew that he would sin and would wash his sins away by holy humility, why should he not say, “I have found David according to my own heart?” He was not going to impute sin to him who was doing so many good acts and living in such great holiness and by this same holiness offering the sacrifice of a contrite spirit for his sins. For all these reasons, it has very truthfully been said, “I have found David according to my heart.” For, although the fact that he sinned was not according to God’s heart, the fact that he atoned for his sins with a fitting penitence was according to God’s heart. Only this, then, in him was not according to God’s heart, which God did not impute [David’s sins] to him. So, when this has been removed, that is, has not been imputed, what remains but that it be very truthfully said, “I have found David according to my own heart”?

Again Saul sinned by disobedience, and again Samuel addressed to him the Lord’s word: “Inasmuch, therefore, as you have rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord has also rejected you as king.” And again, because of the same sin, when Saul admitted it and sought pardon, beseeching Samuel to go back with him and appease God, the prophet said, “I will not return with you, because you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel.” And Samuel turned about to go away; but he grabbed hold of the skirt of his mantle, and it tore. And Samuel said to him, “The Lord has torn the kingdom from Israel from your hand this day and has given it to your neighbor who is better than you, and Israel shall be divided in two. But the triumpher in Israel will not spare and will not be moved to repentance; for he is not a man that he should repent. He threatens and does not persist.”Actually, the man to whom these words were spoken, “The Lord shall reject you as king over Israel,” and, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day,” ruled over Israel for forty years—for the same duration as David did—and he heard this pronouncement in the early part of his reign. Accordingly, we are to understand it to mean that no one of Saul’s posterity was to rule after him—an admonition to look to David’s stock whence was to stem, according to the flesh, Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and humanity.

But our armor is Christ; it is that which the apostle Paul prescribes when, writing to the Ephesians, he says, "Take unto you the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day;" and again, "Stand, therefore, having your loins gird about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked: and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Armed with these weapons, king David went forth in his day to battle. Taking from the torrent's bed five smooth rounded stones, he proved that, even amidst all the eddying currents of the world, his feelings were free both from roughness and from defilement. Drinking of the brook by the way, and therefore lifted up in spirit, he cut off the head of Goliath, using the proud enemy's own sword as the fittest instrument of death, smiting the profane boaster on the forehead and wounding him in the same place in which Uzziah was smitten with leprosy when he presumed to usurp the priestly office; the very place also in which shines the glory that makes the saints rejoice in the Lord, saying, "The light of your countenance is sealed upon us, O Lord." Let us therefore also say, "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise: awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp; I myself will awake early"; that in us may be fulfilled that word, "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it"; and, "The Lord shall give the word with great power to them that publish it." I am well assured that your prayer as well as mine is that in our contending, the victory may remain with the truth. For you seek Christ's glory, not your own: if you are victorious, I also gain a victory if I discover my error.

The book of Kings [Samuel] gives us an example about prophecy. Saul was the persecutor of David. When he was persecuting him, he sent guards to drag him away to punishment, and those who were sent to bring David to be slain found him among the prophets; and Samuel was there too.… So he had fled to the place where besides Samuel, the most distinguished of all the prophets, there were also many other prophets. Pushing their way among them, while they were prophesying, came the emissaries of Saul, to drag him off, as I said, to death. The spirit of God leaped upon them and they began to prophesy, having come to lead a holy and just man of God to the execution block and snatch him away from among the prophets. They were suddenly filled with the spirit of God and turned into prophets. It’s possible this happened because of their innocence; after all, they hadn’t come of their own accord to arrest him but had been sent by their king. And perhaps they had indeed come to the place where David was but weren’t going to do what Saul had told them to; perhaps they too were intending to stay there. Because such things even happen today. Sometimes a bailiff is sent by high authority to drag somebody out of the church; he dare not act against God, and in order not to face execution himself he stays there, in the place he was sent, to haul someone out of it. So you could say, pleasantly surprised and relieved, that these men suddenly became prophets because they were innocent; the very gift of prophecy bore witness to their innocence. They came because they were sent, but they weren’t going to do what that bad man had told them to. Let us believe that about them.Others were sent; the Spirit of God leaped on them too, and they too began to prophesy. Let’s count them too with the first lot as being quite innocent. A third lot were sent; the same happened to them too; let them all be innocent. When they delayed and what Saul had ordered wasn’t done, he came himself. Was he too innocent? Was he also sent by some authority, and not ill-intentioned of his own free will? Yet the Spirit of God leaped on him too, and he began to prophesy. There you are, Saul is prophesying, he has the gift of prophecy, but he has not got charity. He has become a kind of instrument to be touched by the Spirit, not one to be cleansed by the Spirit. The Spirit of God, you see, touches some hearts to set them prophesying, and yet does not cleanse them.… And so the Spirit of God did not cleanse Saul the persecutor, but all the same it touched him to make him prophesy.
Caiaphas, the chief priest, was a persecutor of Christ; and yet he uttered a prophecy when he said, “It is right and proper that one man should die, and not the whole nation perish.” The Evangelist went on to explain this as a prophecy and said, “He did not, however, say this of himself, but being high priest, he prophesied.” Caiaphas prophesied, Saul prophesied; they had the gift of prophecy, but they didn’t have charity. Did Caiaphas have charity, considering he persecuted the Son of God, who was brought to us by charity? Did Saul have charity, who persecuted the one by whose hand he had been delivered from his enemies, so that he was guilty not only of envy but also of ingratitude? So we have proved that it is possible for you to have prophesy and not to have charity. But prophecy does you no good, according to the apostle: “If I do not have charity,” he says, “I am nothing.” He doesn’t say, “Prophesy is nothing,” or “Faith is nothing,” but “I myself am nothing, if I don’t have charity.” So while he has great gifts, he is nothing; although he has great gifts, he is nothing; because these great gifts which he has, he doesn’t have to his benefit but to his condemnation. It isn’t a great thing to have great gifts; but it is a great thing to use great gifts well; but you don’t use them well if you haven’t got charity. The fact is, it is only a good will that uses anything well; but there cannot be a good will where charity is not to be found.

All these modes of expression will be thought lies, if a figurative expression or action is to be considered a lie. But, if it is not a lie when signs signifying one thing are put for another to serve the understanding of a truth, certainly that should not be judged a lie either which Jacob did or said to his father in order to be blessed, or what Joseph said in sporting with his brothers, or David’s pretense of insanity, or other signs of the same kind. They should be judged as prophetic expressions and actions set forth for the understanding of those things which are true. Those things are veiled in figures, in garments as it were, in order that they may exercise the mind of the pious inquirer and not become cheap for being bare and obvious. Although we have learned their meaning stated openly and plainly in other places, still, when they are dug out of obscurity, they are somehow recreated in our knowledge and thus become sweet. A student is not hindered because they are shrouded in this way. On the contrary, they are rendered more acceptable: for being remote they are more ardently desired, and for being desired they are more joyfully discovered.

While the holy man David was on the run from Saul’s persecution, he fled to a place where he thought he would be safe. He passed by the house of a priest named Ahimelech and accepted loaves from him. In so doing, he acted in the role not of a king only, but of a priest too, because he ate the bread of the presence which “it was unlawful for anyone other than the priests to eat,” as the Lord reminds us in the Gospel. Saul, when later he began to hunt him, was angry with his retainers because none of them was willing to betray David. The story has just been read from the book of the Kingdoms [Samuel]. But there was a man present that day named Doeg, who was an Edomite and the principal herdsman in Saul’s service; he too had come to Ahimelech the priest. He was present again when Saul raged against his followers because none of them would betray David. Doeg revealed where he had seen him. Saul immediately sent for the priest and all his family to be brought before him, and [he] ordered that they be killed. Not one of Saul’s entourage dared raise a hand against the priests of the Lord, even under orders from the king. But this Doeg, who had betrayed David’s whereabouts, was like Judas; he did not recoil from his evil purpose but persisted in bringing forth fruit from that same root even to the end, the kind of fruit typical of a rotten tree. So at the king’s order Doeg killed the priest and all his family, and afterwards the city of the priests was demolished.We have seen, then, that this man Doeg was the enemy of both David the king and Ahimelech the priest. Doeg was a single person, but he represents a whole class of people. Similarly David embodies both king and priest, like one man with a dual personality, though the human race is one. So too at the present time and in our world let us recognize these two groups of people, so that what we sing, or hear sung, may profit us. Let us recognize Doeg still with us today, as we recognize the kingly and priestly body today, and so we shall recognize the body that is opposed to king and priest still. Notice from the outset how mysteriously significant their names are. Doeg is said to mean “movement,” and Edomite means “earthly.” Already you can see what kind of people this “movement,” this Doeg, symbolizes: the kind that does not remain stable forever but is destined to be moved elsewhere. As for “earthly”: why expect any fruit from an earthly person? But the heavenly humans will last forever. So, to put it briefly, there is an earthly kingdom in this world today, but there is also a heavenly kingdom. Each of them has its pilgrim citizens, both the earthly kingdom and the heavenly, the kingdom that is to be uprooted and the kingdom that is to be planted for eternity.

Indeed, because David swore that he would kill Nabal and then in more considerate forbearance did not, shall we say that we should imitate him by swearing rashly that we are going to do what we see later ought not to be done? But, just as fear confounded the one [Lot] so that he was willing to prostitute his daughters, so did anger confound the other [David] so as to swear rashly. In short, if it were permitted us to make inquiry and ask them both why they did these things, the one could reply, “Fear and trembling are come upon me: and darkness has covered me,” and the other also could say, “My eye is troubled through indignation.” And so we would not be surprised that the one in the darkness of fear and the other in the indignation of his eye did not see what ought to have been seen so as not to do what ought not to have been done.Indeed, to the righteous David we might with reasonable justice say that he ought not to have become angry, not even with an ingrate who returned evil for good. Even if anger crept upon him, as it does upon a man, at least it ought not to have prevailed so far that he swore to do what he would either do in rage or not do and be forsworn.

In the case of David also, we read of both good and bad actions. But where David’s strength lay, and what the secret of his success was, is sufficiently plain, not to the blind malevolence with which Faustus assails holy writings and holy men, but to pious discernment, which bows to the divine authority and at the same time judges human conduct correctly. The Manichaeans will find, if they read the Scriptures, that God rebukes David more than Faustus does. But they will read also of the sacrifice of his penitence, of his surpassing gentleness to his merciless and bloodthirsty enemy, whom David, pious as he was brave, dismissed unhurt when now and again he fell into his hands. They will read of his memorable humility under divine chastisement, when the kingly neck was so bowed under the Master’s yoke, that he bore with perfect patience bitter taunts from his enemy, though he was armed and had armed men with him. And when his companion was enraged at such things being said to the king and was on the point of requiting the insult on the head of the scoffer, he mildly restrained him, appealing to the fear of God in support of his own royal order and saying that this bad happened to him as a punishment from God, who had sent the man to curse him.