ABELARD TO HELOISE
This short letter was preserved by Berengar of Poitiers, one of Abelard’s students, in his Apologeticus, a spirited defense of Abelard addressed to Bernard of Clairvaux and Abelard’s other opponents at the Council of Sens in 1140, after which Abelard was condemned for heresy and sentenced to perpetual silence, all copies of his writings ordered destroyed.
My sister Heloise, once dear to me in the world, now dearest to me in Christ:
Logic has made me hateful to the world, for those twisted men who twist all things and are wise only to destroy claim that I stand alone when it comes to logic but badly stumble when it comes to Paul. And when they praise the brilliance of my intellect, they slander the purity of my Christian faith; and in all, they come to judgment led by prejudice and not by what experience should teach them. I would not be the philosopher who would challenge Paul; I would not be the Aristotle who is barred from Christ, for there is no other name under heaven in whom I must be saved. I worship Christ who rules at the right hand of the Father. With the arms of faith I embrace him who works as God in the glorious flesh of the Virgin which he assumed from the Paraclete. And to dispel all doubts and anxiety from your heart, hold fast to this assurance: that my conscience is founded upon that rock on which Christ has built his church. To what is inscribed on that rock I will briefly bear witness for you.
I believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one in nature and true God, who in the persons of the Trinity preserves his Unity in substance forever. I believe that the Son is co-equal with the Father in all things, in eternity and power, in will and operation. I do not hold with Arius, who, driven by a twisted intellect or led astray by some demoniacal spirit, establishes degrees within the Trinity, teaching that the Father is greater and the Son is less,1 oblivious to the precept of the law, “Thou shalt not go up by steps unto my altar.”2 For he goes up by steps unto the altar of God who posits a first and last in the Trinity. And I bear witness that the Holy Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son and co-equal with them in all things and is the one who, as my books declare, is known by the name of Goodness. And I condemn Sabellius, who claimed that the person of the Father is the same as the Son and that the Father suffered the Passion of the Cross, and whose followers are then called Patripassians.3
And I believe that the Son of God became the Son of man; that his single person is of and in two natures; and that, after he fulfilled the mission he undertook by becoming man, he suffered and died and was resurrected and rose into heaven, whence he will come to judge the living and the dead. And I assert that in baptism all sins are remitted; that we are in need of grace, in which we may begin and persevere in good; and that, though fallen, we may through penance be made whole. I will not speak of the resurrection of the body—what is the need?—for if I did not believe in resurrection, all my boasts of being a Christian would be vain.
This then is the faith on which I rest, from which I draw the firmness of my hope. Anchored here in safety, I do not fear the barking of Scylla, I laugh at the whirlpool of Charybdis, I do not shrink from the song of the Sirens that brings death.4 In the howling storm I am unshaken, in the onrushing winds I am unmoved, for I am founded on this rock, and it is firm.
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1 Arius (c. 250–336) was a heretic who claimed that the Son was not of one nature and substance with the Father but of a lesser and derivative nature.
2 Exod. 20:26.
3 Sabellius (fl. 215) was a heretic who claimed that God was a single indivisible substance with three modes rather than three distinct persons; the word “Patripassian” denotes the Passion, or suffering, of the Father.
4 Scylla, Charybdis, and the Sirens were dangers that confronted Ulysses on his epic sea voyage home.