Letter 160

160. To Diodorus

There has reached me a letter bearing the inscription of Diodorus, but the rest of it more fitting to be some other man's than Diodorus's. For it seems to me that one of the practised sort, slipping into your person, wished thus to make himself trustworthy to his hearers. For when he was asked by someone whether it was lawful for him to take in marriage his wife's sister, his wife being dead, he did not shudder at the question, but bore the hearing of it calmly, and very nobly and combatively helped to carry through the licentious desire. Now if I had the letter by me, I would have sent it back, and you would have been able both to defend yourself and to defend the truth. But since the man who showed it took it away again, and carried it about like some trophy against me — against me who had forbidden the thing from the first — saying that he had the permission in writing, I have now written to you, so that with a double hand we may come against that spurious argument and leave it no strength, that it may not be able easily to harm those who come upon it.

First, then, the greatest point in such matters: the custom that we have to put forward, which has the force of law, because the ordinances were handed down to us by holy men. And it is this: that if anyone, mastered at some time by the passion of uncleanness, falls into unlawful union with two sisters, this is to be reckoned no marriage, nor are they to be received at all into the full body of the Church before they are parted from each other. So that, even if there were nothing else to say, the custom would suffice to guard what is right. But since the writer of the letter has attempted, by a counterfeit argument, to bring so great an evil into life, it is necessary that I too should not hold back the help that comes from reasoning — although, in matters that are exceedingly plain, each man's prior conviction is stronger than argument.

It is written, he says, in Leviticus: You shall not take a woman as a rival to her sister, to uncover her nakedness alongside her, while she is still living. From this, then, he says, it is plain that it is permitted to take her when the sister is dead. To this I will say first this: that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law; since otherwise we shall be subject to circumcision too, and to the Sabbath, and to abstinence from foods. For surely we shall not, whenever we find something that agrees with our pleasures, put ourselves under the yoke of the slavery of the law, but whenever any of the law's requirements seems burdensome, then run off to the freedom that is in Christ. We were asked whether it is written that one may take a woman alongside her sister. We said what is safe for us and true, that it is not written. But to infer the thing left unspoken from the consequence of what follows belongs to one who makes laws, not to one who states the law; since otherwise it will be open to whoever wishes to dare even, while the wife is still living, to take the sister. For this very same sophism fits that case too. For it is written, he says, You shall not take her as a rival — as though the law did not forbid taking her where there is no rivalry. So the man who pleads for the passion will define the character of the sisters as free from jealousy. Once, then, the cause for which the law forbade the living together of both has been removed, what will there be to hinder the taking of sisters? But these things are not written, we shall say. Yet neither are those things laid down; and the notion of the consequence gives licence alike to both cases. He ought, by running back a little to what precedes in the legislation, to have rid himself of his difficulties.

For the lawgiver seems not to include every kind of sin, but to forbid specifically the practices of the Egyptians, from whom Israel had departed, and those of the Canaanites, to whom they were being removed. For the text runs thus: According to the practices of the land of Egypt, in which you dwelt, you shall not do; and according to the practices of the land of Canaan, into which I am bringing you, there you shall not do, and in their statutes you shall not walk. So that this kind of sin was probably not then current among the nations; and therefore the lawgiver did not need to guard against it, but was content with the unschooled custom to denounce the abomination. How, then, having forbidden the greater, did he keep silent about the lesser? Because the example of the patriarch seemed to many of the carnally minded to do harm, as regards living with sisters while they were still alive.

But what must we do? Speak the things written, or further work out the things passed over in silence? For instance, that a father and son ought not to make use of one harlot is not written in these laws, but by the prophet it is thought worthy of the gravest accusation. For son, he says, and father went in to the same girl. And how many other kinds of unclean passions has the school of the demons invented, which the divine Scripture has passed over in silence, not choosing to defile its own dignity with the naming of shameful things, but denouncing the uncleannesses by general names — as the apostle Paul too says: But fornication and all uncleanness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints — including under the name of uncleanness both the unspeakable acts of males and those of females. So that silence does not, in every case, bring licence to the pleasure-loving.

But I, for my part, say that this matter has not even been passed over in silence, but that the lawgiver has forbidden it very vehemently. For the words, You shall not go in to any near of kin to your flesh, to uncover their nakedness, include also this kind of kinship. For what could be nearer to a man than his own wife, or rather than his own flesh? For they are no longer two, but one flesh. So that through the wife the sister passes into kinship with the husband. For as he will not take the mother of his wife, nor the daughter of his wife, because he may take neither his own mother nor his own daughter, so neither the sister of his wife, because he may not take his own sister. And conversely, neither will it be permitted to the wife to live with the kin of her husband; for the rights of kinship are common to both. But I solemnly declare to everyone who deliberates about marriage that the fashion of this world passes away, and the time is shortened, that those who have wives may be as though they had none. And if anyone reads against me the words Be fruitful and multiply, I laugh at the man who does not distinguish the proper times of the legislations. A second marriage is a remedy against fornication, not a provision for licentiousness. If they cannot contain themselves, let them marry, he says — not that, in marrying, they should also transgress the law.

But these men do not even look to nature — they whose souls are bleared by the passion of dishonour — though nature long ago distinguished the names of kindred. For from what relationship will they name the children born? Will they call them brothers of one another, or cousins? For both names will fit them, because of the confusion. Do not, O man, make the children's aunt their stepmother; nor arm with implacable jealousies the woman who ought to cherish them in a mother's place. For the race of stepmothers alone drives their enmity on even after death. Or rather, those who are otherwise enemies make peace with the dead, but stepmothers begin their hatred after death.

The sum of what has been said: if a man is moved to marriage by law, the whole world is open to him; but if his eagerness is born of passion, for that very reason let him be the more shut out, that he may learn to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the passion of lust. Though I was minded to say more, the measure of a letter holds me back. I pray either that our exhortation may prove stronger than the passion, or that this pollution may not take up residence in our land, but may remain in the places where it was dared.