Annotatio LXXXIX

”Say therefore, I beseech you, that you are my sister.” — Genesis 12:13

Chrysostom, homily 32 on Genesis, upon these words, extols Sarah with many praises — that, her husband being brought into the danger of death, she consented to [him] persuading simulation and adultery, and promptly presented herself to both.¹ For he writes thus: “Therefore the just man consents to the adultery of his wife, and, as it were, serves the adultery to the dishonor of the woman, that he may escape death. Have you seen the bond of the charity of the man and the woman? Have you seen the man — what things he dared to suggest to the woman; and what counsel the woman received, and did not refuse, nor bears it grievously, so that that fable and fiction is hidden?” And a little after: “Who would not be astonished at this readiness to obey? Who could sufficiently praise her, that — after so great continence, and at such an age — in order to keep the just man [safe], so far as it lay in her will, she exposed herself even to adultery, and bore the embrace of barbarians?” Thus far Chrysostom, who in this part seems to differ, in three ways, from the common opinion of the other Fathers. First, that he calls this consultation of Abraham and Sarah not only in this place a fable and a fiction, but in other places also a fabrication, a scene, a comedy, a tragedy, a deception, a hypocrisy, and a lie. In homily 45 on Genesis, expounding those words by which God accuses King Abimelech, who had taken away Sarah from Abraham her husband, he speaks in this manner: “But God said to Abimelech, I know that they themselves contrived this fable, and that, deceived, you did this by their words”; and a little after he adds: “He too, fearing lest he be killed by you, contrived this comedy, and, as it were, cooperated in the dishonor of Sarah.” And in the second book On the Providence of God he says: “Abraham then came into such great necessity that he even submitted to hypocrisy — than which, what more miserable [thing] can be said?” And in the epistle to Olympias he says: “Did not Abraham, on account of the fear of death, prefer to give his own wife to barbarian pleasures and to the Egyptian tyranny? For he himself composed the fable [with] injury, and asked his wife to simulate with him so horrendous a tragedy — does he not blush, bringing forward the cause of such a scene? ‘For it will be,’ he says, ‘that when they see you beautiful of face, they will kill me and will keep you. Say therefore that you are my sister, that it may be well with me on account of you, and that my soul may live for your sake.’ Do you see the fear? do you see the trembling agitating that lofty and philoso[phical soul]” — [do you see the fear? do you see the trembling agitating] that lofty and philosophical soul? — and he lied about the very kind [of relationship], bringing forward one person in place of another.”

The SECOND [way in which Chrysostom seems to differ] is that he judges this fiction and dissimulation of Sarah and Abraham to be worthy of praise, admiration, and imitation, departing in nothing from that opinion which he most openly professes in all his writings — namely, that it is licit, indeed even fitting, for a perfect man to use frauds, wiles, and impostures, not only in his own necessities but also for the advantages of others, for the purpose not of harming but of helping,² as you will be able to see clearly below, chapter 27, Annotation 106. These two assertions — just as (Augustine being witness, in the book Against Lying, chapter 2) they seem to incline toward the heresy of the Priscillianists — so are they opposed to Augustine himself, and to the rest of the theologians, especially the Scholastics, who assert that all dissimulation, whether harmful or officious [well-meant], and every fraud, is a vice contrary to truth and belonging to the crime of lying. For whether by speech, or by any deed whatever, out of a zeal either to harm or to help, someone lies, he is a liar; and every lie is either a sin, or is not without sin. Accordingly Augustine, in book 22 Against Faustus, chapter 24, denies that Abraham lied: since, being asked what Sarah was to him, he declared her a sister, he did not deny her a wife — keeping silent about something true, not saying anything false; for she was truly his sister on his father’s side, though not on his mother’s. Chrysostom himself acknowledges this same thing, in homily 45 on Genesis, where he openly confesses that Abraham’s fiction had in it nothing of a lie, when he says: “See how diligently the just man acts, to show that not even in this did he lie.” But concerning Chrysostom’s opinion on the assertion of officious fraud we have written more fully below, in Annotation 107 of this book.

There REMAINS the THIRD [point], which is contained as asserted in the aforesaid words of Chrysostom — namely, that Sarah is chiefly to be praised and imitated in this, that for the sake of saving her husband she exposed herself to the adultery of barbarians, the husband nevertheless consenting to her adultery, indeed even persuading it.³ From this opinion Augustine dissents, denying that Abraham either persuaded or conceded adultery to his wife, writing thus in book 22, chapter 33, against Faustus: “For Abraham did not consent to the disgrace of his wife, but committed to God the chastity of his spouse — about whose mind he had no doubt — being sure of his God, that he would not allow anything so base and disgraceful to be suffered. Nor did his faith deceive him: to whom first Pharaoh, terrified by portents, and then Abimelech, warned by a dream, both restored his wife unharmed and with honor.” Thus Augustine.

There are also those who affirm that neither to the husband nor to the wife is the remedy of adultery lawful for the sake of avoiding the death of either; but that they ought to await death — indeed, rather to seek death of their own accord — than to betray chastity, for the preservation of which many most chaste women not only endured to be killed by others, but even laid hands upon themselves:⁴ as Sophronia, wife of the prefect of the city of Rome, who — as Eusebius relates in book 8 of the History — noticing that her husband, terrified by fear of death, had betrayed her chastity to the tyrant Maxentius, when she had first prayed to God on bended knees, as though about to immolate her chastity to Christ, transfixed her breast with a seized sword. Following whose example, several holy virgins, whose martyrdom the Church celebrates, slew themselves lest they take on a stain upon their chastity.⁵ But concerning these we have written more at length in the censures upon the expositors of Jonah, Annotation 253.

Augustine, in book 22, chapter 37, against Faustus, and in the first book On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, chapter 29, calls into doubt whether Sarah’s chastity could have been subjected to the lust of the barbarians without any crime of adultery⁶ — as if, for the husband’s life, it were lawful, with his consent, to lie with another man; as once, in the time of the Emperor Constantius, was done at Antioch, where, when the prefect Acindynus was keeping a certain man in prison to be put to death — because he did not have a pound of gold which he owed to the treasury, whence he might pay it — the wife, moved by love of her husband, sold (the husband himself consenting) one night’s intercourse to a certain rich man who anxiously demanded it and promised a pound of gold as the price, that at that price she might redeem her husband’s life from the prefect. And this deed of Acindynus having been set forth at length, [Augustine] leaves it free for each to judge as he will — although he seems more inclined to that side, that this may by no means be done.