Roman Letters

Letter 67

Ambrose of Milan→Simplicianus|c. 385 AD|ambrose milan
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From: Ambrose, Bishop of Milan
To: Simplicianus
Date: ~386 AD
Context: A personal and theological letter to Simplicianus [a learned priest of Milan who had been instrumental in the conversion of the famous rhetorician Marius Victorinus, and who would later succeed Ambrose as bishop of Milan]. They discuss the relationship between philosophy and faith.

Ambrose to his dear friend Simplicianus — greetings.

Your conversation last week stayed with me, and I want to set down in writing what I could not say adequately in person.

You told me the story of Victorinus again — how the great Roman rhetor and philosopher, translator of Plotinus, the man whose mind was the most powerful in the city, finally came to the faith and publicly confessed Christ in the presence of the whole congregation [the conversion of Marius Victorinus, c. 355, later recounted by Augustine in his Confessions, was one of the most celebrated conversions of the fourth century].

What struck me then, and strikes me again now, is the cost. Victorinus knew what public confession would mean: the loss of his teaching career (Julian's later edict banning Christian professors confirmed the risk), the mockery of his philosophical colleagues, the accusation of senility from those who could not bear that a thinker of his caliber had abandoned their camp.

He confessed anyway. Not privately — publicly, in the church, before the assembly. The man who had spent his life in the aristocracy of the mind humbled himself before the God who chose fishermen as apostles.

This is what philosophy cannot do by itself: it cannot humble you. It can refine your thinking, sharpen your arguments, elevate your discourse — but it cannot break the pride that is the root of all sin. Only grace does that. Victorinus was broken by grace, and in his brokenness, he found what his philosophy had only pointed toward.

I tell you this, Simplicianus, because your own influence in bringing him to the faith is part of the story. You did not argue him into believing; you lived the faith before him until he could not resist it. That is the most effective apologetics there is.

Continue as you are, my friend. The Church needs men like you — learned enough to engage the philosophers, humble enough to lead them to Christ.

Farewell.

Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.

Translation source →

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