It is useful to have Christian books for those who have them. For the very sight of books makes us more hesitant before sin and even pushes us to open ourselves toward righteousness.
He said again: Great is the strengthening against sinning in the reading of the Scriptures.
He said again: Ignorance of the Scriptures is a great precipice and a deep pit.
He said again: It is a great betrayal of salvation not to know any of the divine laws.
The same said: The sins of the righteous are around the lips, but those of unbelievers are in the whole body. Therefore the divine David sings: Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips. And: I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.
The same said: God forgives repentant sinners even the debt, as with the harlot and the publican, but from the righteous He requires the interest as well. And this is what He said to the apostles: Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
— Blessed Epiphanius
The six sayings of Blessed Epiphanius follow a single road: from the book placed before the eyes, to the Scripture read, to the danger of ignorance, then to the guarded lips and, finally, to the surplus required of the righteous. The beginning is the threshold of the senses; the end is the measure of love.
The book seen. „The very sight of books makes us more hesitant before sin.” Epiphanius says beforehand what the psychology of habit measured later: behavior is triggered by cues in the surroundings more often than by resolve (W. Wood), and the eye is the first gate of thought (Jer. 9:21). A book in view is a sign that recalls another law. But sight is not yet the work. The Psalm says: „Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Ps. 119:11); from the eye the word must reach the heart. Evagrius composed the Antirrhetikos, a series of verses for each thought, after the Lord who answers the tempter with „It is written” (Matt. 4:4, 7, 10). Yet the devil also quotes Scripture (Matt. 4:6), and Peter says the unstable twist it to their own destruction (2 Pet. 3:16). The book guards the one who reads it within the Church, not the one who wields it as a weapon.
The precipice of ignorance. „My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6); „Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures” (Matt. 22:29). St. Jerome says that ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. Epiphanius calls it a betrayal of salvation: the watchman who falls asleep does not merely fail to see, he leaves the city exposed. Socrates held that no one does wrong willingly, only from ignorance; Aristotle answered with akrasia, the weakness of the one who knows and still does not do, and Paul said it in pain: „The good that I would I do not” (Rom. 7:19). Both truths are in the saying of Epiphanius. Lack of knowledge is a pit, but knowledge alone is not fortification; Scripture strengthens the one who becomes „a doer of the word, and not a hearer only” (James 1:22).
The sin at the lips. „The sins of the righteous are around the lips.” The one who has conquered the body finds his passion moved to the tongue; psychology calls displacement the moving of a tension from one place to another. The Pharisee in Luke neither steals nor commits adultery: his sin is a prayer, „God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are” (Luke 18:11). „If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man” (James 3:2). Vainglory and anger go out by the mouth: a thought unspoken can still be renounced, a word spoken cannot be taken back (Matt. 12:36). David asks for a watch and a door round about his lips (Ps. 141:3), not a wall. A door opens, for the word that is useful. And the second prayer, „I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue” (Ps. 39:1), shows where the guarding begins: in the resolve to take heed to oneself.
The debt and the interest. From repentant sinners God forgives the debt: the harlot is forgiven much because she loved much (Luke 7:47), and the publican goes down to his house justified (Luke 18:14). From the righteous He requires the interest as well, like the master in the parable of the talents: „thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury” (Matt. 25:27). The word in Matthew 5:20 is perisseusē: righteousness must abound. The scribes and Pharisees tithed mint, anise and cumin (Matt. 23:23); a righteousness that counts exactly stays at the debt. Aristotle defines justice as giving each his due; the Gospel asks beyond the reckoning, for love. Psychology shows the danger on the other side: moral licensing (Monin and Miller, 2001; Merritt et al., 2010). After a good deed, a person permits himself a lapse, as if the account stood in surplus. The righteous who feels himself a creditor is precisely the one from whom interest is required. And the Gospel’s answer remains: „When ye shall have done all those things… say, We are unprofitable servants” (Luke 17:10).
The road ends where it began: the book in view, the lips guarded, the interest brought. Eye, tongue and hand: nothing in man remains outside the watch, and everything that is brought is brought as by an unprofitable servant.
