Writings of Gregory of Nyssa - Apologetic Works.
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Translated, with prolegomena, notes, and indices,
by William Moore, M.A., Rector of Appleton,
Late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford;
and Henry Austin Wilson, M.A.,
Fellow and librarian of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Edited by Henry Wace,
Kings College, London, 6th November, 1892.
IV. Apologetic Works.
.
The Great Catechism [1934] .
Summary.
The Trinity.
Prologue and Chapter 1.--The belief in God rests on the art and wisdom
displayed in the order of the world: the belief in the Unity of God,
on the perfection that must belong to Him in respect of power,
goodness, wisdom, etc. Still, the Christian who combats polytheism has
need of care lest in contending against Hellenism he should fall
unconsciously into Judaism. For God has a Logos: else He would be
without reason. And this Logos cannot be merely an attribute of God.
We are led to a more exalted conception of the Logos by the
consideration that in the measure in which God is greater than we, all
His predicates must also be higher than those which belong to us. Our
logos is limited and transient; but the subsistence of the Divine
Logos must be indestructible; and at the same time living, since the
rational cannot be lifeless, like a stone. It must also have an
independent life, not a participated life, else it would lose its
simplicity; and, as living, it must also have the faculty of will.
This will of the Logos must be equalled by his power: for a mixture of
choice and impotence would, again, destroy the simplicity. His will,
as being Divine, must be also good. From this ability and will to work
there follows the realization of the good; hence the bringing into
existence of the wisely and artfully adjusted world. But since, still
further, the logical conception of the Word is in a certain sense a
relative one, it follows that together with the Word He Who speaks it,
i.e. the Father of the Word, must be recognized as existing. Thus the
mystery of the faith avoids equally the absurdity of Jewish
monotheism, and that of heathen polytheism. On the one hand, we say
that the Word has life and activity; on the other, we affirm that we
find in the Logos, whose existence is derived from the Father, all the
attributes of the Father's nature.
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Chapter II.--By the analogy of human breath, which is nothing but
inhaled and exhaled fire, i.e. an object foreign to us, is
demonstrated the community of the Divine Spirit with the essence of
God, and yet the independence of Its existence.
Chapter III.--From the Jewish doctrine, then, the unity of the Divine
nature has been retained: from Hellenism the distinction into
hypostases.
Chapter IV.--The Jew convicted from Scripture.
Reasonableness of the Incarnation.
Chapters V. and VI.--God created the world by His reason and wisdom;
for He cannot have proceeded irrationally in that work; but His reason
and wisdom are, as above shown, not to be conceived as a spoken word,
or as the mere possession of knowledge, but as a personal and willing
potency. If the entire world was created by this second Divine
hypostasis, then certainly was man also thus created; yet not in view
of any necessity, but from superabounding love, that there might exist
a being who should participate in the Divine perfections. If man was
to be receptive of these, it was necessary that his nature should
contain an element akin to God; and, in particular, that he should be
immortal. Thus, then, man was created in the image of God. He could
not therefore be without the gifts of freedom, independence,
self-determination; and his participation in the Divine gifts was
consequently made dependent on his virtue. Owing to this freedom he
could decide in favour of evil, which cannot have its origin in the
Divine will, but only in our inner selves, where it arises in the form
of a deviation from good, and so a privation of it. Vice is opposed to
virtue only as the absence of the better. Since, then, all that is
created is subject to change, it was possible that, in the first
instance, one of the created spirits should turn his eye away from the
good, and become envious, and that from this envy should arise a
leaning towards badness, which should, in natural sequence, prepare
the way for all other evil. He seduced the first men into the folly of
turning away from goodness, by disturbing the Divinely ordered harmony
between their sensuous and intellectual natures; and guilefully
tainting their wills with evil.
Chapters VII. and VIII.--God did not, on account of His foreknowledge
of the evil that would result from man's creation, leave man
uncreated; for it was better to bring back sinners to original grace
by the way of repentance and physical suffering than not to create man
at all. The raising up of the fallen was a work befitting the Giver of
life, Who is the wisdom and power of God; and for this purpose He
became man.
Chapter IX.--The Incarnation was not unworthy of Him; for only evil
brings degradation.
Chapter X.--The objection that the finite cannot contain the infinite,
and that therefore the human nature could not receive into itself the
Divine, is founded on the false supposition that the Incarnation of
the Word means that the infinity of God was contained in the limits of
the flesh, as in a vessel.--Comparison of the flame and wick.
Chapters XI., XII., XIII.--For the rest, the manner in which the
Divine nature was united to the human surpasses our power of
comprehension; although we are not permitted to doubt the fact of that
union in Jesus, on account of the miracles which He wrought. The
supernatural character of those miracles bears witness to their Divine
origin.
Chapters XIV., XV., XVI., XVII.--The scheme of the Incarnation is
still further drawn out, to show that this way for man's salvation was
preferable to a single fiat of God's will. Christ took human weakness
upon Him; but it was physical, not moral, weakness. In other words the
Divine goodness did not change to its opposite, which is only vice. In
Him soul and body were united, and then separated, according to the
course of nature; but after He had thus purged human life, He reunited
them upon a more general scale, for all, and for ever, in the
Resurrection.
Chapter XVIII.--The ceasing of demon-worship, the Christian
martyrdoms, and the devastation of Jerusalem, are accepted by some as
proofs of the Incarnation--
Chapters XIX., XX.--But not by the Greek and the Jew. To return, then,
to its reasonableness. Whether we regard the goodness, the power, the
wisdom, or the justice of God, it displays a combination of all these
acknowledged attributes, which, if one be wanting, cease to be Divine.
It is therefore true to the Divine perfection.
Chapters XXI., XXII., XXIII.--What, then, is the justice in it? We
must remember that man was necessarily created subject to change (to
better or to worse). Moral beauty was to be the direction in which his
free will was to move; but then he was deceived, to his ruin, by an
illusion of that beauty. After we had thus freely sold ourselves to
the deceiver, He who of His goodness sought to restore us to liberty
could not, because He was just too, for this end have recourse to
measures of arbitrary violence. It was necessary therefore that a
ransom should be paid, which should exceed in value that which was to
be ransomed; and hence it was necessary that the Son of God should
surrender Himself to the power of death. God's justice then impelled
Him to choose a method of exchange, as His wisdom was seen in
executing it.
Chapters XXIV., XXV.--But how about the power? That was more
conspicuously displayed in Deity descending to lowliness, than in all
the natural wonders of the universe. It was like flame being made to
stream downwards. Then, after such a birth, Christ conquered death.
Chapter XXVI.--A certain deception was indeed practised upon the Evil
one, by concealing the Divine nature within the human; but for the
latter, as himself a deceiver, it was only a just recompense that he
should be deceived himself: the great adversary must himself at last
find that what has been done is just and salutary, when he also shall
experience the benefit of the Incarnation. He, as well as humanity,
will be purged.
Chapters XXVII., XXVIII.--A patient, to be healed, must be touched;
and humanity had to be touched by Christ. It was not in "heaven"; so
only through the Incarnation could it be healed.--It was, besides, no
more inconsistent with His Divinity to assume a human than a
"heavenly" body; all created beings are on a level beneath Deity. Even
"abundant honour" is due to the instruments of human birth.
Chapters XXIX., XXX., XXXI.--As to the delay of the Incarnation, it
was necessary that human degeneracy should have reached the lowest
point, before the work of salvation could enter in. That, however,
grace through faith has not come to all must be laid to the account of
human freedom; if God were to break down our opposition by violent
means, the praise-worthiness of human conduct would be destroyed.
Chapter XXXII.--Even the death on the Cross was sublime: for it was
the culminating and necessary point in that scheme of Love in which
death was to be followed by blessed resurrection for the whole "lump"
of humanity: and the Cross itself has a mystic meaning.
The Sacraments.
Chapters XXXIII., XXXIV., XXXV., XXXVI.--The saving nature of Baptism
depends on three things; Prayer, Water, and Faith. 1. It is shown how
Prayer secures the Divine Presence. God is a God of truth; and He has
promised to come (as Miracles prove that He has come already) if
invoked in a particular way. 2. It is shown how the Deity gives life
from water. In human generation, even without prayer, He gives life
from a small beginning. In a higher generation He transforms matter,
not into soul, but into spirit. 3. Human freedom, as evinced in faith
and repentance, is also necessary to Regeneration. Being thrice dipped
in the water is our earliest mortification; coming out of it is a
forecast of the ease with which the pure shall rise in a blessed
resurrection: the whole process is an imitation of Christ.
Chapter XXXVII.--The Eucharist unites the body, as Baptism the soul,
to God. Our bodies, having received poison, need an Antidote; and only
by eating and drinking can it enter. One Body, the receptacle of
Deity, is this Antidote, thus received. But how can it enter whole
into each one of the Faithful? This needs an illustration. Water gives
its own body to a skin-bottle. So nourishment (bread and wine) by
becoming flesh and blood gives bulk to the human frame: the
nourishment is the body. Just as in the case of other men, our
Saviour's nourishment (bread and wine) was His Body; but these,
nourishment and Body, were in Him changed into the Body of God by the
Word indwelling. So now repeatedly the bread and wine, sanctified by
the Word (the sacred Benediction), is at the same time changed into
the Body of that Word; and this Flesh is disseminated amongst all the
Faithful.
Chapters XXXVIII., XXXIX.--It is essential for Regeneration to believe
that the Son and the Spirit are not created spirits, but of like
nature with God the Father; for he who would make his salvation
dependent (in the baptismal Invocation) on anything created would
trust to an imperfect nature, and one itself needing a saviour.
Chapter XL.--He alone has truly become a child of God who gives
evidence of his regeneration by putting away from himself all vice.
Footnotes
[1934] It is not exactly clear why this Instruction for Catechizers is
called the "Great": perhaps with reference to some lesser manual. For
its apologetic intention, see Prolegomena, p. 12. Its genuineness,
which has been called in question by a few merely on the ground of
opinions in it Origenistic and even Eutychian, is confirmed by
Theodoret, Dial. ii. 3, contr. Eutych. Aubertin and Casaubon both
recognize Gregory as its author. The division, however, of the
chapters, by whoever made, is far from a correct guide to the
contents; but, by grouping them, the main argument can be made clear.
Prologue.
The presiding ministers of the "mystery of godliness" [1935] have need
of a system in their instructions, in order that the Church may be
replenished by the accession of such as should be saved [1936] ,
through the teaching of the word of Faith being brought home to the
hearing of unbelievers. Not that the same method of instruction will
be suitable in the case of all who approach the word. The catechism
must be adapted to the diversities of their religious worship; with an
eye, indeed, to the one aim and end of the system, but not using the
same method of preparation in each individual case. The Judaizer has
been preoccupied with one set of notions, one conversant with
Hellenism, with others; while the Anomoean, and the Manichee, with the
followers of Marcion [1937] , Valentinus, and Basilides [1938] , and
the rest on the list of those who have wandered into heresy, each of
them being prepossessed with their peculiar notions, necessitate a
special controversy with their several. opinions. The method of
recovery must be adapted to the form of the disease. You will not by
the same means cure the polytheism of the Greek, and the unbelief of
the Jew as to the Only-begotten God: nor as regards those who have
wandered into heresy will you, by the same arguments in each case,
upset their misleading romances as to the tenets of the Faith. No one
could set Sabellius [1939] right by the same instruction as would
benefit the Anomoean [1940] . The controversy with the Manichee is
profitless against the Jew [1941] . It is necessary, therefore, as I
have said, to regard the opinions which the persons have taken up, and
to frame your argument in accordance with the error into which each
has fallen, by advancing in each discussion certain principles and
reasonable propositions, that thus, through what is agreed upon on
both sides, the truth may conclusively be brought to light. When,
then, a discussion is held with one of those who favour Greek ideas,
it would be well to make the ascertaining of this the commencement of
the reasoning, i.e. whether he presupposes the existence of a God, or
concurs with the atheistic view. Should he say there is no God, then,
from the consideration of the skilful and wise economy of the Universe
he will be brought to acknowledge that there is a certain
overmastering power manifested through these channels. If, on the
other hand, he should have no doubt as to the existence of Deity, but
should be inclined to entertain the presumption of a plurality of
Gods, then we will adopt against him some such train of reasoning as
this: "does he think Deity is perfect or defective?" and if, as is
likely, he bears testimony to the perfection in the Divine nature,
then we will demand of him to grant a perfection throughout in
everything that is observable in that divinity, in order that Deity
may not be regarded as a mixture of opposites, defect and perfection.
But whether as respects power, or the conception of goodness, or
wisdom and imperishability and eternal existence, or any other notion
besides suitable to the nature of Deity, that is found to lie close to
the subject of our contemplation, in all he will agree that perfection
is the idea to be entertained of the Divine nature, as being a just
inference from these premises. If this, then, be granted us, it would
not be difficult to bring round these scattered notions of a plurality
of Gods to the acknowledgment of a unity of Deity. For if he admits
that perfection is in every respect to be ascribed to the subject
before us, though there is a plurality of these perfect things which
are marked with the same character, he must be required by a logical
necessity, either to point out the particularity in each of these
things which present no distinctive variation, but are found always
with the same marks, or, if (he cannot do that, and) the mind can
grasp nothing in them in the way of particular, to give up the idea of
any distinction. For if neither as regards "more and less" a person
can detect a difference (in as much as the idea of perfection does not
admit of it), nor as regards "worse" and "better" (for he cannot
entertain a notion of Deity at all where the term "worse" is not got
rid of), nor as regards "ancient" and "modern" (for what exists not
for ever is foreign to the notion of Deity), but on the contrary the
idea of Godhead is one and the same, no peculiarity being on any
ground of reason to be discovered in any one point, it is an absolute
necessity that the mistaken fancy of a plurality of Gods would be
forced to the acknowledgment of a unity of Deity. For if goodness, and
justice, and wisdom, and power may be equally predicated of it, then
also imperishability and eternal existence, and every orthodox idea
would be in the same way admitted. As then all distinctive difference
in any aspect whatever has been gradually removed, it necessarily
follows that together with it a plurality of Gods has been removed
from his belief, the general identity bringing round conviction to the
Unity.
Footnotes
[1935] 1 Tim. iii. 16.
[1936] Acts ii. 47.
[1937] Marcion, a disciple of Cerdo, added a third Principle to the
two which his master taught. The first is an unnamed, invisible, and
good God, but no creator; the second is a visible and creative God,
i.e. the Demiurge; the third intermediate between the invisible and
visible God, i.e. the Devil. The Demiurge is the God and Judge of the
Jews. Marcion affirmed the Resurrection of the soul alone. He rejected
the Law and the Prophets as proceeding from the Demiurge; only Christ
came down from the unnamed and invisible Father to save the soul, and
to confute this God of the Jews. The only Gospel he acknowledged was
S. Luke's, omitting the beginning which details our Lord's Conception
and Incarnation. Other portions also both in the middle and the end he
curtailed. Besides this broken Gospel of S. Luke he retained ten of
the Apostolic letters, but garbled even them. Gregory says elsewhere
that the followers of Eunomius got their "duality of Gods" from
Marcion, but went beyond him in denying essential goodness to the
Only-begotten, the "God of the Gospel."
[1938] Of the Gnostics Valentinus and Basilides the truest and best
account is given in H. L. Mansel's Gnostics, and in the articles upon
them in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. It is there shown how
all their visions of celestial Hierarchies, and the romances connected
with them, were born of the attempt to solve the insoluble problem,
i.e. how that which in modern philosophy would be called the Infinite
is to pass into the Finite. They fell into the fatalism of the
Emanationist view of the Deity, but still the attempt was an honest
one.
[1939] Sabellius. The Sabellian heresy was rife in the century
preceding: i.e. that Personality is attributed to the Deity only from
the exigency of human language, that consequently He is sometimes
characterized as the Father, when operations and works more
appropriate to the paternal relation are spoken of; and so in like
manner of the Son, and the Holy Ghost; as when Redemption is the
subject, or Sanctification. In making the Son the Father, it is the
opposite pole to Arianism.
[1940] "We see also the rise (i.e. a.d. 350) of a new and more defiant
Arian school, more in earnest than the older generation, impatient of
their shuffling diplomacy, and less pliant to court influences.
Aetius....came to rest in a clear and simple form of Arianism.
Christianity without mystery seems to have been his aim. The Anomoean
leaders took their stand on the doctrine of Arius himself and dwelt
with emphasis on its most offensive aspects. Arius had long ago laid
down the absolute unlikeness of the Son to the Father, but for years
past the Arianizers had prudently softened it down. Now, however,
`unlike' became the watchword of Aetius and Eunomius": Gwatkin's
Arians. For the way in which this school treated the Trinity see
Against Eunomius, p. 50.
[1941] I.e.an argument against Dualism would only confirm the Jew in
his stern monotheism. Manes had taught also that "those souls who
believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God renounce the worship of the
God of the Jews, who is the Prince of Darkness," and that "the Old
Testament was the work of this Prince, who was substituted by the Jews
in the place of the true God."
Chapter I.
But since our system of religion is wont to observe a distinction of
persons in the unity of the Nature, to prevent our argument in our
contention with Greeks sinking to the level of Judaism there is need
again of a distinct technical statement in order to correct all error
on this point.
For not even by those who are external to our doctrine is the Deity
held to be without Logos [1942] . Now this admission of theirs will
quite enable our argument to be unfolded. For he who admits that God
is not without Logos, will agree that a being who is not without Logos
(or word) certainly possesses Logos. Now it is to be observed that the
utterance of man is expressed by the same term. If, then, he should
say that he understands what the Logos of God is according to the
analogy of things with us, he will thus be led on to a loftier idea,
it being an absolute necessity for him to believe that the utterance,
just as everything else, corresponds with the nature. Though, that is,
there is a certain sort of force, and life, and wisdom, observed in
the human subject, yet no one from the similarity of the terms would
suppose that the life, or power, or wisdom, were in the case of God of
such a sort as that, but the significations of all such terms are
lowered to accord with the standard of our nature. For since our
nature is liable to corruption and weak, therefore is our life short,
our strength unsubstantial, our word unstable [1943] . But in that
transcendent nature, through the greatness of the subject
contemplated, every thing that is said about it is elevated with it.
Therefore though mention be made of God's Word it will not be thought
of as having its realization in the utterance of what is spoken, and
as then vanishing away, like our speech, into the nonexistent. On the
contrary, as our nature, liable as it is to come to an end, is endued
with speech which likewise comes to an end, so that, imperishable and
ever-existing nature has eternal, and substantial speech. If, then,
logic requires him to admit this eternal subsistence of God's Word, it
is altogether necessary to admit also that the subsistence [1944] of
that word consists in a living state; for it is an impiety to suppose
that the Word has a soulless subsistence after the manner of stones.
But if it subsists, being as it is something with intellect and
without body, then certainly it lives, whereas if it be divorced from
life, then as certainly it does not subsist; but this idea that the
Word of God does not subsist, has been shown to be blasphemy. By
consequence, therefore, it has also been shown that the Word is to be
considered as in a living condition. And since the nature of the Logos
is reasonably believed to be simple, and exhibits in itself no
duplicity or combination, no one would contemplate the existence of
the living Logos as dependent on a mere participation of life, for
such a supposition, which is to say that one thing is within another,
would not exclude the idea of compositeness; but, since the simplicity
has been admitted, we are compelled to think that the Logos has an
independent life, and not a mere participation of life. If, then, the
Logos, as being life, lives [1945] , it certainly has the faculty of
will, for no one of living creatures is without such a faculty.
Moreover that such a will has also capacity to act must be the
conclusion of a devout mind. For if you admit not this potency, you
prove the reverse to exist. But no; impotence is quite removed from
our conception of Deity. Nothing of incongruity is to be observed in
connection with the Divine nature, but it is absolutely necessary to
admit that the power of that word is as great as the purpose, lest
mixture, or concurrence, of contradictions be found in an existence
that is incomposite, as would be the case if, in the same purpose, we
were to detect both impotence and power, if, that is, there were power
to do one thing, but no power to do something else. Also we must
suppose that this will in its power to do all things will have no
tendency to anything that is evil (for impulse towards evil is foreign
to the Divine nature), but that whatever is good, this it also wishes,
and, wishing, is able to perform, and, being able, will not fail to
perform [1946] ; but that it will bring all its proposals for good to
effectual accomplishment. Now the world is good, and all its contents
are seen to be wisely and skilfully ordered. All of them, therefore,
are the works of the Word, of one who, while He lives and subsists, in
that He is God's Word, has a will too, in that He lives; of one too
who has power to effect what He wills, and who wills what is
absolutely good and wise and all else that connotes superiority.
Whereas, then, the world is admitted to be something good, and from
what has been said the world has been shown to be the work of the
Word, who both wills and is able to effect the good, this Word is
other than He of whom He is the Word. For this, too, to a certain
extent is a term of "relation," inasmuch as the Father of the Word
must needs be thought of with the Word, for it would not be word were
it not a word of some one. If, then, the mind of the hearers, from the
relative meaning of the term, makes a distinction between the Word and
Him from whom He proceeds, we should find that the Gospel mystery, in
its contention with the Greek conceptions, would not be in danger of
coinciding with those who prefer the beliefs of the Jews. But it will
equally escape the absurdity of either party, by acknowledging both
that the living Word of God is an effective and creative being, which
is what the Jew refuses to receive, and also that the Word itself, and
He from whom He is, do not differ in their nature. As in our own case
we say that the word is from the mind, and no more entirely the same
as the mind, than altogether other than it (for, by its being from it,
it is something else, and not it; still by its bringing the mind in
evidence it can no longer be considered as something other than it;
and so it is in its essence one with mind, while as a subject it is
different), in like manner, too, the Word of God by its
self-subsistence is distinct from Him from whom it has its
subsistence; and yet by exhibiting in itself those qualities which are
recognized in God it is the same in nature with Him who is
recognizable by the same distinctive marks. For whether one adopts
goodness [1947] , or power, or wisdom, or eternal existence, or the
incapability of vice, death, and decay, or an entire perfection, or
anything whatever of the kind, to mark one's conception of the Father,
by means of the same marks he will find the Word that subsists from
Him.
Footnotes
[1942] the Deity...without Logos. In another treatise (De Fide, p. 40)
Gregory bases the argument for the eternity of the Logos on John i. 1,
where it is not said, "after the beginning," but "in the beginning."
The beginning, therefore, never was without the Logos.
[1943] unstable: apages (the reading harpagis is manifestly wrong). So
afterwards human speech is called epikeros. Cf. Athanasius (Contr.
Arian. 3): "Since man came from the non-existent, therefore his `word'
also has a pause, and does not last. From man we get, day after day,
many different words, because the first abide not, but are forgotten."
[1944] hupostasin. About this oft repeated word the question arises
whether we are indebted to Christians or to Platonists for the first
skilful use of it in expressing that which is neither substance nor
quality. Abraham Tucker (Light of Nature, ii. p. 191) hazards the
following remark with regard to the Platonic Triad, i.e. Goodness,
Intelligence, Activity, viz. that quality would not do as a general
name for these principles, because the ideas and abstract essences
existed in the Intelligence, &c., and qualities cannot exist in one
another, e.g. yellowness cannot be soft: nor could substance be the
term, for then they must have been component parts of the Existent,
which would have destroyed the unity of the Godhead: "therefore, he
(Plato) styled them Hypostases or Subsistencies, which is something
between substance and quality, inexisting in the one, and serving as a
receptacle for the other's inexistency within it." But he adds, "I do
not recommend this explanation to anybody"; nor does he state the
authority for this Platonic use, so lucidly explained, of the word.
Indeed, if the word had ever been applied to the principles of the
Platonic triad, to express in the case of each of them "the distinct
subsistence in a common ousia," it would have falsified the very
conception of the first, i.e. Goodness, which was never relative. So
that this very word seems to emphasize, so far, the antagonism between
Christianity and Platonism. Socrates (E. H. iii. 7) bears witness to
the absence of the word from the ancient Greek philosophy: "it appears
to us that the Greek philosophers have given us various definitions of
ousia, but have not taken the slightest notice of hupostasis....it is
not found in any of the ancients except occasionally in a sense quite
different from that which is attached to it at the present day (i.e.
fifth century). Thus Sophocles in his tragedy entitled Phoenix uses it
to signify `treachery'; in Menander it implies `sauces' (i e.
sediment). But although the ancient philosophical writers scarcely
noticed the word, the more modern ones have frequently used it instead
of ousia." But it was, as far as can be traced, the unerring genius of
Origen that first threw around the Logos that atmosphere of a new
term, i.e. hupostasis, as well as homoousios, autotheos, which
afterward made it possible to present the Second Person to the
Greek-speaking world as the member of an equal and indivisible
Trinity. It was he who first selected such words and saw what they
were capable of; though he did not insist on that fuller meaning which
was put upon them when all danger within the Church of Sabellianism
had disappeared, and error passed in the guise of Arianism to the
opposite extreme.
[1945] lives. This doctrine is far removed from that of Philo, i.e.
from the Alexandrine philosophy. The very first statement of S. John
represents the Logos as having a backward movement towards the Deity,
as well as a forward movement from Him; as held there, and yet sent
thence by a force which he calls Love, so that the primal movement
towards the world does not come from the Logos, but from the Father
Himself. The Logos here is the Word, and not the Reason; He is the
living effect of a living cause, not a theory or hypothesis standing
at the gateway of an insoluble mystery. The Logos speaks because the
Father speaks, not because the Supreme cannot and will not speak; and
their relations are often the reverse of those they hold in Philo; for
the Father becomes at times the meditator between the Logos and the
world drawing men towards Him and subduing portions of the Creation
before His path. Psychology seems to pour a light straight into the
Council-chamber of the Eternal; while Metaphysics had turned away from
it, with her finger on her lips. Philo may have used, as Tholuck
thinks, those very texts of the Old Testament which support the
Christian doctrine of the Word, and in the translation of which the
LXX. supplied him with the Greek word. But, however derived, his
theology eventually ranged itself with those pantheistic views of the
universe which subdued all thinking minds not Christianized, for more
than three centuries after him. The majority of recent critics
certainly favour the supposition that the Logos of Philo is a being
numerically distinct from the Supreme; but when the relation of the
Supreme is attentively traced in each, the actual antagonism of the
Christian system and his begins to be apparent. The Supreme of Philo
is not and can never be related to the world. The Logos is a logical
necessity as a mediator between the two; a spiritual being certainly,
but only the head of a long series of such beings, who succeed at last
in filling the passage between the finite and the infinite. In this
system there is no mission of love and of free will; such beings are
but as the milestones to mark the distance between man and the Great
Unknown. It is significant that Vacherot, the leading historian of the
Alexandrine school of philosophy, doubts whether John the Evangelist
ever even heard of the Jewish philosopher of Alexandria. It is pretty
much the same with the members of the Neoplatonic Triad as with the
Logos of Philo. The God of Plotinus and Proclus is not a God in three
hypostases: he is simply one, Intelligence and Soul being his
necessary emanations; they are in God, but they are not God: Soul is
but a hypostasis of a hypostasis. The One is not a hypostasis, but
above it. This "Trinity" depends on the distinction and succession of
the necessary movements of the Deity; it consists of three distinct
and separate principles of things. The Trinity is really peculiar to
Christianity. Three inseparable Hypostases make equally a part of the
Divine nature, so that to take away one would be to destroy the whole.
The Word and Spirit are Divine, not intermediaries disposed in a
hierarchy on the route of the world to God. As Plotinus reproached the
Gnostics, the Christian mysticism despises the world, and suppressing
the intermediaries who in other doctrines serve to elevate the soul
gradually to God, it transports it by one impulse as it were into the
Divine nature. The Christian goes straight to God by Faith. The
Imagination, Reason, and Contemplation of the Neoplatonists, i.e. the
three movements of the soul which correspond to their lower "trinity"
of Nature, Soul, Intelligence, are no longer necessary. There is an
antipathy profound between the two systems; How then could the one be
said to influence the other? Neoplatonism may have tinged
Christianity, while it was still seeking for language in which to
express its inner self: but it never influenced the intrinsically
moral character of the Christian Creeds. The Alexandrine philosophy is
all metaphysics, and its rock was pantheism; all, even matter,
proceeds from God necessarily and eternally. The Church never
hesitated: she saw the abyss that opens upon that path; and by severe
decrees she has closed the way to pantheism.
[1946] will not fail to perform; me anenergeton einai. This is a
favourite word with Gregory, and the Platonist Synesius.
[1947] goodness. "God is love;" but how is this love above or equal to
the Power? "Infinite Goodness, according to our apprehension, requires
that it should exhaust omnipotence: that it should give capacities of
enjoyment and confer blessings until there were no more to be
conferred: but our idea of omnipotence requires that it should be
inexhaustible; that nothing should limit its operation, so that it
should do no more than it has done. Therefore, it is much easier to
conceive an imperfect creature completely good, than a perfect Being
who is so....Since, then, we find our understanding incapable of
comprehending infinite goodness joined with infinite power, we need
not be surprised at finding our thoughts perplexed concerning
them...we may presume that the obscurity rises from something wrong in
our ideas, not from any inconsistencies in the subjects themselves."
Abraham Tucker, L. of N., i. 355.
Chapter II.
As, then, by the higher mystical ascent [1948] from matters that
concern ourselves to that transcendent nature we gain a knowledge of
the Word, by the same method we shall be led on to a conception of the
Spirit, by observing in our own nature certain shadows and
resemblances of His ineffable power. Now in us the spirit (or breath)
is the drawing of the air, a matter other than ourselves, inhaled and
breathed out for the necessary sustainment of the body. This, on the
occasion of uttering the word, becomes an utterance which expresses in
itself the meaning of the word. And in the case of the Divine nature
it has been deemed a point of our religion that there is a Spirit of
God, just as it has been allowed that there is a Word of God, because
of the inconsistency of the Word of God being deficient as compared
with our word, if, while this word of ours is contemplated in
connection with spirit, that other Word were to be believed to be
quite unconnected with spirit. Not indeed that it is a thought proper
to entertain of Deity, that after the manner of our breath something
foreign from without flows into God, and in Him becomes the Spirit;
but when we think of God's Word we do not deem the Word to be
something unsubstantial, nor the result of instruction, nor an
utterance of the voice, nor what after being uttered passes away, nor
what is subject to any other condition such as those which are
observed in our word, but to be essentially self-subsisting, with a
faculty of will ever-working, all-powerful. The like doctrine have we
received as to God's Spirit; we regard it as that which goes with the
Word and manifests its energy, and not as a mere effluence of the
breath; for by such a conception the grandeur of the Divine power
would be reduced and humiliated, that is, if the Spirit that is in it
were supposed to resemble ours. But we conceive of it as an essential
power, regarded as self-centred in its own proper person, yet equally
incapable of being separated from God in Whom it is, or from the Word
of God whom it accompanies, as from melting into nothingness; but as
being, after the likeness of God's Word, existing as a person [1949] ,
able to will, self-moved, efficient, ever choosing the good, and for
its every purpose having its power concurrent with its will.
Footnotes
[1948] by the higher mystical ascent, anagogikos. The common reading
was analogikos, which Hervetus and Morell have translated. But
Krabinger, from all his Codd. but one, has rightly restored
anagogikos. It is not "analogy," but rather "induction," that is here
meant; i.e. the arguing from the known to the unknown, from the facts
of human nature (ta kath' hemas) to those of the Godhead, or from
history to spiritual events. 'Anagoge is the chief instrument in
Origen's interpretation of the Bible; it is more important than
allegory. It alone gives the "heavenly" meaning, as opposed to the
moral and practical though still mystical (cf. Guericke, Hist. Schol.
Catech. ii. p. 60) meaning. Speaking of the Tower of Babel, he says
that there is a "riddle" in the account. "A competent exposition will
have a more convenient season for dealing with this, when there is a
direct necessity to explain the passage in its higher mystical
meaning" (c. Cels. iv. p. 173). Gregory imitates his master in
constantly thus dealing with the Old Testament, i.e. making inductions
about the highest spiritual truths from the "history." So Basil would
treat the prophecies (in Isai. v. p. 948). Chrysostom, on the Songs of
"Degrees" in the Psalms, says that they are so called because they
speak of the going up from Babylon, according to history; but,
according to their high mysticism, because they lift us into the way
of excellence. Here Gregory uses the facts of human nature neither in
the way of mere analogy nor of allegory: he argues straight from them,
as one reality, to another reality almost of the same class, as it
were, as the first, man being "in the image of God"; and so anagoge
here comes nearer induction than anything else.
[1949] kath' hupostasin. Ueberweg (Hist. of Philosophy, vol. i. 329)
remarks: "That the same argumentation, which in the last analysis
reposes only on the double sense of hupostasis (viz. : (a) real
subsistence; (b) individually independent, not attributive
subsistence), could be used with reference to each of the Divine
attributes, and so for the complete restoration of polytheism, Gregory
leaves unnoticed." Yet Gregory doubtless was well aware of this, for
he says, just below, that even a severe study of the mystery can only
result in a moderate amount of apprehension of it.
Chapter III.
And so one who severely studies the depths of the mystery, receives
secretly in his spirit, indeed, a moderate amount of apprehension of
the doctrine of God's nature, yet he is unable to explain clearly in
words the ineffable depth of this mystery. As, for instance, how the
same thing is capable of being numbered and yet rejects numeration,
how it is observed with distinctions yet is apprehended as a monad,
how it is separate as to personality yet is not divided as to subject
matter [1950] . For, in personality, the Spirit is one thing and the
Word another, and yet again that from which the Word and Spirit is,
another. But when you have gained the conception of what the
distinction is in these, the oneness, again, of the nature admits not
division, so that the supremacy of the one First Cause is not split
and cut up into differing Godships, neither does the statement
harmonize with the Jewish dogma, but the truth passes in the mean
between these two conceptions, destroying each heresy, and yet
accepting what is useful to it from each. The Jewish dogma is
destroyed by the acceptance of the Word, and by the belief in the
Spirit; while the polytheistic error of the Greek school is made to
vanish by the unity of the Nature abrogating this imagination of
plurality. While yet again, of the Jewish conception, let the unity of
the Nature stand; and of the Hellenistic, only the distinction as to
persons; the remedy against a profane view being thus applied, as
required, on either side. For it is as if the number of the triad were
a remedy in the case of those who are in error as to the One, and the
assertion of the unity for those whose beliefs are dispersed among a
number of divinities.
Footnotes
[1950] it is separate as to personality yet is not divided as to
subject matter. The words are respectively hupostasis and
hupokeimenon. The last word is with Gregory, whose clearness in
philosophical distinctions makes his use of words very observable,
always equivalent to ousia, and ousia generally to phusis. The
following note of Casaubon (Epist. ad Eustath.) is valuable: In the
Holy. Trinity there is neither "confusion," nor "composition," nor
"coalescing"; neither the Sabellian "contraction," any more than the
Arian "division," neither on the other hand "estrangement," or
"difference." There is "distinction" or "distribution" without
division. This word "distribution" is used by Tertullian and others to
express the effect of the "persons" (idiotetes, hupostaseis, prosopa)
upon the Godhead which forms the definition of the substance (ho tes
ousias logos).
Chapter IV.
But should it be the Jew who gainsays these arguments, our discussion
with him will no longer present equal difficulty [1951] , since the
truth will be made manifest out of those doctrines on which he has
been brought up. For that there is a Word of God, and a Spirit of God,
powers essentially subsisting, both creative of whatever has come into
being, and comprehensive of things that exist, is shown in the
clearest light out of the Divinely-inspired Scriptures. It is enough
if we call to mind one testimony, and leave the discovery of more to
those who are inclined to take the trouble. "By the Word of the Lord,"
it is said, "the heavens were established, and all the power of them
by the breath of His mouth [1952] ." What word and what breath? For
the Word is not mere speech, nor that breath mere breathing. Would not
the Deity be brought down to the level of the likeness of our human
nature, were it held as a doctrine that the Maker of the universe used
such word and such breath as this? What power arising from speech or
breathing could there be of such a kind as would suffice for the
establishment of the heavens and the powers that are therein? For if
the Word of God is like our speech, and His Breath is like our breath,
then from these like things there must certainly come a likeness of
power; and the Word of God has just so much force as our word, and no
more. But the words that come from us and the breath that accompanies
their utterance are ineffective and unsubstantial. Thus, they who
would bring down the Deity to a similarity with the word as with us
render also the Divine word and spirit altogether ineffective and
unsubstantial. But if, as David says, "By the Word of the Lord were
the heavens established, and their powers had their framing by His
breath," then has the mystery of the truth been confirmed, which
instructs us to speak of a word as in essential being, and a breath as
in personality.
Footnotes
[1951] i.e.as with the Greek.
[1952] Ps. xxxiii. 4, Septuagint version.
Chapter V.
That there is, then, a Word of God, and a Breath of God, the Greek,
with his "innate ideas" [1953] , and the Jew, with his Scriptures,
will perhaps not deny. But the dispensation as regards the Word of
God, whereby He became man, both parties would perhaps equally reject,
as being incredible and unfitting to be told of God. By starting,
therefore, from another point we will bring these gainsayers to a
belief in this fact. They believe that all things came into being by
thought and skill on the part of Him Who framed the system of the
universe; or else they hold views that do not conform to this opinion.
But should they not grant that reason and wisdom guided the framing of
the world, they will install unreason and unskilfulness on the throne
of the universe. But if this is an absurdity and impiety, it is
abundantly plain that they must allow that thought and skill rule the
world. Now in what has been previously said, the Word of God has been
shown not to be this actual utterance of speech, or the possession of
some science or art, but to be a power essentially and substantially
existing, willing all good, and being possessed of strength to execute
all its will; and, of a world that is good, this power appetitive and
creative of good is the cause. If, then, the subsistence of the whole
world has been made to depend on the power of the Word, as the train
of the argument has shown, an absolute necessity prevents us
entertaining the thought of there being any other cause of the
organization of the several parts of the world than the Word Himself,
through whom all things in it passed into being. If any one wants to
call Him Word, or Skill, or Power, or God, or anything else that is
high and prized, we will not quarrel with him. For whatever word or
name be invented as descriptive of the subject, one thing is intended
by the expressions, namely the eternal power of God which is creative
of things that are, the discoverer of things that are not, the
sustaining cause of things that are brought into being, the foreseeing
cause of things yet to be. This, then, whether it be God, or Word, or
Skill, or Power, has been shown by inference to be the Maker of the
nature of man, not urged to framing him by any necessity, but in the
superabundance of love operating the production of such a creature.
For needful it was that neither His light should be unseen, nor His
glory without witness, nor His goodness unenjoyed, nor that any other
quality observed in the Divine nature should in any case lie idle,
with none to share it or enjoy it. If, therefore, man comes to his
birth upon these conditions, namely to be a partaker of the good
things in God, necessarily he is framed of such a kind as to be
adapted to the participation of such good. For as the eye, by virtue
of the bright ray which is by nature wrapped up in it, is in
fellowship with the light, and by its innate capacity draws to itself
that which is akin to it, so was it needful that a certain affinity
with the Divine should be mingled with the nature of man, in order
that by means of this correspondence it might aim at that which was
native to it. It is thus even with the nature of the unreasoning
creatures, whose lot is cast in water or in air; each of them has an
organization adapted to its kind of life, so that by a peculiar
formation of the body, to the one of them the air, to the other the
water, is its proper and congenial element. Thus, then, it was needful
for man, born for the enjoyment of Divine good, to have something in
his nature akin to that in which he is to participate. For this end he
has been furnished with life, with thought, with skill, and with all
the excellences that we attribute to God, in order that by each of
them he might have his desire set upon that which is not strange to
him. Since, then, one of the excellences connected with the Divine
nature is also eternal existence, it was altogether needful that the
equipment of our nature should not be without the further gift of this
attribute, but should have in itself the immortal, that by its
inherent faculty it might both recognize what is above it, and be
possessed with a desire for the divine and eternal life [1954] . In
truth this has been shown in the comprehensive utterance of one
expression, in the description of the cosmogony, where it is said that
man was made "in the image of God" [1955] . For in this likeness,
implied in the word image, there is a summary of all things that
characterize Deity; and whatever else Moses relates, in a style more
in the way of history, of these matters, placing doctrines before us
in the form of a story, is connected with the same instruction. For
that Paradise of his, with its peculiar fruits, the eating of which
did not afford to them who tasted thereof satisfaction of the
appetite, but knowledge and eternity of life, is in entire agreement
with what has been previously considered with regard to man, in the
view that our nature at its beginnings was good, and in the midst of
good. But, perhaps, what has been said will be contradicted by one who
looks only to the present condition of things, and thinks to convict
our statement of untruthfulness, inasmuch as man is seen no longer
under those primeval circumstances, but under almost entirely opposite
ones. "Where is the divine resemblance in the soul? Where the body's
freedom from suffering? Where the eternity of life? Man is of brief
existence, subject to passions, liable to decay, and ready both in
body and mind for every form of suffering." By these and the like
assertions, and by directing the attack against human nature, the
opponent will think that he upsets the account that has been offered
respecting man. But to secure that our argument may not have to be
diverted from its course at any future stage, we will briefly discuss
these points. That the life of man is at present subject to abnormal
conditions is no proof that man was not created in the midst of good.
For since man is the work of God, Who through His goodness brought
this creature into being, no one could reasonably suspect that he, of
whose constitution goodness is the cause, was created by his Maker in
the midst of evil. But there is another reason for our present
circumstances being what they are, and for our being destitute of the
primitive surroundings: and yet again the starting-point of our answer
to this argument against us is not beyond and outside the assent of
our opponents. For He who made man for the participation of His own
peculiar good, and incorporated in him the instincts for all that was
excellent, in order that his desire might be carried forward by a
corresponding movement in each case to its like, would never have
deprived him of that most excellent and precious of all goods; I mean
the gift implied in being his own master, and having a free will. For
if necessity in any way was the master of the life of man, the "image"
would have been falsified in that particular part, by being estranged
owing to this unlikeness to its archetype. How can that nature which
is under a yoke and bondage to any kind of necessity be called an
image of a Master Being? Was it not, then, most right that that which
is in every detail made like the Divine should possess in its nature a
self-ruling and independent principle, such as to enable the
participation of good to be the reward of its virtue? Whence, then,
comes it, you will ask, that he who had been distinguished throughout
with most excellent endowments exchanged these good things for the
worse? The reason of this also is plain. No growth of evil had its
beginning in the Divine will. Vice would have been blameless were it
inscribed with the name of God as its maker and father. But the evil
is, in some way or other, engendered [1956] from within, springing up
in the will at that moment when there is a retrocession of the soul
from the beautiful [1957] . For as sight is an activity of nature, and
blindness a deprivation of that natural operation, such is the kind of
opposition between virtue and vice. It is, in fact, not possible to
form any other notion of the origin of vice than as the absence of
virtue. For as when the light has been removed the darkness
supervenes, but as long as it is present there is no darkness, so, as
long as the good is present in the nature, vice is a thing that has no
inherent existence; while the departure of the better state becomes
the origin of its opposite. Since then, this is the peculiarity of the
possession of a free will, that it chooses as it likes the thing that
pleases it, you will find that it is not God Who is the author of the
present evils, seeing that He has ordered your nature so as to be its
own master and free; but rather the recklessness that makes choice of
the worse in preference to the better.
Footnotes
[1953] innate ideas (koinon ennoion). There is a Treatise of Gregory
introducing Christianity to the Greeks "from innate ideas." This title
has been, wrongly, attributed by some to a later hand.
[1954] Cf. Cato's Speech in Addison's Cato:-- It must be so; Plato,
thou reasonest well!-- Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond
desire This longing after immortality? * * * * * 'Tis the divinity
that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.
[1955] Gen. i. 27.
[1956] S. James i. 15: he epithumia tiktei...hamartian
[1957] to kalon. The Greek word for moral perfection, according to one
view of its derivation (kaiein), refers to "brightness"; according to
another (cf. kekadmenos), to "finish" or perfection.
Chapter VI.
But you will perhaps seek to know the cause of this error of judgment;
for it is to this point that the train of our discussion tends. Again,
then, we shall be justified in expecting to find some starting-point
which will throw light on this inquiry also. An argument such as the
following we have received by tradition from the Fathers; and this
argument is no mere mythical narrative, but one that naturally invites
our credence. Of all existing things there is a twofold manner of
apprehension, the consideration of them being divided between what
appertains to intellect and what appertains to the senses; and besides
these there is nothing to be detected in the nature of existing
things, as extending beyond this division. Now these two worlds have
been separated from each other by a wide interval, so that the
sensible is not included in those qualities which mark the
intellectual, nor this last in those qualities which distinguish the
sensible, but each receives its formal character from qualities
opposite to those of the other. The world of thought is bodiless,
impalpable, and figureless; but the sensible is, by its very name,
bounded by those perceptions which come through the organs of sense.
But as in the sensible world itself, though there is a considerable
mutual opposition of its various elements, yet a certain harmony
maintained in those opposites has been devised by the wisdom that
rules the Universe, and thus there is produced a concord of the whole
creation with itself, and the natural contrariety does not break the
chain of agreement; in like manner, owing to the Divine wisdom, there
is an admixture and interpenetration of the sensible with the
intellectual department, in order that all things may equally have a
share in the beautiful, and no single one of existing things be
without its share in that superior world. For this reason the
corresponding locality of the intellectual world is a subtitle and
mobile essence, which, in accordance with its supramundane habitation,
has in its peculiar nature large affinity with the intellectual part.
Now, by a provision of the supreme Mind there is an intermixture of
the intellectual with the sensible world, in order that nothing in
creation may be thrown aside [1958] as worthless, as says the Apostle,
or be left without its portion of the Divine fellowship. On this
account it is that the commixture of the intellectual and sensible in
man is effected by the Divine Being, as the description of the
cosmogony instructs us. It tells us that God, taking dust of the
ground, formed the man, and by an inspiration from Himself He planted
life in the work of His hand, that thus the earthy might be raised up
to the Divine, and so one certain grace of equal value might pervade
the whole creation, the lower nature being mingled with the
supramundane. Since, then, the intellectual nature had a previous
existence, and to each of the angelic powers a certain operation was
assigned, for the organization of the whole, by the authority that
presides over all things, there was a certain power ordained to hold
together and sway the earthly region [1959] , constituted for this
purpose by the power that administers the Universe. Upon that there
was fashioned that thing moulded of earth, an "image" copied from the
superior Power. Now this living being was man. In him, by an ineffable
influence, the godlike beauty of the intellectual nature was mingled.
He to whom the administration of the earth has been consigned takes it
ill and thinks it not to be borne, if, of that nature which has been
subjected to him, any being shall be exhibited bearing likeness to his
transcendent dignity. But the question, how one who had been created
for no evil purpose by Him who framed the system of the Universe in
goodness fell away, nevertheless, into this passion of envy, it is not
a part of my present business minutely to discuss; though it would not
be difficult, and it would not take long, to offer an account to those
who are amenable to persuasion. For the distinctive difference between
virtue and vice is not to be contemplated as that between two actually
subsisting phenomena; but as there is a logical opposition between
that which is and that which is not, and it is not possible to say
that, as regards subsistency, that which is not is distinguished from
that which is, but we say that nonentity is only logically opposed to
entity, in the same way also the word vice is opposed to the word
virtue, not as being any existence in itself, but only as becoming
thinkable by the absence of the better. As we say that blindness is
logically opposed to sight, not that blindness has of itself a natural
existence, being only a deprivation of a preceding faculty, so also we
say that vice is to be regarded as the deprivation of goodness, just
as a shadow which supervenes at the passage of the solar ray. Since,
then, the uncreated nature is incapable of admitting of such movement
as is implied in turning or change or alteration, while everything
that subsists through creation has connection with change, inasmuch as
the subsistence itself of the creation had its rise in change, that
which was not passing by the Divine power into that which is; and
since the above-mentioned power was created too, and could choose by a
spontaneous movement whatever he liked, when he had closed his eyes to
the good and the ungrudging like one who in the sunshine lets his
eyelids down upon his eyes and sees only darkness, in this way that
being also, by his very unwillingness to perceive the good, became
cognisant of the contrary to goodness. Now this is Envy. Well, it is
undeniable that the beginning of any matter is the cause of everything
else that by consequence follows upon it, as, for instance, upon
health there follows a good habit of body, activity, and a pleasurable
life, but upon sickness, weakness, want of energy, and life passed in
distaste of everything; and so, in all other instances, things follow
by consequence their proper beginnings. As, then, freedom from the
agitation of the passions is the beginning and groundwork of a life in
accordance with virtue, so the bias to vice generated by that Envy is
the constituted road to all these evils which have been since
displayed. For when once he, who by his apostacy from goodness had
begotten in himself this Envy, had received this bias to evil [1960] ,
like a rock, torn asunder from a mountain ridge, which is driven down
headlong by its own weight, in like manner he, dragged away from his
original natural propension to goodness and gravitating with all his
weight in the direction of vice, was deliberately forced and borne
away as by a kind of gravitation to the utmost limit of iniquity; and
as for that intellectual power which he had received from his Creator
to co-operate with the better endowments, this he made his assisting
instrument in the discovery of contrivances for the purposes of vice,
while by his crafty skill he deceives and circumvents man, persuading
him to become his own murderer with his own hands. For seeing that man
by the commission of the Divine blessing had been elevated to a lofty
pre-eminence (for he was appointed king over the earth and all things
on it; he was beautiful in his form, being created an image of the
archetypal beauty; he was without passion in his nature, for he was an
imitation of the unimpassioned; he was full of frankness, delighting
in a face-to-face manifestation of the personal Deity),--all this was
to the adversary the fuel to his passion of envy. Yet could he not by
any exercise of strength or dint of force accomplish his purpose, for
the strength of God's blessing over-mastered his own force. His plan,
therefore, is to withdraw man from this enabling strength, that thus
he may be easily captured by him and open to his treachery. As in a
lamp when the flame has caught the wick and a person is unable to blow
it out, he mixes water with the oil and by this devices will dull the
flame, in the same way the enemy, by craftily mixing up badness in
man's will, has produced a kind of extinguishment and dulness in the
blessing, on the failure of which that which is opposed necessarily
enters. For to life is opposed death, to strength weakness, to
blessing curse, to frankness shame, and to all that is good whatever
can be conceived as opposite. Thus it is that humanity is in its
present evil condition, since that beginning introduced the occasions
for such an ending.
Footnotes
[1958] 1 Tim. iv. 4; "rejected" (R.V.), better than "refused" (A.V.).
[1959] This is not making the Devil the Demiurge, but only the "angel
of the Earth." And as the celestial regions and atmosphere of the
earth were assigned to "angelic powers," so the Earth itself and her
nations were assigned to subordinate angels. Origen had already
developed, or rather christianized, this doctrine. Speaking of the
Confusion of Tongues, he says, "And so each (nation) had to be handed
over to the keeping of angels more or less severe, and of this
character or of that, according as each had moved a greater or less
distance from the East, and had prepared more or less bricks for
stone, and more or less slime for mortar; and had built up more or
less. This was that they might be punished for their boldness. These
angels who had already created for each nation its peculiar tongue,
were to lead their charges into various parts according to their
deserts: one for instance to some burning clime, another to one which
would chastise the dwellers in it with its freezing:...those who
retained the original speech through not having moved from the East
are the only ones that became `the portion of the Lord.'...They, too,
alone are to be considered as having been under a ruler who did not
take them in hand to be punished as the others were' (c. Cels. v.
30-1).
[1960] "We affirm that it is not easy, or perhaps possible, even for a
philosopher to know the origin of evil without its being made known to
him by an inspiration of God, whence it comes, and how it shall
vanish. Ignorance of God is itself in the list of evils; ignorance of
His way of healing and of serving Him aright is itself the greatest
evil: we affirm that no one whatever can possibly know the origin of
evil, who does not see that the standard of piety recognized by the
average of established laws is itself an evil. No one, either, can
know it who has not grasped the truth about the Being who is called
the Devil; what he was at the first, and how he became such as he
is."--Origen (c. Cels. iv. 65).
Chapter VII.
Yet let no one ask, "How was it that, if God foresaw the misfortune
that would happen to man from want of thought, He came to create him,
since it was, perhaps, more to his advantage not to have been born
than to be in the midst of such evils?" This is what they who have
been carried away by the false teaching of the Manichees put forward
for the establishment of their error, as thus able to show that the
Creator of human nature is evil. For if God is not ignorant of
anything that is, and yet man is in the midst of evil, the argument
for the goodness of God could not be upheld; that is, if He brought
forth into life the man who was to be in this evil. For if the
operating force which is in accordance with the good is entirely that
of a nature which is good, then this painful and perishing life, they
say, can never be referred to the workmanship of the good, but it is
necessary to suppose for such a life as this another author, from whom
our nature derives its tendency to misery. Now all these and the like
assertions seem to those who are thoroughly imbued with the heretical
fraud, as with some deeply ingrained stain, to have a certain force
from their superficial plausibility. But they who have a more thorough
insight into the truth clearly perceive that what they say is unsound,
and admits of speedy demonstration of its fallacy. In my opinion, too,
it is well to put forward the Apostle as pleading with us on these
points for their condemnation. In his address to the Corinthians he
makes a distinction between the carnal and spiritual dispositions of
souls; showing, I think, by what he says that it is wrong to judge of
what is morally excellent, or, on the other hand, of what is evil, by
the standard of the senses; but that, by withdrawing the mind from
bodily phenomena, we must decide by itself and from itself the true
nature of moral excellence and of its opposite. "The spiritual man,"
he says, "judgeth all things [1961] ." This, I think, must have been
the reason of the invention of these deceptive doctrines on the part
of those who propound them, viz. that when they define the good they
have an eye only to the sweetness of the body's enjoyment, and so,
because from its composite nature and constant tendency to dissolution
that body is unavoidably subject to suffering and sicknesses, and
because upon such conditions of suffering there follows a sort of
sense of pain, they decree that the formation of man is the work of an
evil deity. Since, if their thoughts had taken a loftier view, and,
withdrawing their minds from this disposition to regard the
gratifications of the senses, they had looked at the nature of
existing things dispassionately, they would have understood that there
is no evil other than wickedness. Now all wickedness has its form and
character in the deprivation of the good; it exists not by itself, and
cannot be contemplated as a subsistence. For no evil of any kind lies
outside and independent of the will; but it is the non-existence of
the good that is so denominated. Now that which is not has no
substantial existence, and the Maker of that which has no substantial
existence is not the Maker of things that have substantial existence.
Therefore the God of things that are is external to the causation of
things that are evil, since He is not the Maker of things that are
non-existent. He Who formed the sight did not make blindness. He Who
manifested virtue manifested not the deprivation thereof. He Who has
proposed as the prize in the contest of a free will the guerdon of all
good to those who are living virtuously, never, to please Himself,
subjected mankind to the yoke of a strong compulsion, as if he would
drag it unwilling, as it were his lifeless tool, towards the right.
But if, when the light shines very brightly in a clear sky, a man of
his own accord shuts his eyelids to shade his sight, the sun is clear
of blame on the part of him who sees not.
Footnotes
[1961] 1 Cor. ii. 15.
Chapter VIII.
Nevertheless one who regards only the dissolution of the body is
greatly disturbed, and makes it a hardship that this life of ours
should be dissolved by death; it is, he says, the extremity of evil
that our being should be quenched by this condition of mortality. Let
him, then, observe through this gloomy prospect the excess of the
Divine benevolence. He may by this, perhaps, be the more induced to
admire the graciousness of God's care for the affairs of man. To live
is desirable to those who partake of life, on account of the enjoyment
of things to their mind; since, if any one lives in bodily pain, not
to be is deemed by such an one much more desirable than to exist in
pain. Let us inquire, then, whether He Who gives us our outfit for
living has any other object in view than how we may pass our life
under the fairest circumstances. Now since by a motion of our
self-will we contracted a fellowship with evil, and, owing to some
sensual gratification, mixed up this evil with our nature like some
deleterious ingredient spoiling the taste of honey, and so, falling
away from that blessedness which is involved in the thought of
passionlessness, we have been viciously transformed--for this reason,
Man, like some earthen potsherd, is resolved again into the dust of
the ground, in order to secure that he may part with the soil which he
has now contracted, and that he may, through the resurrection, be
reformed anew after the original pattern; at least if in this life
that now is he has preserved what belongs to that image. A doctrine
such as this is set before us by Moses under the disguise of an
historical manner [1962] . And yet this disguise of history contains a
teaching which is most plain. For after, as he tells us, the earliest
of mankind were brought into contact with what was forbidden, and
thereby were stripped naked of that primal blessed condition, the Lord
clothed these, His first-formed creatures, with coats of skins. In my
opinion we are not bound to take these skins in their literal meaning.
For to what sort of slain and flayed animals did this clothing devised
for these humanities belong? But since all skin, after it is separated
from the animal, is dead, I am certainly of opinion that He Who is the
healer of our sinfulness, of His foresight invested man subsequently
with that capacity of dying which had been the special attribute of
the brute creation. Not that it was to last for ever; for a coat is
something external put on us, lending itself to the body for a time,
but not indigenous to its nature. This liability to death, then, taken
from the brute creation, was, provisionally, made to envelope the
nature created for immortality. It enwrapped it externally, but not
internally. It grasped the sentient part of man; but laid no hold upon
the Divine image. This sentient part, however, does not disappear, but
is dissolved. Disappearance is the passing away into non-existence,
but dissolution is the dispersion again into those constituent
elements of the world of which it was composed. But that which is
contained in them perishes not, though it escapes the cognisance of
our senses.
Now the cause of this dissolution is evident from the illustration we
have given of it. For since the senses have a close connection with
what is gross and earthy, while the intellect is in its nature of a
nobler and more exalted character than the movements involved in
sensation, it follows that as, through the estimate which is made by
the senses, there is an erroneous judgment as to what is morally good,
and this error has wrought the effect of substantiating a contrary
condition, that part of us which has thus been made useless is
dissolved by its reception of this contrary. Now the bearing of our
illustration is as follows. We supposed that some vessel has been
composed of clay, and then, for some mischief or other, filled with
melted lead, which lead hardens and remains in a non-liquid state;
then that the owner of the vessel recovers it, and, as he possesses
the potter's art, pounds to bits the ware which held the lead, and
then remoulds the vessel after its former pattern for his own special
use, emptied now of the material which had been mixed with it: by a
like process the maker of our vessel, now that wickedness has
intermingled with our sentient part, I mean that connected with the
body, will dissolve the material which has received the evil, and,
re-moulding it again by the Resurrection without any admixture of the
contrary matter, will recombine the elements into the vessel in its
original beauty. Now since both soul and body have a common bond of
fellowship in their participation of the sinful affections, there is
also an analogy between the soul's and body's death. For as in regard
to the flesh we pronounce the separation of the sentient life to be
death, so in respect of the soul we call the departure of the real
life death. While, then, as we have said before, the participation in
evil observable both in soul and body is of one and the same
character, for it is through both that the evil principle advances
into actual working, the death of dissolution which came from that
clothing of dead skins does not affect the soul. For how can that
which is uncompounded be subject to dissolution? But since there is a
necessity that the defilements which sin has engendered in the soul as
well should be removed thence by some remedial process, the medicine
which virtue supplies has, in the life that now is, been applied to
the healing of such mutilations as these. If, however, the soul
remains unhealed [1963] , the remedy is dispensed in the life that
follows this. Now in the ailments of the body there are sundry
differences, some admitting of an easier, others requiring a more
difficult treatment. In these last the use of the knife, or cauteries,
or draughts of bitter medicines are adopted to remove the disease that
has attacked the body. For the healing of the soul's sicknesses the
future judgment announces something of the same kind, and this to the
thoughtless sort is held out as the threat of a terrible correction
[1964] , in order that through fear of this painful retribution they
may gain the wisdom of fleeing from wickedness: while by those of more
intelligence it is believed to be a remedial process ordered by God to
bring back man, His peculiar creature, to the grace of his primal
condition. They who use the knife or cautery to remove certain
unnatural excrescences in the body, such as wens or warts, do not
bring to the person they are serving a method of healing that is
painless, though certainly they apply the knife without any intention
of injuring the patient. In like manner whatever material excrescences
are hardening on our souls, that have been sensualized by fellowship
with the body's affections, are, in the day of the judgment [1965] ,
as it were cut and scraped away by the ineffable wisdom and power of
Him Who, as the Gospel says, "healeth those that are sick [1966] ."
For, as He says again, "they that are whole have no need of the
physician, but they that are sick [1967] ." Since, then, there has
been inbred in the soul a strong natural tendency to evil, it must
suffer, just as the excision of a wart [1968] gives a sharp pain to
the skin of the body; for whatever contrary to the nature has been
inbred in the nature attaches itself to the subject in a certain union
of feeling, and hence there is produced an abnormal intermixture of
our own with an alien quality, so that the feelings, when the
separation from this abnormal growth comes, are hurt and lacerated.
Thus when the soul pines and melts away under the correction of its
sins, as prophecy somewhere tells us [1969] , there necessarily
follow, from its deep and intimate connection with evil, certain
unspeakable and inexpressible pangs, the description of which is as
difficult to render as is that of the nature of those good things
which are the subjects of our hope. For neither the one nor the other
is capable of being expressed in words, or brought within reach of the
understanding. If, then, any one looks to the ultimate aim of the
Wisdom of Him Who directs the economy of the universe, he would be
very unreasonable and narrow-minded to call the Maker of man the
Author of evil; or to say that He is ignorant of the future, or that,
if He knows it and has made him, He is not uninfluenced by the impulse
to what is bad. He knew what was going to be, yet did not prevent the
tendency towards that which actually happened. That humanity, indeed,
would be diverted from the good, could not be unknown to Him Who
grasps all things by His power of foresight, and Whose eyes behold the
coming equally with the past events. As, then, He had in sight the
perversion, so He devised man's recall to good. Accordingly, which was
the better way?--never to have brought our nature into existence at
all, since He foresaw that the being about to be created would fall
away from that which is morally beautiful; or to bring him back by
repentance, and restore his diseased nature to its original beauty?
But, because of the pains and sufferings of the body which are the
necessary accidents of its unstable nature, to call God on that
account the Maker of evil, or to think that He is not the Creator of
man at all, in hopes thereby to prevent the supposition of His being
the Author of what gives us pain,--all this is an instance of that
extreme narrow-mindedness which is the mark of those who judge of
moral good and moral evil by mere sensation. Such persons do not
understand that that only is intrinsically good which sensation does
not reach, and that the only evil is estrangement from the good. But
to make pains and pleasures the criterion of what is morally good and
the contrary, is a characteristic of the unreasoning nature of
creatures in whom, from their want of mind and understanding, the
apprehension of real goodness has no place. That man is the work of
God, created morally noble and for the noblest destiny, is evident not
only from what has been said, but from a vast number of other proofs;
which, because they are so many, we shall here omit. But when we call
God the Maker of man we do not forget how carefully at the outset
[1970] we defined our position against the Greeks. It was there shown
that the Word of God is a substantial and personified being, Himself
both God and the Word; Who has embraced in Himself all creative power,
or rather Who is very power with an impulse to all good; Who works out
effectually whatever He wills by having a power concurrent with His
will; Whose will and work is the life of all things that exist; by
Whom, too, man was brought into being and adorned with the highest
excellences after the fashion of Deity. But since that alone is
unchangeable in its nature which does not derive its origin through
creation, while whatever by the uncreated being is brought into
existence out of what was nonexistent, from the very first moment that
it begins to be, is ever passing through change, and if it acts
according to its nature the change is ever to the better, but if it be
diverted from the straight path, then a movement to the contrary
succeeds,--since, I say, man was thus conditioned, and in him the
changeable element in his nature had slipped aside to the exact
contrary, so that this departure from the good introduced in its train
every form of evil to match the good (as, for instance, on the
defection of life there was brought in the antagonism of death; on the
deprivation of light darkness supervened; in the absence of virtue
vice arose in its place, and against every form of good might be
reckoned a like number of opposite evils), by whom, I ask, was man,
fallen by his recklessness into this and the like evil state (for it
was not possible for him to retain even his prudence when he had
estranged himself from prudence, or to take any wise counsel when he
had severed himself from wisdom),--by whom was man to be recalled to
the grace of his original state? To whom belonged the restoration of
the fallen one, the recovery of the lost, the leading back the
wanderer by the hand? To whom else than entirely to Him Who is the
Lord of his nature? For Him only Who at the first had given the life
was it possible, or fitting, to recover it when lost. This is what we
are taught and learn from the Revelation of the truth, that God in the
beginning made man and saved him when he had fallen.
Footnotes
[1962] historikoteron kai di' ainigmaton
[1963] "Here," says Semler, "our Author reveals himself as a scholar
of Origen, and other doctors, who had imbibed the heathen thoughts of
Plato, and wished to rest their system upon a future (purely) moral
improvement." There is certainly too little room left here for the
application to the soul and body in this life of Christ's atonement.
[1964] skuthropon epanorthosis, lit. "a correction consisting in
terrible (processes)" (subjective genitive). The following passage
will illustrate this: "Now this requires a deeper investigation,
before it can be decided whether some evil powers have had assigned
them...certain duties, like the State-executioners, who hold a
melancholy (tetagmenoi epi ton skuthropon...pragmaton) but necessary
office in the Constitution." Origen, c. Cels. vii. 70.
[1965] in the day of the judgment. The reading ktiseos, which Hervetus
has followed, must be wrong here.
[1966] S. Matt. ix. 12
[1967] S. Mark ii. 17
[1968] of a wart; murmekias. Gregory uses the same simile in his
treatise On the Soul (iii. p. 204). The following "scholium" in Greek
is found in the margin of two mss. of that treatise, and in that of
one ms. of this treatise: "There is an affection of the skin which is
called a wart. A small fleshy excrescence projects from the skin,
which seems a part of it, and a natural growth upon it: but this is
not really so; and therefore it requires removal for its cure. This
illustration made use of by Gregory is exceedingly appropriate to the
matter in hand."
[1969] Ps. xxxix. (xxxviii.) 11: "When thou with rebukes dost correct
man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away" (A.V).
[1970] i.e.Chapter 1., throughout.
Chapter IX.
Up to this point, perhaps, one who has followed the course of our
argument will agree with it, inasmuch as it does not seem to him that
anything has been said which is foreign to the proper conception of
the Deity. But towards what follows and constitutes the strongest part
of this Revelation of the truth, he will not be similarly disposed;
the human birth, I mean, the growth of infancy to maturity, the eating
and drinking, the fatigue and sleep, the sorrow and tears, the false
accusation and judgment hall, the cross of death and consignment to
the tomb. All these things, included as they are in this revelation,
to a certain extent blunt the faith of the more narrow-minded, and so
they reject the sequel itself in consequence of these antecedents.
They will not allow that in the Resurrection from the dead there is
anything consistent with the Deity, because of the unseemly
circumstances of the Death. Well, I deem it necessary first of all to
remove our thoughts for a moment from the grossness of the carnal
element, and to fix them on what is morally beautiful in itself, and
on what is not, and on the distinguishing marks by which each of them
is to be apprehended. No one, I think, who has reflected will
challenge the assertion that, in the whole nature of things, one thing
only is disgraceful, and that is vicious weakness; while whatever has
no connection with vice is a stranger to all disgrace; and whatever
has no mixture in it of disgrace is certainly to be found on the side
of the beautiful; and what is really beautiful has in it no mixture of
its opposite. Now whatever is to be regarded as coming within the
sphere of the beautiful becomes the character of God. Either, then,
let them show that there was viciousness in His birth, His bringing
up, His growth, His progress to the perfection of His nature, His
experience of death and return from death; or, if they allow that the
aforesaid circumstances of His life remain outside the sphere of
viciousness, they will perforce admit that there is nothing of
disgrace in this that is foreign to viciousness. Since, then, what is
thus removed from every disgraceful and vicious quality is abundantly
shown to be morally beautiful, how can one fail to pity the folly of
men who give it as their opinion that what is morally beautiful is not
becoming in the case of God?
Chapter X.
"But the nature of man," it is said, "is narrow and circumscribed,
whereas the Deity is infinite. How could the infinite be included in
the atom [1971] ?" But who is it that says the infinitude of the Deity
is comprehended in the envelopment of the flesh as if it were in a
vessel? Not even in the case of our own life is the intellectual
nature shut up within the boundary of the flesh. On the contrary,
while the body's bulk is limited to the proportions peculiar to it,
the soul by the movements of its thinking faculty can coincide [1972]
at will with the whole of creation. It ascends to the heavens, and
sets foot within the deep. It traverses the breadth of the world, and
in the restlessness of its curiosity makes its way into the regions
that are beneath the earth; and often it is occupied in the scrutiny
of the wonders of heaven, and feels no weight from the appendage
[1973] of the body. If, then, the soul of man, although by the
necessity of its nature it is transfused through the body, yet
presents itself everywhere at will, what necessity is there for saying
that the Deity is hampered by an environment of fleshly nature, and
why may we not, by examples which we are capable of understanding,
gain some reasonable idea of God's plan of salvation? There is an
analogy, for instance, in the flame of a lamp, which is seen to
embrace the material with which it is supplied [1974] . Reason makes a
distinction between the flame upon the material, and the material that
kindles the flame, though in fact it is not possible to cut off the
one from the other so as to exhibit the flame separate from the
material, but they both united form one single thing. But let no one,
I beg, associate also with this illustration the idea of the
perishableness of the flame; let him accept only what is apposite in
the image; what is irrelevant and incongruous let him reject. What is
there, then, to prevent our thinking (just as we see flame fastening
on the material [1975] , and yet not inclosed in it) of a kind of
union or approximation of the Divine nature with humanity, and yet in
this very approximation guarding the proper notion of Deity, believing
as we do that, though the Godhead be in man, it is beyond all
circumscription?
Footnotes
[1971] to atomo: here, the individual body of man: "individuo
corpusculo," Zinus translates. Theodoret in his second ("Unconfused")
Dialogue quotes this very passage about the "infiniteness of the
Deity," and a "vessel," to prove the two natures of Christ.
[1972] ephaploutai
[1973] epholki& 251;.
[1974] There is a touch of Eutychianism in this illustration of the
union of the Two Natures; as also in Gregory's answer (c. Eunom. iii.
265; v. 589) to Eunomius' charge of Two Persons against the Nicene
party, viz. that "the flesh with all its peculiar marks and properties
is taken up and transformed into the Divine nature"; whence arose that
antimethistasis ton onomaton, i.e. reciprocal interchange of the
properties human and Divine, which afterwards occasioned the
Monophysite controversy. But Origen had used language still more
incautious; "with regard to his mortal body and his human soul, we
believe that owing to something more than communion with Him, to
actual union and intermingling, it has acquired the highest qualities,
and partakes of His Divinity, and so has changed into God" (c. Cels.
iii. 41).
[1975] fastening on the material. The word (haptesthai) could mean
either "fastening on," or "depending on," or "kindled from" (it has
been used in this last sense just above). Krabinger selects the
second, "quæ a subjecto dependet."
Chapter XI.
Should you, however, ask in what way Deity is mingled with humanity,
you will have occasion for a preliminary inquiry as to what the
coalescence is of soul with flesh. But supposing you are ignorant of
the way in which the soul is in union with the body, do not suppose
that that other question is bound to come within your comprehension;
rather, as in this case of the union of soul and body, while we have
reason to believe that the soul is something other than the body,
because the flesh when isolated from the soul becomes dead and
inactive, we have yet no exact knowledge of the method of the union,
so in that other inquiry of the union of Deity with manhood, while we
are quite aware that there is a distinction as regards degree of
majesty between the Divine and the mortal perishable nature, we are
not capable of detecting how the Divine and the human elements are
mixed up together. The miracles recorded permit us not to entertain a
doubt [1976] that God was born in the nature of man. But how--this, as
being a subject unapproachable by the processes of reasoning, we
decline to investigate. For though we believe, as we do, that all the
corporeal and intellectual creation derives its subsistence from the
incorporeal and uncreated Being, yet the whence or the how, these we
do not make a matter for examination along with our faith in the thing
itself. While we accept the fact, we pass by the manner of the putting
together of the Universe, as a subject which must not be curiously
handled, but one altogether ineffable and inexplicable.
Footnotes
[1976] dia ton historoumenon thaumaton ouk amphiballomen
Chapter XII.
If a person requires proofs of God's having been manifested to us in
the flesh, let him look at the Divine activities. For of the existence
of the Deity at all one can discover no other demonstration than that
which the testimony of those activities supplies. When, that is, we
take a wide survey of the universe, and consider the dispensations
throughout the world, and the Divine benevolences that operate in our
life, we grasp the conception of a power overlying all, that is
creative of all things that come into being, and is conservative of
them as they exist. On the same principle, as regards the
manifestation of God in the flesh, we have established a satisfactory
proof of that apparition of Deity, in those wonders of His operations;
for in all his work as actually recorded we recognize the
characteristics of the Divine nature. It belongs to God to give life
to men, to uphold by His providence all things that exist. It belongs
to God to bestow meat and drink on those who in the flesh have
received from Him the boon of life, to benefit the needy, to bring
back to itself, by means of renewed health, the nature that has been
perverted by sickness. It belongs to God to rule with equal sway the
whole of creation; earth, sea, air, and the realms above the air. It
is His to have a power that is sufficient for all things, and above
all to be stronger than death and corruption. Now if in any one of
these or the like particulars the record of Him had been wanting, they
who are external to the faith had reasonably taken exception [1977] to
the gospel revelation. But if every notion that is conceivable of God
is to be traced in what is recorded of Him, what is there to hinder
our faith?
Footnotes
[1977] paregraphonto
Chapter XIII.
But, it is said, to be born and to die are conditions peculiar to the
fleshly nature. I admit it. But what went before that Birth and what
came after that Death escapes the mark of our common humanity. If we
look to either term of our human life, we understand both from what we
take our beginning, and in what we end. Man commenced his existence in
a weakness and in a weakness completes it. But in the instance of the
Incarnation neither did the birth begin with a weakness, nor in a
weakness did the death terminate; for neither did sensual pleasure go
before the birth, nor did corruption follow upon the death. Do you
disbelieve this marvel? I quite welcome your incredulity. You thus
entirely admit that those marvellous facts are supernatural, in the
very way that you think that what is related is above belief. Let this
very fact, then, that the proclamation of the mystery did not proceed
in terms that are natural, be a proof to you of the manifestation of
the Deity. For if what is related of Christ were within the bounds of
nature, where were the Godhead? But if the account surpasses nature,
then the very facts which you disbelieve are a demonstration that He
who was thus proclaimed was God. A man is begotten by the conjunction
of two persons, and after death is left in corruption. Had the Gospel
comprised no more than this, you certainly would not have deemed him
to be God, the testimony to whom was conveyed in terms peculiar only
to our nature. But when you are told that He was born, and yet
transcended our common humanity both in the manner of His birth, and
by His incapacity of a change to corruption, it would be well if, in
consequence of this, you would direct your incredulity upon the other
point, so as to refuse to suppose Him to be one of those who have
manifestly existed as mere men; for it follows of necessity that a
person who does not believe that such and such a being is mere man,
must be led on to the belief that He is God. Well, he who has recorded
that He was born has related also that He was born of a Virgin. If,
therefore, on the evidence stated, the fact of His being born is
established as a matter of faith, it is altogether incredible, on the
same evidence, that He was not born in the manner stated. For the
author who mentions His birth adds also, that it was of a Virgin; and
in recording His death bears further testimony to His resurrection
from the dead. If, therefore, from what you are told, you grant that
He both was born and died, on the same grounds you must admit that
both His birth and death were independent of the conditions of human
weakness,--in fact, were above nature. The conclusion, therefore, is
that He Who has thus been shown to have been born under supernatural
circumstances was certainly Himself not limited by nature.
Chapter XIV.
"Then why," it is asked, "did the Deity descend to such humiliation?
Our faith is staggered to think that God, that incomprehensible,
inconceivable, and ineffable reality, transcending all glory of
greatness, wraps Himself up in the base covering of humanity, so that
His sublime operations as well are debased by this admixture with the
grovelling earth."
Chapter XV.
Even to this objection we are not at a loss for an answer consistent
with our idea of God. You ask the reason why God was born among men.
If you take away from life the benefits that come to us from God, you
would not be able to tell me what means you have of arriving at any
knowledge of Deity. In the kindly treatment of us we recognize the
benefactor; that is, from observation of that which happens to us, we
conjecture the disposition of the person who operates it. If, then,
love of man be a special characteristic of the Divine nature, here is
the reason for which you are in search, here is the cause of the
presence of God among men. Our diseased nature needed a healer. Man in
his fall needed one to set him upright. He who had lost the gift of
life stood in need of a life-giver, and he who had dropped away from
his fellowship with good wanted one who would lead him back to good.
He who was shut up in darkness longed for the presence of the light.
The captive sought for a ransomer, the fettered prisoner for some one
to take his part, and for a deliverer he who was held in the bondage
of slavery. Were these, then, trifling or unworthy wants to importune
the Deity to come down and take a survey of the nature of man, when
mankind was so miserably and pitiably conditioned? "But," it is
replied, "man might have been benefited, and yet God might have
continued in a passionless state. Was it not possible for Him Who in
His wisdom framed the universe, and by the simple impulse of His will
brought into subsistence that which was not, had it so pleased Him, by
means of some direct Divine command to withdraw man from the reach of
the opposing power, and bring him back to his primal state? Whereas He
waits for long periods of time to come round, He submits Himself to
the condition of a human body, He enters upon the stage of life by
being born, and after passing through each age of life in succession,
and then tasting death, at last, only by the rising again of His own
body, accomplishes His object,--as if it was not optional to Him to
fulfil His purpose without leaving the height of His Divine glory, and
to save man by a single command [1978] , letting those long periods of
time alone." Needful, therefore, is it that in answer to objections
such as these we should draw out the counter-statement of the truth,
in order that no obstacle may be offered to the faith of those persons
who will minutely examine the reasonableness of the gospel revelation.
In the first place, then, as has been partially discussed before
[1979] , let us consider what is that which, by the rule of
contraries, is opposed to virtue. As darkness is the opposite of
light, and death of life, so vice, and nothing else besides, is
plainly the opposite of virtue. For as in the many objects in creation
there is nothing which is distinguished by its opposition to light or
life, but only the peculiar ideas which are their exact opposites, as
darkness and death--not stone, or wood, or water, or man, or anything
else in the world,--so, in the instance of virtue, it cannot be said
that any created thing can be conceived of as contrary to it, but only
the idea of vice. If, then, our Faith preached that the Deity had been
begotten under vicious circumstances, an opportunity would have been
afforded the objector of running down our belief, as that of persons
who propounded incongruous and absurd opinions with regard to the
Divine nature. For, indeed, it were blasphemous to assert that the
Deity, Which is very wisdom, goodness, incorruptibility, and every
other exalted thing in thought or word, had undergone change to the
contrary. If, then, God is real and essential virtue, and no mere
existence [1980] of any kind is logically opposed to virtue, but only
vice is so; and if the Divine birth was not into vice, but into human
existence; and if only vicious weakness is unseemly and shameful--and
with such weakness neither was God born, nor had it in His nature to
be born,--why are they scandalized at the confession that God came
into touch with human nature, when in relation to virtue no
contrariety whatever is observable in the organization of man? For
neither Reason, nor Understanding [1981] , nor Receptivity for
science, nor any other like quality proper to the essence of man, is
opposed to the principle of virtue.
Footnotes
[1978] Origin answering the same objections says, "I know not what
sort of alteration of mankind it is that Celsus wants, when he doubts
whether it were not possible to improve man by a display of Divine
power, without any one being sent in the course of nature (phusei) for
that purpose. Does he want this to take place among mankind by a
sudden appearance of God destroying evil in their hearts at a blow,
and causing virtue to spring up there? One might well inquire if it
were fitting or possible that such a thing should happen. But we will
suppose that it is so. What then? How will our assent to the truth be
(in that case) praiseworthy? You yourself profess to recognize a
special Providence: therefore you ought just as much to have told us,
as we you, why it is that God, knowing the affairs of men, does not
correct them, and by a single stroke of His power rid Himself of the
whole family of evil. But we confidently assert that He does send
messengers for this very purpose: for His words appealing to men's
noblest emotions are amongst them. But whereas there had been already
great differences between the various ministers of the Word, the
reformation of Jesus went beyond them all in greatness; for He did not
mean to heal the men of one little corner only of the world, but He
came to save all;" c. Cels. iv. 3, 4.
[1979] Ch. v.
[1980] phusis.
[1981] to dianoetikon
Chapter XVI.
"But," it is said, "this change in our body by birth is a weakness,
and one born under such condition is born in weakness. Now the Deity
is free from weakness. It is, therefore, a strange idea in connection
with God," they say, "when people declare that one who is essentially
free from weakness thus comes into fellowship with weakness." Now in
reply to this let us adopt the same argument as before, namely that
the word "weakness" is used partly in a proper, partly in an adapted
sense. Whatever, that is, affects the will and perverts it from virtue
to vice is really and truly a weakness; but whatever in nature is to
be seen proceeding by a chain peculiar to itself of successive stages
would be more fitly called a work than a weakness. As, for instance,
birth, growth, the continuance of the underlying substance through the
influx and efflux of the aliments, the meeting together of the
component elements of the body, and, on the other hand, the
dissolution of its component parts and their passing back into the
kindred elements. Which "weakness," then, does our Mystery assert that
the Deity came in contact with? That which is properly called
weakness, which is vice, or that which is the result of natural
movements? Well, if our Faith affirmed that the Deity was born under
forbidden circumstances, then it would be our duty to shun a statement
which gave this profane and unsound description of the Divine Being.
But if it asserts that God laid hold on this nature of ours, the
production of which in the first instance and the subsistence
afterwards had its origin in Him, in what way does this our preaching
fail in the reverence that befits Him? Amongst our notions of God no
disposition tending to weakness goes along with our belief in Him. We
do not say that a physician is in weakness when he is employed in
healing one who is so [1982] . For though he touches the infirmity he
is himself unaffected by it. If birth is not regarded in itself as a
weakness, no one can call life such. But the feeling of sensual
pleasure does go before the human birth, and as to the impulse to vice
in all living men, this is a disease of our nature. But then the
Gospel mystery asserts that He Who took our nature was pure from both
these feelings. If, then, His birth had no connection with sensual
pleasure, and His life none with vice, what "weakness" is there left
which the mystery of our religion asserts that God participated in?
But should any one call the separation of body and soul a weakness
[1983] , far more justly might he term the meeting together of these
two elements such. For if the severance of things that have been
connected is a weakness, then is the union of things that are asunder
a weakness also. For there is a feeling of movement in the uniting of
things sundered as well as in the separation of what has been welded
into one. The same term, then, by which the final movement is called,
it is proper to apply to the one that initiated it. If the first
movement, which we call birth, is not a weakness, it follows that
neither the second, which we call death, and by which the severance of
the union of the soul and body is effected, is a weakness. Our
position is, that God was born subject to both movements of our
nature; first, that by which the soul hastens to join the body, and
then again that by which the body is separated from the soul; and that
when the concrete humanity was formed by the mixture of these two, I
mean the sentient and the intelligent element, through that ineffable
and inexpressible conjunction, this result in the Incarnation
followed, that after the soul and body had been once united the union
continued for ever. For when our nature, following its own proper
course, had even in Him been advanced to the separation of soul and
body, He knitted together again the disunited elements, cementing
them, as it were, together with the cement of His Divine power, and
recombining what has been severed in a union never to be broken. And
this is the Resurrection, namely the return, after they have been
dissolved, of those elements that had been before linked together,
into an indissoluble union through a mutual incorporation; in order
that thus the primal grace which invested humanity might be recalled,
and we restored to the everlasting life, when the vice that has been
mixed up with our kind has evaporated through our dissolution, as
happens to any liquid when the vessel that contained it is broken, and
it is spilt and disappears, there being nothing to contain it. For as
the principle of death took its rise in one person and passed on in
succession through the whole of human kind, in like manner the
principle of the Resurrection-life extends from one person to the
whole of humanity. For He Who reunited to His own proper body the soul
that had been assumed by Himself, by virtue of that power which had
mingled with both of these component elements at their first framing,
then, upon a more general scale as it were [1984] , conjoined the
intellectual to the sentient nature, the new principle freely
progressing to the extremities by natural consequence. For when, in
that concrete humanity which He had taken to Himself, the soul after
the dissolution returned to the body, then this uniting of the several
portions passes, as by a new principle, in equal force upon the whole
human race. This, then, is the mystery of God's plan with regard to
His death and His resurrection from the dead; namely, instead of
preventing the dissolution of His body by death and the necessary
results of nature, to bring both back to each other in the
resurrection; so that He might become in Himself the meeting-ground
both of life and death, having re-established in Himself that nature
which death had divided, and being Himself the originating principle
of the uniting those separated portions.
Footnotes
[1982] So Origen (c. Cels. iv. 15) illustrates the kenosis and
sunkatabasis of Christ: "Nor was this change one from the heights of
excellence to the depths of baseness (to ponerotaton), for how can
goodness and love be baseness? If they were, it would be high time to
declare that the surgeon who inspects or touches grievous and
unsightly cases in order to heal them undergoes such a change from
good to bad."
[1983] There is no one word in English which would represent the full
meaning of pathos. "Sufferance" sometimes comes nearest to it, but not
here, where Gregory is attempting to express that which in no way
whatever attached to the Saviour, i.e. moral weakness, as opposed to
physical infirmity.
[1984] upon a more general scale as it were. The Greek here is
somewhat obscure; the best reading is Krabinger's; genikotero tini
logo ten noeran ousian te aisthete sunkatemixen. Hervetus' translation
is manifestly wrong; "Is generosiorem quandam intelligentem essentiam
commiscuit sensili principio."--Soul and body have been reunited by
the Resurrection, on a larger scale and to a wider extent (logo), than
in the former instance of a single Person (in the Incarnation), the
new principle of life progressing to the extremities of humanity by
natural consequence: genikotero will thus refer by comparison to "the
first framing of these component elements." Or else it contrasts the
amount of life with that of death: and is to be explained by Rom. v.
15, "But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through
the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the
gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto
many." Krabinger's translation, "generaliori quâdam ratione,"
therefore seems correct. The mode of the union of soul and body is
described in Gregory's Treatise on the Soul as kreitton logos, and in
his Making of Man as aphrastos logos, but in neither is there any
comparison but with other less perfect modes of union; i.e. the
reference is to quality, not to quantity, as here.
Chapter XVII.
But it will be said that the objection which has been brought against
us has not yet been solved, and that what unbelievers have urged has
been rather strengthened by all we have said. For if, as our argument
has shown, there is such power in Him that both the destruction of
death and the introduction of life resides in Him, why does He not
effect His purpose by the mere exercise of His will, instead of
working out our salvation in such a roundabout way, by being born and
nurtured as a man, and even, while he was saving man, tasting death;
when it was possible for Him to have saved man without subjecting
Himself to such conditions? Now to this, with all candid persons, it
were sufficient to reply, that the sick do not dictate to their
physicians the measures for their recovery, nor cavil with those who
do them good as to the method of their healing; why, for instance, the
medical man felt the diseased part and devised this or that particular
remedy for the removal of the complaint, when they expected another;
but the patient looks to the end and aim of the good work, and
receives the benefit with gratitude. Seeing, however, as says the
Prophet [1985] , that God's abounding goodness keeps its utility
concealed, and is not seen in complete clearness in this present
life--otherwise, if the eyes could behold all that is hoped for, every
objection of unbelievers would be removed,--but, as it is, abides the
ages that are coming, when what is at present seen only by the eye of
faith must be revealed, it is needful accordingly that, as far as we
may, we should by the aid of arguments, the best within our reach,
attempt to discover for these difficulties also a solution in harmony
with what has gone before.
Footnotes
[1985] the Prophet, i.e. David; Ps. xxxi. 19: hos polu to plethos tes
chrestotetos sou, k.t.l. Hervetus translates Gregory here "divitiæ
benignitatis," as if he had found ploutos in the text, which does not
appear. Jerome twice translates the chrestotes of LXX. by "bonitas";
Aquila and Symmachus have ti polu to agathon sou. This is the later
sense of chrestotes, which originally meant "serviceableness" and then
"uprightness" (Psalm xiii. 2, 4; xxxvi. 3; cxix. 66), rather than
"kindness."
Chapter XVIII.
And yet it is perhaps straining too far for those who do believe that
God sojourned here in life to object to the manner of His appearance
[1986] , as wanting wisdom or conspicuous reasonableness. For to those
who are not vehemently antagonistic to the truth there exists no
slight proof of the Deity having sojourned here; I mean that which is
exhibited now in this present life before the life to come begins, the
testimony which is borne by actual facts. For who is there that does
not know that every part of the world was overspread with demoniacal
delusion which mastered the life of man through the madness of
idolatry; how this was the customary rule among all nations, to
worship demons under the form of idols, with the sacrifice of living
animals and the polluted offerings on their altars? But from the time
when, as says the Apostle, "the grace of God that bringeth salvation
to all men appeared [1987] ," and dwelt among us in His human nature,
all these things passed away like smoke into nothingness, the madness
of their oracles and prophesyings ceased, the annual pomps and
pollutions of their bloody hecatombs came to an end, while among most
nations altars entirely disappeared, together with porches, precincts,
and shrines, and all the ritual besides which was followed out by the
attendant priest of those demons, to the deception both of themselves
and of all who came in their way. So that in many of these places no
memorial exists of these things having ever been. But, instead,
throughout the whole world there have arisen in the name of Jesus
temples and altars and a holy and unbloody Priesthood [1988] , and a
sublime philosophy, which teaches, by deed and example more than by
word, a disregard of this bodily life and a contempt of death, a
contempt which they whom tyrants have tried to force to apostatize
from the faith have manifestly displayed, making no account of the
cruelties done to their bodies or of their doom of death: and yet,
plainly, it was not likely that they would have submitted to such
treatment unless they had had a clear and indisputable proof of that
Divine Sojourn among men. And the following fact is, further, a
sufficient mark, as against the Jews, of the presence among them
[1989] of Him in Whom they disbelieve; up to the time of the
manifestation of Christ the royal palaces in Jerusalem were in all
their splendour: there was their far-famed Temple; there was the
customary round of their sacrifices throughout the year: all the
things, which had been expressed by the Law in symbols to those who
knew how to read its secrets, were up to that point of time unbroken
in their observance, in accordance with that form of worship which had
been established from the beginning. But when at length they saw Him
Whom they were looking for, and of Whom by their Prophets and the Law
they had before been told, and when they held in more estimation than
faith in Him Who had so manifested Himself that which for the future
became but a degraded superstition, because they took it in a wrong
sense [1990] , and clung to the mere phrases of the Law in obedience
to the dictates of custom rather than of intelligence, and when they
had thus refused the grace which had appeared,--then even [1991] those
holy monuments of their religion were left standing, as they do, in
history alone; for no traces even of their Temple can be recognized,
and their splendid city has been left in ruins, so that there remains
to the Jews nothing of the ancient institutions; while by the command
of those who rule over them the very ground of Jerusalem which they so
venerated is forbidden to them.
Footnotes
[1986] appearance, parousian. Casaubon in his notes to Gregory's Ep.
to Eustathia, gives a list of the various terms applied by the Greek
Fathers to the Incarnation, viz. (besides parousia),--he tou Christou
epiphaneia; he despotike epidemia; he dia sarkos homilia; he tou logou
ensarkosis; he enanthropesis; he eleusis; he kenosis; he sunkatabasis;
he oikonomia (none more frequent than this); and others.
[1987] Tit. ii. 11. This is the preferable rendering; not as in the
A.V., "appeared to all men."
[1988] unbloody Priesthood, anaimakton hierosunen, i.e. "sacerdotium,"
not "sacrificium." This, not thusian, is supported by the Codd. The
Eucharist is often called by the Fathers "the unbloody sacrifice"
(e.g. Chrysost. in Ps. xcv., citing Malachi), and the Priesthood which
offers it can be called "unbloody" too. Cf. Greg. Naz. in Poem. xi.
1-- ?,O thusias pempontes anaimaktous hierees. While these terms
assert the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, might they not at the
same time supply an argument against the Roman view of
Transubstantiation, which teaches that the actual blood of Christ is
received, and makes it still a bloody sacrifice?
[1989] of the presence among them, &c. Cf. a striking passage in
Origen; "One amongst the convincing proofs that Jesus was something
Divine and holy is this; that the Jews after what they did to Him have
suffered so many terrible afflictions for so long. And we shall be
bold to say that they never will be restored again. They have
committed the most impious of crimes. They plotted against the Saviour
of mankind in that city where the ceremonies they continually
performed for God enshrined great mysteries. It was right that that
city where Jesus suffered should be utterly destroyed, and the Jewish
nation expelled, and that God's call to blessedness should be made to
others, I mean the Christians, to whom have passed the doctrines of a
religion of stainless purity, and who have received new laws fitted
for any form of government that exists" (c. Celsum, iv. 22). The Jews,
he says, will even "suffer more than others in the judgment which they
anticipate, in addition to what they have suffered already," ii. 8.
But he says, v. 43, "Would that they had not committed the error of
having broken their own law; first killing their prophets, and at last
taking Jesus by stealth; for then we should still have amongst us the
model of that heavenly city which Plato attempted to sketch, though I
cannot say that his powers came up to those of Moses and his
successors."
[1990] they took it (i.e. the religion, which for the future, &c.) in
a wrong sense: kakos eklabontes (Hasius, ad Leon. Diacon., shows how
lambanein and metalambanein also have this meaning "interpret,"
"accipere"). This is a better reading than ekbalontes, and is
supported by two mss.
[1991] then even. The apodosis begins here, and hoste must be
understood after hupoleleiptai, to govern meinai, "were left standing,
&c....so that there remains."
Chapter XIX.
Nevertheless, since neither those who take the Greek view, nor yet the
leaders of Jewish opinions, are willing to make such things the proofs
of that Divine manifestation, it may be as well, as regards these
demurrers to our statement, to treat more particularly the reason by
virtue of which the Divine nature is combined with ours, saving, as it
does, humanity by means of itself, and not working out its proposed
design by means of a mere command. With what, then, must we begin, so
as to conduct our thinking by a logical sequence to the proposed
conclusion? What but this, viz. with a succinct detail of the notions
that can religiously be entertained of God [1992] ?
Footnotes
[1992] The Greek Fathers and the English divines for the most part
confine themselves to showing this moral fitness and consonance with
God's nature in the Incarnation, and do not attempt to prove its
absolute necessity. Cf. Athanasius, De Incarn. Verb. c. 6; Hooker,
Eccles. Pol. V. li. 3; Butler's Analogy, pt. ii. c. 5.
Chapter XX.
It is, then, universally acknowledged that we must believe the Deity
to be not only almighty, but just, and good, and wise, and everything
else that suggests excellence. It follows, therefore, in the present
dispensation of things, that it is not the case that some particular
one [1993] of these Divine attributes freely displays itself in
creation, while there is another that is not present there; for,
speaking once for all, no one of those exalted terms, when disjoined
from the rest, is by itself alone a virtue, nor is the good really
good unless allied with what is just, and wise, and mighty (for what
is unjust, or unwise, or powerless, is not good, neither is power,
when disjoined from the principle of justice and of wisdom, to be
considered in the light of virtue; such species of power is brutal and
tyrannous; and so, as to the rest, if what is wise be carried beyond
the limits of what is just, or if what is just be not contemplated
along with might and goodness, cases of that sort one would more
properly call vice; for how can what comes short of perfection be
reckoned among things that are good?). If, then, it is fitting that
all excellences should be combined in the views we have of God, let us
see whether this Dispensation as regards man fails in any of those
conceptions which we should entertain of Him. The object of our
inquiry in the case of God is before all things the indications of His
goodness. And what testimony to His goodness could there be more
palpable than this, viz. His regaining to Himself the allegiance of
one who had revolted to the opposite side, instead of allowing the
fixed goodness of His nature to be affected by the variableness of the
human will? For, as David says, He had not come to save us had not
"goodness" created in Him such a purpose [1994] ; and yet His goodness
had not advanced His purpose had not wisdom given efficacy to His love
for man. For, as in the case of persons who are in a sickly condition,
there are probably many who wish that a man were not in such evil
plight, but it is only they in whom there is some technical ability
operating in behalf of the sick, who bring their good-will on their
behalf to a practical issue, so it is absolutely needful that wisdom
should be conjoined with goodness. In what way, then, is wisdom
contemplated in combination with goodness; in the actual events, that
is, which have taken place? because one cannot observe a good purpose
in the abstract; a purpose cannot possibly be revealed unless it has
the light of some events upon it. Well, the things accomplished,
progressing as they did in orderly series and sequence, reveal the
wisdom and the skill of the Divine economy. And since, as has been
before remarked, wisdom, when combined with justice, then absolutely
becomes a virtue, but, if it be disjoined from it, cannot in itself
alone be good, it were well moreover in this discussion of the
Dispensation in regard to man, to consider attentively in the light of
each other these two qualities; I mean, its wisdom and its justice.
Footnotes
[1993] to men ti (for toi). There is the same variety of reading in c.
i. and xxi., where Krabinger has preserved the ti: he well quotes
Synesius, de Prov. ii. 2; ;;O men tis apothneskei plegeis, ho de
k.t.l. (and refers to his note there).
[1994] Ps. cvi. (cv.) 4, 5; cxix. (cxviii.) 65, 66, 68. In the first
passage the LXX. has tou idein en te chrestoteti ton eklekton sou
(Heb. "the felicity of Thy chosen"): evidently referring to God's
eudokia in them; He, good Himself (chrestos, v. 1), will save them,
"in order to approve their goodness." The second passage mentions four
times this chrestotes (bonitas).
Chapter XXI.
What, then, is justice? We distinctly remember what in the course of
our argument we said in the commencement of this treatise; namely,
that man was fashioned in imitation of the Divine nature, preserving
his resemblance to the Deity as well in other excellences as in
possession of freedom of the will, yet being of necessity of a nature
subject to change. For it was not possible that a being who derived
his origin from an alteration should be altogether free from this
liability. For the passing from a state of non-existence into that of
existence is a kind of alteration; when being, that is, by the
exercise of Divine power takes the place of nonentity. In the
following special respect, too, alteration is necessarily observable
in man, namely, because man was an imitation of the Divine nature, and
unless some distinctive difference had been occasioned, the imitating
subject would be entirely the same as that which it resembles; but in
this instance, it is to be observed, there is a difference between
that which "was made in the image" and its pattern; namely this, that
the one is not subject to change, while the other is (for, as has been
described, it has come into existence through an alteration), and
being thus subject to alteration does not always continue in its
existing state. For alteration is a kind of movement ever advancing
from the present state to another; and there are two forms of this
movement; the one being ever towards what is good, and in this the
advance has no check, because no goal of the course to be traversed
[1995] can be reached, while the other is in the direction of the
contrary, and of it this is the essence, that it has no subsistence;
for, as has been before stated, the contrary state to goodness conveys
some such notion of opposition, as when we say, for instance, that
that which is is logically opposed to that which is not, and that
existence is so opposed to non-existence. Since, then, by reason of
this impulse and movement of changeful alteration it is not possible
that the nature of the subject of this change should remain
self-centred and unmoved, but there is always something towards which
the will is tending, the appetency for moral beauty naturally drawing
it on to movement, this beauty is in one instance really such in its
nature, in another it is not so, only blossoming with an illusive
appearance of beauty; and the criterion of these two kinds is the mind
that dwells within us. Under these circumstances it is a matter of
risk whether we happen to choose the real beauty, or whether we are
diverted from its choice by some deception arising from appearance,
and thus drift away to the opposite; as happened, we are told in the
heathen fable, to the dog which looked askance at the reflection in
the water of what it carried in its mouth, but let go the real food,
and, opening its mouth wide to swallow the image of it, still
hungered. Since, then, the mind has been disappointed in its craving
for the real good, and diverted to that which is not such, being
persuaded, through the deception of the great advocate and inventor of
vice, that that was beauty which was just the opposite (for this
deception would never have succeeded, had not the glamour of beauty
been spread over the hook of vice like a bait),--the man, I say, on
the one hand, who had enslaved himself by indulgence to the enemy of
his life, being of his own accord in this unfortunate condition,--I
ask you to investigate, on the other hand, those qualities which suit
and go along with our conception of the Deity, such as goodness,
wisdom, power, immortality, and all else that has the stamp of
superiority. As good, then, the Deity entertains pity for fallen man;
as wise He is not ignorant of the means for his recovery; while a just
decision must also form part of that wisdom; for no one would ascribe
that genuine justice to the absence of wisdom.
Footnotes
[1995] of the course to be traversed: tou diexodeuomenou. Glauber
remarks that the Latin translation here, "ejus qui transit," gives no
sense, and rightly takes the word as a passive. Krabinger also
translates, "ejus quod evolvitur." Here again there is unconscious
Platonism: auto to kalon is eternal.
Chapter XXII.
What, then, under these circumstances is justice? It is the not
exercising any arbitrary sway over him who has us in his power [1996]
, nor, by tearing us away by a violent exercise of force from his
hold, thus leaving some colour for a just complaint to him who
enslaved man through sensual pleasure. For as they who have bartered
away their freedom for money are the slaves of those who have
purchased them (for they have constituted themselves their own
sellers, and it is not allowable either for themselves or any one else
in their behalf to call freedom to their aid, not even though those
who have thus reduced themselves to this sad state are of noble birth;
and, if any one out of regard for the person who has so sold himself
should use violence against him who has bought him, he will clearly be
acting unjustly in thus arbitrarily rescuing one who has been legally
purchased as a slave, whereas, if he wishes to pay a price to get such
a one away, there is no law to prevent that), on the same principle,
now that we had voluntarily bartered away our freedom, it was
requisite that no arbitrary method of recovery, but the one consonant
with justice [1997] should be devised by Him Who in His goodness had
undertaken our rescue. Now this method is in a measure this; to make
over to the master of the slave whatever ransom he may agree to accept
for the person in his possession.
Footnotes
[1996] Compare a passage in Dionysius Areop. (De eccles. hierarch. c.
iii. p. 297). "The boundless love of the Supreme Goodness did not
refuse a personal providing for us, but perfectly participating in all
that belongs to us, and united to our lowliness, along with an
undiluted and unimpaired possession of its own qualities, has gifted
us for ever with a communion of kinship with itself, and exhibited us
as partners in Its glories: undoing the adverse power of the Rebel
throng, as the secret Tradition says, "not by might, as if it was
domineering, but, according to the oracle secretly delivered to us, by
right and justice" (quoted by Krabinger). To the words "not by might,"
S. Maximus has added the note, "This is what Gregory of Nyssa says in
the Catechetic." See next note.
[1997] one consonant with justice. This view of Redemption, as a
coming to terms with Satan and making him a party or defender in the
case, is rather remarkable. The Prologue to the Book of Job furnishes
a basis for it, where Satan enters into terms with God. It appears to
be the Miltonic view: as also that Envy was the first sin of Satan.
Chapter XXIII.
What, then, was it likely that the master of the slave would choose to
receive in his stead? It is possible in the way of inference to make a
guess as to his wishes in the matter, if, that is, the manifest
indications of what we are seeking for should come into our hands. He
then, who, as we before stated in the beginning of this treatise, shut
his eyes to the good in his envy of man in his happy condition, he who
generated in himself the murky cloud of wickedness, he who suffered
from the disease of the love of rule, that primary and fundamental
cause of propension to the bad and the mother, so to speak, of all the
wickedness that follows,--what would he accept in exchange for the
thing which he held, but something, to be sure, higher and better, in
the way of ransom, that thus, by receiving a gain in the exchange, he
might foster the more his own special passion of pride? Now
unquestionably in not one of those who had lived in history from the
beginning of the world had he been conscious of any such circumstance
as he observed to surround Him Who then manifested Himself, i.e.
conception without carnal connection, birth without impurity,
motherhood with virginity, voices of the unseen testifying from above
to a transcendent worth, the healing of natural disease, without the
use of means and of an extraordinary character, proceeding from Him by
the mere utterance of a word and exercise of His will, the restoration
of the dead to life, the absolution of the damned [1998] , the fear
with which He inspired devils, His power over tempests, His walking
through the sea, not by the waters separating on either side, and, as
in the case of Moses' miraculous power, making bare its depths for
those who passed through, but by the surface of the water presenting
solid ground for His feet, and by a firm and hard resistance
supporting His steps; then, His disregard for food as long as it
pleased Him to abstain, His abundant banquets in the wilderness
wherewith many thousands were fully fed (though neither did the
heavens pour down manna on them, nor was their need supplied by the
earth producing corn for them in its natural way, but that instance of
munificence [1999] came out of the ineffable store-houses of His
Divine power), the bread ready in the hands of those who distributed
it, as if they were actually reaping it, and becoming more, the more
the eaters were filled; and then, the banquet on the fish; not that
the sea supplied their need, but He Who had stocked the sea with its
fish. But how is it possible to narrate in succession each one of the
Gospel miracles? The Enemy, therefore, beholding in Him such power,
saw also in Him an opportunity for an advance, in the exchange, upon
the value of what he held. For this reason he chooses Him as a ransom
[2000] for those who were shut up in the prison of death. But it was
out of his power to look on the unclouded aspect of God; he must see
in Him some portion of that fleshly nature which through sin he had so
long held in bondage. Therefore it was that the Deity was invested
with the flesh, in order, that is, to secure that he, by looking upon
something congenial and kindred to himself, might have no fears in
approaching that supereminent power; and might yet by perceiving that
power, showing as it did, yet only gradually, more and more splendour
in the miracles, deem what was seen an object of desire rather than of
fear. Thus, you see how goodness was conjoined with justice, and how
wisdom was not divorced from them. For to have devised that the Divine
power should have been containable in the envelopment of a body, to
the end that the Dispensation in our behalf might not be thwarted
through any fear inspired by the Deity actually appearing, affords a
demonstration of all these qualities at once--goodness, wisdom,
justice. His choosing to save man is a testimony of his goodness; His
making the redemption of the captive a matter of exchange exhibits His
justice, while the invention whereby He enabled the Enemy to apprehend
that of which he was before incapable, is a manifestation of supreme
wisdom.
Footnotes
[1998] the absolution of the damned. These words, wanting in all
others, Krabinger has restored from the Codex B. Morell translates
"damnatorum absolutio." The Greek is ten ton katadikon ana&
207;rhusin. "Hæc Origenem sapiunt, qui damnatorum poenis finem
statuit:" Krabinger. But here at all events it is not necessary to
accuse Gregory of this, since he is clearly speaking only of Christ's
forgiveness of sins during His earthly ministry.
[1999] philotimia
[2000] he chooses Him as a ransom. This peculiar teaching of Gregory
of Nyssa, that it was to the Devil, not God the Father, that the
ransom, i.e. Christ's blood, was paid, is shared by Origen, Ambrose,
and Augustine. The latter says, "Sanguine Christi diabolus non ditatus
est, sed ligatus," i.e. bound by compact. On the other hand Gregory
Naz. (tom. I. Orat. 42) and John Damascene (De Fid. Orthod. iii. c.
27) give the ransom to the Father.
Chapter XXIV.
But possibly one who has given his attention to the course of the
preceding remarks may inquire: "wherein is the power of the Deity,
wherein is the imperishableness of that Divine power, to be traced in
the processes you have described?" In order, therefore, to make this
also clear, let us take a survey of the sequel of the Gospel mystery,
where that Power conjoined with Love is more especially exhibited. In
the first place, then, that the omnipotence of the Divine nature
should have had strength to descend to the humiliation of humanity,
furnishes a clearer proof of that omnipotence than even the greatness
and supernatural character of the miracles. For that something
pre-eminently great should be wrought out by Divine power is, in a
manner, in accordance with, and consequent upon the Divine nature; nor
is it startling to hear it said that the whole of the created world,
and all that is understood to be beyond the range of visible things,
subsists by the power of God, His will giving it existence according
to His good pleasure. But this His descent to the humility of man is a
kind of superabundant exercise of power, which thus finds no check
even in directions which contravene nature. It is the peculiar
property of the essence of fire to tend upwards; no one therefore,
deems it wonderful in the case of flame to see that natural operation.
But should the flame be seen to stream downwards, like heavy bodies,
such a fact would be regarded as a miracle; namely, how fire still
remains fire, and yet, by this change of direction in its motion,
passes out of its nature by being borne downward. In like manner, it
is not the vastness of the heavens, and the bright shining of its
constellations, and the order of the universe and the unbroken
administration over all existence that so manifestly displays the
transcendent power of the Deity, as this condescension to the weakness
of our nature; the way, in fact, in which sublimity, existing in
lowliness, is actually seen in lowliness, and yet descends not from
its height, and in which Deity, entwined as it is with the nature of
man, becomes this, and yet still is that. For since, as has been said
before, it was not in the nature of the opposing power to come in
contact with the undiluted presence of God, and to undergo His
unclouded manifestation, therefore, in order to secure that the ransom
in our behalf might be easily accepted by him who required it, the
Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature, that so, as with
ravenous fish [2001] , the hook of the Deity might be gulped down
along with the bait of flesh, and thus, life being introduced into the
house of death, and light shining in darkness, that which is
diametrically opposed to light and life might vanish; for it is not in
the nature of darkness to remain when light is present, or of death to
exist when life is active. Let us, then, by way of summary take up the
train of the arguments for the Gospel mystery, and thus complete our
answer to those who question this Dispensation of God, and show them
on what ground it is that the Deity by a personal intervention works
out the salvation of man. It is certainly most necessary that in every
point the conceptions we entertain of the Deity should be such as
befit the subject, and not that, while one idea worthy of His
sublimity should be retained, another equally belonging to that
estimate of Deity should be dismissed from it; on the contrary, every
exalted notion, every devout thought, must most surely enter into our
belief in God, and each must be made dependent on each in a necessary
sequence. Well, then; it has been pointed out that His goodness,
wisdom, justice, power, incapability of decay, are all of them in
evidence in the doctrine of the Dispensation in which we are. His
goodness is caught sight of in His election to save lost man; His
wisdom and justice have been displayed in the method of our salvation;
His power, in that, though born in the likeness and fashion of a man,
on the lowly level of our nature, and in accordance with that likeness
raising the expectation that he could be overmastered by death, he,
after such a birth, nevertheless produced the effects peculiar and
natural to Him. Now it is the peculiar effect of light to make
darkness vanish, and of life to destroy death. Since, then, we have
been led astray from the right path, and diverted from that life which
was ours at the beginning, and brought under the sway of death, what
is there improbable in the lesson we are taught by the Gospel mystery,
if it be this; that cleansing reaches those who are befouled with sin,
and life the dead, and guidance the wanderers, in order that
defilement may be cleansed, error corrected, and what was dead
restored to life?
Footnotes
[2001] as with ravenous fish. The same simile is found in John of
Damascus (De Fid. iii. 27), speaking of Death. "Therefore Death will
advance, and, gulping down the bait of the Body, be transfixed with
the hook of the Divinity: tasting that sinless and life-giving Body,
he is undone, and disgorges all whom he has ever engulphed: for as
darkness vanishes at the letting in of light, so corruption is chased
away by the onset of life, and while there is life given to all else,
there is corruption only for the Corrupter."
Chapter XXV.
That Deity should be born in our nature, ought not reasonably to
present any strangeness to the minds of those who do not take too
narrow a view of things. For who, when he takes a survey of the
universe, is so simple as not to believe that there is Deity in
everything, penetrating it, embracing it, and seated in it? For all
things depend on Him Who is [2002] , nor can there be anything which
has not its being in Him Who is. If, therefore, all things are in Him,
and He in all things, why are they scandalized at the plan of
Revelation when it teaches that God was born among men, that same God
Whom we are convinced is even now not outside mankind? For although
this last form of God's presence amongst us is not the same as that
former presence, still His existence amongst us equally both then and
now is evidenced; only now He Who holds together Nature in existence
is transfused in us; while at that other time He was transfused
throughout our nature, in order that our nature might by this
transfusion of the Divine become itself divine, rescued as it was from
death, and put beyond the reach of the caprice of the antagonist. For
His return from death becomes to our mortal race the commencement of
our return to the immortal life.
Footnotes
[2002] Exod. iii. 14.
Chapter XXVI.
Still, in his examination of the amount of justice and wisdom
discoverable in this Dispensation a person is, perhaps, induced to
entertain the thought that it was by means of a certain amount of
deceit that God carried out this scheme on our behalf. For that not by
pure Deity alone, but by Deity veiled in human nature, God, without
the knowledge of His enemy, got within the lines of him who had man in
his power, is in some measure a fraud and a surprise; seeing that it
is the peculiar way with those who want to deceive to divert in
another direction the expectations of their intended victims, and then
to effect something quite different from what these latter expected.
But he who has regard for truth will agree that the essential
qualities of justice and wisdom are before all things these; viz. of
justice, to give to every one according to his due; of wisdom, not to
pervert justice, and yet at the same time not to dissociate the
benevolent aim of the love of mankind from the verdict of justice, but
skilfully to combine both these requisites together, in regard to
justice [2003] returning the due recompense, in regard to kindness not
swerving from the aim of that love of man. Let us see, then, whether
these two qualities are not to be observed in that which took place.
That repayment, adequate to the debt, by which the deceiver was in his
turn deceived, exhibits the justice of the dealing, while the object
aimed at is a testimony to the goodness of Him who effected it. It is,
indeed, the property of justice to assign to every one those
particular results of which he has sunk already the foundations and
the causes, just as the earth returns its harvests according to the
kinds of seeds thrown into it; while it is the property of wisdom, in
its very manner of giving equivalent returns, not to depart from the
kinder course. Two persons may both mix poison with food, one with the
design of taking life, the other with the design of saving that life;
the one using it as a poison, the other only as an antidote to poison;
and in no way does the manner of the cure adopted spoil the aim and
purpose of the benefit intended; for although a mixture of poison with
the food may be effected by both of these persons alike, yet looking
at their intention we are indignant with the one and approve the
other; so in this instance, by the reasonable rule of justice, he who
practised deception receives in return that very treatment, the seeds
of which he had himself sown of his own free will. He who first
deceived man by the bait of sensual pleasure is himself deceived by
the presentment of the human form. But as regards the aim and purpose
of what took place, a change in the direction of the nobler is
involved; for whereas he, the enemy, effected his deception for the
ruin of our nature, He Who is at once the just, and good, and wise
one, used His device, in which there was deception, for the salvation
of him who had perished, and thus not only conferred benefit on the
lost one, but on him, too, who had wrought our ruin. For from this
approximation of death to life, of darkness to light, of corruption to
incorruption, there is effected an obliteration of what is worse, and
a passing away of it into nothing, while benefit is conferred on him
who is freed from those evils. For it is as when some worthless
material has been mixed with gold, and the gold-refiners [2004] burn
up the foreign and refuse part in the consuming fire, and so restore
the more precious substance to its natural lustre: (not that the
separation is effected without difficulty, for it takes time for the
fire by its melting force to cause the baser matter to disappear; but
for all that, this melting away of the actual thing that was embedded
in it to the injury of its beauty is a kind of healing of the gold.)
In the same way when death, and corruption, and darkness, and every
other offshoot of evil had grown into the nature of the author of
evil, the approach of the Divine power, acting like fire [2005] , and
making that unnatural accretion to disappear, thus by purgation [2006]
of the evil becomes a blessing to that nature, though the separation
is agonizing. Therefore even the adversary himself will not be likely
to dispute that what took place was both just and salutary, that is,
if he shall have attained to a perception of the boon. For it is now
as with those who for their cure are subjected to the knife and the
cautery; they are angry with the doctors, and wince with the pain of
the incision; but if recovery of health be the result of this
treatment, and the pain of the cautery passes away, they will feel
grateful to those who have wrought this cure upon them. In like
manner, when, after long periods of time, the evil of our nature,
which now is mixed up with it and has grown with its growth, has been
expelled, and when there has been a restoration of those who are now
lying in Sin to their primal state, a harmony of thanksgiving will
arise from all creation [2007] , as well from those who in the process
of the purgation have suffered chastisement, as from those who needed
not any purgation at all. These and the like benefits the great
mystery of the Divine incarnation bestows. For in those points in
which He was mingled with humanity, passing as He did through all the
accidents proper to human nature, such as birth, rearing, growing up,
and advancing even to the taste of death, He accomplished all the
results before mentioned, freeing both man from evil, and healing even
the introducer of evil himself. For the chastisement, however painful,
of moral disease is a healing of its weakness.
Footnotes
[2003] te men dikaiosune. The dative is not governed by antididonta
but corresponds to te de agathoteti (a dative of reference), which has
no such verb after it. Krabinger therefore hardly translates correctly
"justitiæ quod datur, pro meritis tribuendo."
[2004] hoi therapeutai tou chrusiou On the margin of one of
Krabinger's Codd. is written here in Latin, "This must be read with
caution: it seems to savour of Origen's opinion," i.e. the curing of
Satan.
[2005] Mal. iii. 2, 3.
[2006] te katharsei. This is the reading of three of Krabinger's Codd.
and that of Hervetus and Zinus; "purgatione," "purgationis": the
context too of the whole chapter seems to require it. But Morell's
Cod. had te aphtharsi& 139;, and Ducæus approved of retaining it. For
this katharsis see especially Origen, c. Cels. vi. 44.
[2007] "Far otherwise was it with the great thinkers of the early
Church....They realized that redemption was a means to an end, and
that end the reconsecration of the whole universe to God. And so the
very completeness of their grasp upon the Atonement led them to dwell
upon the cosmical significance of the Incarnation, its purpose to
`gather together all things in one.' For it was an age in which the
problems of the universe were keenly felt."--Lux Mundi, p. 134.
Chapter XXVII.
It is, then, completely in keeping with this, that He Who was thus
pouring Himself into our nature should accept this commixture in all
its accidents. For as they who wash clothes do not pass over some of
the dirt and cleanse the rest, but clear the whole cloth from all its
stains, from one end to the other, that the cloak by being uniformly
brightened from washing may be throughout equal to its own standard of
cleanness, in like manner, since the life of man was defiled by sin,
in its beginning, end, and all its intermediate states, there needed
an abstergent force to penetrate the whole, and not to mend some one
part by cleansing, while it left another unattended to. For this
reason it is that, seeing that our life has been included between
boundaries on either side, one, I mean, at its beginning, and the
other at its ending, at each boundary the force that is capable of
correcting our nature is to be found, attaching itself to the
beginning, and extending to the end, and touching all between those
two points [2008] . Since, then, there is for all men only one way of
entrance into this life of ours, from whence was He Who was making His
entrance amongst us to transport Himself into our life? From heaven,
perhaps some one will say, who rejects with contempt, as base and
degraded, this species of birth, i.e. the human. But there was no
humanity in heaven: and in that supramundane existence no disease of
evil had been naturalized; but He Who poured Himself into man adopted
this commixture with a view to the benefit of it. Where, then, evil
was not and the human life was not lived, how is it that any one seeks
there the scene of this wrapping up of God in man, or, rather, not
man, but some phantom resemblance of man? In what could the recovery
of our nature have consisted if, while this earthly creature was
diseased and needed this recovery, something else, amongst the
heavenly beings, had experienced the Divine sojourning? It is
impossible for the sick man to be healed, unless his suffering member
receives the healing. If, therefore, while this sick part was on
earth, omnipotence had touched it not, but had regarded only its own
dignity, this its pre-occupation with matters with which we had
nothing in common would have been of no benefit to man. And with
regard to the undignified in the case of Deity we can make no
distinction; that is, if it is allowable to conceive at all of
anything beneath the dignity of Deity beside evil. On the contrary,
for one who forms such a narrow-minded view of the greatness of the
Deity as to make it consist in inability to admit of fellowship with
the peculiarities of our nature, the degradation is in no point
lessened by the Deity being conformed to the fashion of a heavenly
rather than of an earthly body. For every created being is distant, by
an equal degree of inferiority, from that which is the Highest, Who is
unapproachable by reason of the sublimity of His Being: the whole
universe is in value the same distance beneath Him. For that which is
absolutely inaccessible does not allow access to some one thing while
it is unapproachable by another, but it transcends all existences by
an equal sublimity. Neither, therefore, is the earth further removed
from this dignity, nor the heavens closer to it, nor do the things
which have their existence within each of these elemental worlds
differ at all from each other in this respect, that some are allowed
to be in contact with the inaccessible Being, while others are
forbidden the approach. Otherwise we must suppose that the power which
governs the Universe does not equally pervade the whole, but in some
parts is in excess, in others is deficient. Consequently, by this
difference of less or more in quantity or quality, the Deity will
appear in the light of something composite and out of agreement with
itself; if, that is, we could suppose it, as viewed in its essence, to
be far away from us, whilst it is a close neighbour to some other
creature, and from that proximity easily apprehended. But on this
subject of that exalted dignity true reason looks neither downward nor
upward in the way of comparison; for all things sink to a level
beneath the power which presides over the Universe: so that if it
shall be thought by them that any earthly nature is unworthy of this
intimate connection with the Deity, neither can any other be found
which has such worthiness. But if all things equally fall short of
this dignity, one thing there is that is not beneath the dignity of
God, and that is, to do good to him that needed it. If we confess,
then, that where the disease was, there the healing power attended,
what is there in this belief which is foreign to the proper conception
of the Deity?
Footnotes
[2008] "In order that the sacrifice might be representative, He took
upon Him the whole of our human nature and became flesh, conditioned
though that fleshly nature was throughout by sin. It was not only in
His death that we contemplate Him as the sin-bearer: but throughout
His life He was as it were conditioned by the sinfulness of those with
whom His human nature brought Him into close and manifold
relations."--Lux Mundi, p. 217 (Augustine, de Musicâ, vi. 4, quoted in
note, "Hominem sine peccato, non sine peccatoris conditione,
suscepit").
Chapter XXVIII.
But they deride our state of nature, and din into our ears the manner
of our being born, supposing in this way to make the mystery
ridiculous, as if it were unbecoming in God by such an entrance into
the world as this to connect Himself with the fellowship of the human
life. But we touched upon this point before, when we said that the
only thing which is essentially degraded is moral evil or whatever has
an affinity with such evil; whereas the orderly process of Nature,
arranged as it has been by the Divine will and law, is beyond the
reach of any misrepresentation on the score of wickedness: otherwise
this accusation would reach up to the Author of Nature, if anything
connected with Nature were to be found fault with as degraded and
unseemly. If, then, the Deity is separate only from evil, and if there
is no nature in evil, and if the mystery declares that God was born in
man but not in evil; and if, for man, there is but one way of entrance
upon life, namely that by which the embryo passes on to the stage of
life, what other mode of entrance upon life would they prescribe for
God? these people, I mean, who, while they judge it right and proper
that the nature which evil had weakened should be visited by the
Divine power, yet take offence at this special method of the
visitation, not remembering that the whole organization of the body is
of equal value throughout, and that nothing in it, of all the elements
that contribute to the continuance of the animal life, is liable to
the charge of being worthless or wicked. For the whole arrangement of
the bodily organs and limbs has been constructed with one end in view,
and that is, the continuance in life of humanity; and while the other
organs of the body conserve the present actual vitality of men, each
being apportioned to a different operation, and by their means the
faculties of sense and action are exercised, the generative organs on
the contrary involve a forecast of the future, introducing as they do,
by themselves, their counteracting transmission for our race. Looking,
therefore, to their utility, to which of those parts which are deemed
more honourable are these inferior [2009] ? Nay, than which must they
not in all reason be deemed more worthy of honour? For not by the eye,
or ear, or tongue, or any other sense, is the continuation of our race
carried on. These, as has been remarked, pertain to the enjoyment of
the present. But by those other organs the immortality of humanity is
secured, so that death, though ever operating against us, thus in a
certain measure becomes powerless and ineffectual, since Nature, to
baffle him, is ever as it were throwing herself into the breach
through those who come successively into being. What unseemliness,
then, is contained in our revelation of God mingled with the life of
humanity through those very means by which Nature carries on the
combat against death?
Footnotes
[2009] Cf. 1 Cor. xii. 14-24.
Chapter XXIX.
But they change their ground and endeavour to vilify our faith in
another way. They ask, if what took place was not to the dishonour of
God or unworthy of Him, why did He delay the benefit so long? Why,
since evil was in the beginning, did He not cut off its further
progress?--To this we have a concise answer; viz. that this delay in
conferring the benefit was owing to wisdom and a provident regard for
that which would be a gain for our nature. In diseases, for instance,
of the body, when some corrupt humour spreads unseen beneath the
pores, before all the unhealthy secretion has been detected on the
skin, they who treat diseases by the rules of art do not use such
medicines as would harden the flesh, but they wait till all that lurks
within comes out upon the surface, and then, with the disease
unmasked, apply their remedies. When once, then, the disease of evil
had fixed itself in the nature of mankind, He, the universal Healer,
waited for the time when no form of wickedness was left still hidden
in that nature. For this reason it was that He did not produce his
healing for man's disease immediately on Cain's hatred and murder of
his brother; for the wickedness of those who were destroyed in the
days of Noah had not yet burst into a flame, nor had that terrible
disease of Sodomite lawlessness been displayed, nor the Egyptians' war
against God [2010] , nor the pride of Assyria, nor the Jews' bloody
persecution of God's saints, nor Herod's cruel murder of the children,
nor whatever else is recorded, or if unrecorded was done in the
generations that followed, the root of evil budding forth in divers
manners in the wilful purposes of man. When, then, wickedness had
reached its utmost height, and there was no form of wickedness which
men had not dared to do, to the end that the healing remedy might
pervade the whole of the diseased system, He, accordingly, ministers
to the disease; not at its beginning, but when it had been completely
developed.
Footnotes
[2010] theomachia, a word often applied by the Greek Fathers to the
conduct of the Egyptians, in reference, of course, to Pharaoh.
Chapter XXX.
If, however, any one thinks to refute our argument on this ground,
that even after the application of the remedial process the life of
man is still in discord through its errors, let us lead him to the
truth by an example taken from familiar things. Take, for instance,
the case of a serpent; if it receives a deadly blow on the head, the
hinder part of the coil is not at once deadened along with it; but,
while the head is dead, the tail part is still animated with its own
particular spirit, and is not deprived of its vital motion: in like
manner we may see Sin struck its deadly blow and yet in its remainders
still vexing the life of man. But then they give up finding fault with
the account of Revelation on these points, and make another charge
against it; viz. that the Faith does not reach all mankind. "But why
is it," they ask, "that all men do not obtain the grace, but that,
while some adhere to the Word, the portion who remain unbelieving is
no small one; either because God was unwilling to bestow his benefit
ungrudgingly upon all, or because He was altogether unable to do so?"
Now neither of these alternatives can defy criticism. For it is
unworthy of God, either that He should not will what is good, or that
He should be unable to do it. "If, therefore, the Faith is a good
thing, why," they ask, "does not its grace come upon all men?" Now
[2011] , if in our representation of the Gospel mystery we had so
stated the matter as that it was the Divine will that the Faith should
be so granted away amongst mankind that some men should be called,
while the rest had no share in the calling, occasion would be given
for bringing such a charge against this Revelation. But if the call
came with equal meaning to all and makes no distinction as to worth,
age, or different national characteristics (for it was for this reason
that at the very first beginning of the proclamation of the Gospel
they who ministered the Word were, by Divine inspiration, all at once
enabled to speak in the language of any nation, viz. in order that no
one might be destitute of a share in the blessings of evangelical
instruction), with what reasonableness can they still charge it upon
God that the Word has not influenced all mankind? For He Who holds the
sovereignty of the universe, out of the excess of this regard for man,
permitted something to be under our own control, of which each of us
alone is master. Now this is the will, a thing that cannot be
enslaved, and of self-determining power, since it is seated in the
liberty of thought and mind. Therefore such a charge might more justly
be transferred to those who have not attached themselves to the Faith,
instead of resting on Him Who has called them to believe. For even
when Peter at the beginning preached the Gospel in a crowded assembly
of the Jews, and three thousand at once received the Faith, though
those who disbelieved were more in number than the believers, they did
not attach blame to the Apostle on the ground of their disbelief. It
was, indeed, not in reason, when the grace of the Gospel had been
publicly set forth, for one who had absented himself from it of his
own accord to lay the blame of his exclusion on another rather than
himself.
Footnotes
[2011] The following passage is anti-Calvinistic. Gregory here, as
continually elsewhere, asserts the freedom of the will; and is
strongly supported by Justin Martyr, i. 43: "If it has been fixed by
fate that one man shall be good, and another bad, the one is not
praiseworthy, the other not culpable. And again, if mankind has not
power by a free choice to flee the evil and to choose the good, it is
not responsible for any results, however shocking."
Chapter XXXI.
Yet, even in their reply to this, or the like, they are not at a loss
for a contentious rejoinder. For they assert that God, if He had been
so pleased, might have forcibly drawn those, who were not inclined to
yield, to accept the Gospel message. But where then would have been
their free will? Where their virtuous merit? Where their meed of
praise from their moral directors? It belongs only to inanimate or
irrational creatures to be brought round by the will of another to his
purpose; whereas the reasoning and intelligent nature, if it lays
aside its freedom of action, loses at the same time the gracious gift
of intellect. For upon what is he to employ any faculty of thought, if
his power of choosing anything according to his inclination lies in
the will of another? But then, if the will remains without the
capacity of action, virtue necessarily disappears, since it is
shackled by the enforced quiescence of the will. Then, if virtue does
not exist, life loses its value, reason moves in accordance with
fatalism, the praise of moral guardians [2012] is gone, sin may be
indulged in without risk, and the difference between the courses of
life is obliterated. For who, henceforth, could with any reason
condemn profligacy, or praise sobriety? Since [2013] every one would
have this ready answer, that nothing of all the things we are inclined
to is in our own power, but that by some superior and ruling influence
the wills of men are brought round to the purpose of one who has the
mastery over them. The conclusion, then is that it is not the goodness
of God that is chargeable with the fact that the Faith is not
engendered in all men, but rather the disposition of those by whom the
preaching of the Word is received.
Footnotes
[2012] ton katorthounton
[2013] This is an answer to modern "Ethical Determinants."
Chapter XXXII.
What other objection is alleged by our adversaries? This; that (to
take the preferable view [2014] ) it was altogether needless that that
transcendent Being should submit to the experience of death, but He
might independently of this, through the superabundance of His power,
have wrought with ease His purpose; still, if for some ineffable
reason or other it was absolutely necessary that so it should be, at
least He ought not to have been subjected to the contumely of such an
ignominious kind of death. What death, they ask, could be more
ignominious than that by crucifixion? What answer can we make to this?
Why, that the death is rendered necessary by the birth, and that He
Who had determined once for all to share the nature of man must pass
through all the peculiar conditions of that nature. Seeing, then, that
the life of man is determined between two boundaries, had He, after
having passed the one, not touched the other that follows, His
proposed design would have remained only half fulfilled, from His not
having touched that second condition of our nature. Perhaps, however,
one who exactly understands the mystery would be justified rather in
saying that, instead of the death occurring in consequence of the
birth, the birth on the contrary was accepted by Him for the sake of
the death; for He Who lives for ever did not sink down into the
conditions of a bodily birth from any need to live, but to call us
back from death to life. Since, then, there was needed a lifting up
from death for the whole of our nature, He stretches forth a hand as
it were to prostrate man, and stooping down to our dead corpse He came
so far within the grasp of death as to touch a state of deadness, and
then in His own body to bestow on our nature the principle of the
resurrection, raising as He did by His power along with Himself the
whole man. For since from no other source than from the concrete lump
of our nature [2015] had come that flesh, which was the receptacle of
the Godhead and in the resurrection was raised up together with that
Godhead, therefore just in the same way as, in the instance of this
body of ours, the operation of one of the organs of sense is felt at
once by the whole system, as one with that member, so also the
resurrection principle of this Member, as though the whole of mankind
was a single living being, passes through the entire race, being
imparted from the Member to the whole by virtue of the continuity and
oneness of the nature. What, then, is there beyond the bounds of
probability in what this Revelation teaches us; viz. that He Who
stands upright stoops to one who has fallen, in order to lift him up
from his prostrate condition? And as to the Cross, whether it
possesses some other and deeper meaning, those who are skilled in
mysticism may explain; but, however that may be, the traditional
teaching which has reached us is as follows. Since all things in the
Gospel, both deeds and words, have a sublime and heavenly meaning, and
there is nothing in it which is not such, that is, which does not
exhibit a complete mingling of the human with the Divine, where the
utterance exerted and the deeds enacted are human but the secret sense
represents the Divine, it would follow that in this particular as well
as in the rest we must not regard only the one element and overlook
the other; but in the fact of this death we must contemplate the human
feature, while in the manner of it we must be anxious to find the
Divine [2016] . For since it is the property of the Godhead to pervade
all things, and to extend itself through the length and breadth of the
substance of existence in every part--for nothing would continue to be
if it remained not within the existent; and that which is this
existent properly and primarily is the Divine Being, Whose existence
in the world the continuance of all things that are forces us to
believe in,--this is the very thing we learn from the figure of the
Cross; it is divided into four parts, so that there are the
projections, four in number, from the central point where the whole
converges upon itself; because He Who at the hour of His pre-arranged
death was stretched upon it is He Who binds together all things into
Himself, and by Himself brings to one harmonious agreement the diverse
natures of actual existences. For in these existences there is the
idea either of something above, or of something below, or else the
thought passes to the confines sideways. If, therefore, you take into
your consideration the system of things above the heavens or of things
below the earth, or of things at the boundaries of the universe on
either side, everywhere the presence of Deity anticipates your thought
as the sole observable power that in every part of existing things
holds in a state of being all those things. Now whether we ought to
call this Existence Deity, or Mind, or Power, or Wisdom, or any other
lofty term which might be better able to express Him Who is above all,
our argument has no quarrel with the appellation or name or form of
phrase used. Since, then, all creation looks to Him, and is about and
around Him, and through Him is coherent with itself, things above
being through Him conjoined to things below and things lateral to
themselves, it was right that not by hearing only we should be
conducted to the full understanding of the Deity, but that sight also
should be our teacher in these sublime subjects for thought; and it is
from sight that the mighty Paul starts when he initiates [2017] the
people of Ephesus in the mysteries, and imbues them through his
instructions with the power of knowing what is that "depth and height
and breadth and length." In fact he designates each projection of the
Cross by its proper appellation. The upper part he calls height, the
lower depth, and the side extensions breadth and length; and in
another passage [2018] he makes his thought still clearer to the
Philippians, to whom he says, "that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under
the earth." In that passage he includes in one appellation the centre
and projecting arms [2019] , calling "things in earth" all that is in
the middle between things in heaven and things under the earth. Such
is the lesson we learn in regard to the mystery of the Cross. And the
subsequent events which the narrative contains follow so appropriately
that, as even unbelievers must admit, there is nothing in them adverse
to the proper conceptions of the Deity. That He did not abide in
death, that the wounds which His body had received from the iron of
the nails and spear offered no impediment to His rising again, that
after His resurrection He showed Himself as He pleased to His
disciples, that when He wished to be present with them He was in their
midst without being seen, as needing no entrance through open doors,
and that He strengthened the disciples by the inspiration of the Holy
Ghost, and that He promised to be amongst them, and that no partition
wall should intervene between them and Him, and that to the sight He
ascended to Heaven while to the mind He was everywhere; all these, and
whatever like facts the history of Him comprises, need no assistance
from arguments to show that they are signs of deity and of a sublime
and supereminent power. With regard to them therefore I do not deem it
necessary to go into any detail, inasmuch as their description of
itself shows the supernatural character. But since the dispensation of
the washing (whether we choose to call it baptism, or illumination, or
regeneration; for we make the name no subject of controversy) is a
part of our revealed doctrines, it may be as well to enter on a short
discussion of this as well.
Footnotes
[2014] malista men.
[2015] Cf. Rom. ix. 21: phurama is used for the human body often in
the Greek Fathers, i.e. Athanasius, Chrysostom, John Damascene: by all
of whom Christ is called aparche tou hemeterou phuramatos. Cf. Gen.
ii. 7; Job x. 9: Epictetus also calls the human body peloo kompsos
pephuramenon.
[2016] en men to thanato kathoran to anthropinon, en de to tropo
polupragmonein to theioteron. This is Krabinger's reading (for en to
athanato...en de to anthropo) on the authority of Theodoret's
quotation and two Codd. for the first, and of all his Codd. for the
second. Hervetus also seems to have read the same, "in morte quidem
quod est humanum intueri, in modo autem perscrutari quod est
divinius." Glauber, however, translates the common text, "Man muss bei
dem Unsterblichen zwar das Menschliche betrachten, aber bei dem
Menschen auch das Göttliche hervorsuchen:" notwithstanding that he
hints his preference for another reading, skopo for this last; cf.
just above, "but the secret sense represents the Divine," which would
then be parallel to this last sentence.
[2017] Eph. iii. 18.
[2018] Philip. ii. 10.
[2019] keraian. The Fathers were fond of tracing similitudes to the
form of the Cross, in nature and art: in the sail-yards of a ship, as
here, and in the flight of birds on the wing. This is the reading of
Codd. Morell., Reg., and three of Krabinger's: but gaian in the margin
of that of J. Vulcobius (Abbot of Belpré) has got into the text of
both Paris Editt., though the second asterisks it. Hervetus ("et
fastigium") seems to have read kai akran.
Chapter XXXIII.
For when they have heard from us something to this effect--that when
the mortal passes into life it follows necessarily that, as that first
birth leads only to the existence of mortality, another birth should
be discovered, a birth which neither begins nor ends with corruption,
but one which conducts the person begotten to an immortal existence,
in order that, as what is begotten of a mortal birth has necessarily a
mortal subsistence, so from a birth which admits not corruption that
which is born may be superior to the corruption of death; when, I say,
they have heard this and the like from us, and are besides instructed
as to the process,--namely that it is prayer and the invocation of
heavenly grace, and water, and faith, by which the mystery of
regeneration is accomplished,--they still remain incredulous and have
an eye only for the outward and visible, as if that which is operated
corporeally [2020] concurred not with the fulfilment of God's promise.
How, they ask, can prayer and the invocation of Divine power over the
water be the foundation of life in those who have been thus initiated?
In reply to them, unless they be of a very obstinate disposition, one
single consideration suffices to bring them to an acquiescence in our
doctrine. For let us in our turn ask them about that process of the
carnal generation which every one can notice. How does that something
which is cast for the beginnings of the formation of a living being
become a Man? In that case, most certainly, there is no method
whatever that can discover for us, by any possible reasoning, even the
probable truth. For what correlation is there between the definition
of man and the quality observable in that something? Man, when once he
is put together, is a reasoning and intellectual being, capable of
thought and knowledge; but that something is to be observed only in
its quality of humidity, and the mind grasps nothing in it beyond that
which is seen by the sense of sight. The reply, therefore, which we
might expect to receive from those whom we questioned as to how it is
credible that a man is compounded from that humid element, is the very
reply which we make when questioned about the regeneration that takes
place through the water. Now in that other case any one so questioned
has this reply ready at hand, that that element becomes a man by a
Divine power, wanting which, the element is motionless and
inoperative. If, therefore, in that instance the subordinate matter
does not make the man, but the Divine power changes that visible thing
into a man's nature, it would be utterly unfair for them, when in the
one case they testify to such power in God, in this other department
to suppose that the Deity is too weak to accomplish His will. What is
there common, they ask, between water and life? What is there common,
we ask them in return, between humidity and God's image? In that case
there is no paradox if, God so willing, what is humid changes into the
most rare creature [2021] . Equally, then, in this case we assert that
there is nothing strange when the presence of a Divine influence
transforms what is born with a corruptible nature into a state of
incorruption.
Footnotes
[2020] somatikos: with a general reference both to the recipient, the
words (the "form"), and the water (the "matter," in the Aristotelian
sense). Cf. questions in Private Baptism of Infants: and Hampden's
Bampton Lectures, p. 336 n.
[2021] timiotaton (time = "price") zoon. So Plato, Laws, p. 766: "Man,
getting right training and a happy organization, is wont to become a
most godlike and cultivated creature."
Chapter XXXIV.
But they ask for proof of this presence of the Deity when invoked for
the sanctification of the baptismal process [2022] . Let the person
who requires this evidence recall to mind the result of our inquiries
further back. The reasoning by which we established that the power
which was manifested to us through the flesh was really a Divine
power, is the defence of that which we now say. For when it has been
shown that He Who was manifested in the flesh, and then exhibited His
nature by the miracles which He wrought, was God, it is also at the
same time shown that He is present in that process, as often as He is
invoked. For, as of everything that exists there is some peculiarity
which indicates its nature, so truth is the distinctive peculiarity of
the Divine nature. Well, then, He has promised that He will always be
present with those that call upon Him, that He is in the midst of
those that believe, that He remains among them collectively and has
special intercourse with each one. We can no longer, then, need any
other proof of the presence of the Deity in the things that are done
in Baptism, believing as we do that He is God by reason of the
miracles which He wrought, and knowing as we do that it is the
peculiarity of the Godhead to be free from any touch of falsehood, and
confidently holding as we do that the thing promised was involved in
the truthfulness of its announcement. The invocation by prayer, then,
which precedes this Divine Dispensation constitutes an abundance of
proof that what is effected is done by God. For if in the case of that
other kind of man-formation the impulses of the parents, even though
they do not invoke the Deity, yet by the power of God, as we have
before said, mould the embryo, and if this power is withheld their
eagerness is ineffectual and useless, how much more will the object be
accomplished in that spiritual mode of generation, where both God has
promised that He will be present in the process and, as we have
believed, has put power from Himself into the work, and, besides, our
own will is bent upon that object; supposing, that is, that the aid
which comes through prayer has at the same time been duly called in?
For as they who pray God that the sun may shine on them in no way
blunt the promptitude of that which is actually going to take place,
yet no one will say that the zeal of those who thus pray is useless on
the ground that they pray God for what must happen, in the same way
they who, resting on the truthfulness of His promise, are firmly
persuaded that His grace is surely present in those who are regenerate
in this mystical Dispensation, either themselves make [2023] an actual
addition to that grace, or at all events do not cause the existing
grace to miscarry. For that the grace is there is a matter of faith,
on account of Him Who has promised to give it being Divine; while the
testimony as to His Divinity comes through the Miracles [2024] . Thus,
then, that the Deity is present in all the baptismal process [2025]
admits of no question.
Footnotes
[2022] ton ginomenon
[2023] poiountai (middle), i.e. by their prayers.
[2024] he de tes theotetos marturia dia ton thaumaton estin: a
noteworthy sentence.
[2025] ton ginomenon (cf. above) being understood.
Chapter XXXV.
But the descent into the water, and the trine immersion of the person
in it, involves another mystery. For since the method of our salvation
was made effectual not so much by His precepts in the way of teaching
[2026] as by the deeds of Him Who has realized an actual fellowship
with man, and has effected life as a living fact, so that by means of
the flesh which He has assumed, and at the same time deified [2027] ,
everything kindred and related may be saved along with it, it was
necessary that some means should be devised by which there might be,
in the baptismal process, a kind of affinity and likeness between him
who follows and Him Who leads the way. Needful, therefore, is it to
see what features are to be observed in the Author of our life, in
order that the imitation on the part of those that follow may be
regulated, as the Apostle says, after the pattern of the Captain of
our salvation [2028] . For, as it is they who are actually drilled
into measured and orderly movements in arms by skilled drill-masters,
who are advanced to dexterity in handling their weapons by what they
see with their eyes, whereas he who does not practise what is shown
him remains devoid of such dexterity, in the same way it is imperative
on all those who have an equally earnest desire for the Good as He
has, to be followers by the path of an exact imitation of Him Who
leads the way to salvation, and to carry into action what He has shown
them. It is, in fact, impossible for persons to reach the same goal
unless they travel by the same ways. For as persons who are at a loss
how to thread the turns of mazes, when they happen to fall in with
some one who has experience of them, get to the end of those various
misleading turnings in the chambers by following him behind, which
they could not do, did they not follow him their leader step by step,
so too, I pray you mark, the labyrinth of this our life cannot be
threaded by the faculties of human nature unless a man pursues that
same path as He did Who, though once in it, yet got beyond the
difficulties which hemmed Him in. I apply this figure of a labyrinth
to that prison of death, which is without an egress [2029] and
environs the wretched race of mankind. What, then, have we beheld in
the case of the Captain of our salvation? A three days' state of death
and then life again. Now some sort of resemblance in us to such things
has to be planned. What, then, is the plan by which in us too a
resemblance to that which took place in Him is completed? Everything
that is affected by death has its proper and natural place, and that
is the earth in which it is laid and hidden. Now earth and water have
much mutual affinity. Alone of the elements they have weight and
gravitate downwards; they mutually abide in each other; they are
mutually confined. Seeing, then, the death of the Author of our life
subjected Him to burial in earth and was in accord with our common
nature, the imitation which we enact of that death is expressed in the
neighbouring element. And as He, that Man from above [2030] , having
taken deadness on Himself, after His being deposited in the earth,
returned back to life the third day, so every one who is knitted to
Him by virtue of his bodily form, looking forward to the same
successful issue, I mean this arriving at life by having, instead of
earth, water poured on him [2031] , and so submitting to that element,
has represented for him in the three movements the three-days-delayed
grace of the resurrection. Something like this has been said in what
has gone before, namely, that by the Divine providence death has been
introduced as a dispensation into the nature of man, so that, sin
having flowed away at the dissolution of the union of soul and body,
man, through the resurrection, might be refashioned, sound,
passionless, stainless, and removed from any touch of evil. In the
case however of the Author of our Salvation this dispensation of death
reached its fulfilment, having entirely accomplished its special
purpose. For in His death, not only were things that once were one put
asunder, but also things that had been disunited were again brought
together; so that in this dissolution of things that had naturally
grown together, I mean, the soul and body, our nature might be
purified, and this return to union of these severed elements might
secure freedom from the contamination of any foreign admixture. But as
regards those who follow this Leader, their nature does not admit of
an exact and entire imitation, but it receives now as much as it is
capable of receiving, while it reserves the remainder for the time
that comes after. In what, then, does this imitation consist? It
consists in the effecting the suppression of that admixture of sin, in
the figure of mortification that is given by the water, not certainly
a complete effacement, but a kind of break in the continuity of the
evil, two things concurring to this removal of sin--the penitence of
the transgressor and his imitation of the death. By these two things
the man is in a measure freed from his congenital tendency to evil; by
his penitence he advances to a hatred of and averseness from sin, and
by his death he works out the suppression of the evil. But had it been
possible for him in his imitation to undergo a complete dying, the
result would be not imitation but identity; and the evil of our nature
would so entirely vanish that, as the Apostle says, "he would die unto
sin once for all [2032] ." But since, as has been said, we only so far
imitate the transcendent Power as the poverty of our nature is capable
of, by having the water thrice poured on us and ascending again up
from the water, we enact that saving burial and resurrection which
took place on the third day, with this thought in our mind, that as we
have power over the water both to be in it and arise out of it, so He
too, Who has the universe at His sovereign disposal, immersed Himself
in death, as we in the water, to return [2033] to His own blessedness.
If, therefore, one looks to that which is in reason, and judges of the
results according to the power inherent in either party, one will
discover no disproportion in these results, each in proportion to the
measure of his natural power working out the effects that are within
his reach. For, as it is in the power of man, if he is so disposed, to
touch the water and yet be safe, with infinitely greater ease may
death be handled by the Divine Power so as to be in it and yet not to
be changed by it injuriously. Observe, then, that it is necessary for
us to rehearse beforehand in the water the grace of the resurrection,
to the intent that we may understand that, as far as facility goes, it
is the same thing for us to be baptized with water and to rise again
from death. But as in matters that concern our life here, there are
some which take precedence of others, as being those without which the
result could not be achieved, although if the beginning be compared
with the end, the beginning so contrasted will seem of no account (for
what equality, for instance, is there between the man and that which
is laid as a foundation for the constitution of his animal being? And
yet if that had never been, neither would this be which we see), in
like manner that which happens in the great resurrection, essentially
vaster though it be, has its beginnings and its causes here; it is
not, in fact, possible that that should take place, unless this had
gone before; I mean, that without the laver of regeneration it is
impossible for the man to be in the resurrection; but in saying this I
do not regard the mere remoulding and refashioning of our composite
body; for towards this it is absolutely necessary that human nature
should advance, being constrained thereto by its own laws according to
the dispensation of Him Who has so ordained, whether it have received
the grace of the laver, or whether it remains without that initiation:
but I am thinking of the restoration to a blessed and divine
condition, separated from all shame and sorrow. For not everything
that is granted in the resurrection a return to existence will return
to the same kind of life. There is a wide interval between those who
have been purified, and those who still need purification. For those
in whose life-time here the purification by the laver has preceded,
there is a restoration to a kindred state. Now, to the pure, freedom
from passion is that kindred state, and that in this freedom from
passion blessedness consists, admits of no dispute. But as for those
whose weaknesses have become inveterate [2034] , and to whom no
purgation of their defilement has been applied, no mystic water, no
invocation of the Divine power, no amendment by repentance, it is
absolutely necessary that they should come to be in something proper
to their case,--just as the furnace is the proper thing for gold
alloyed with dross,--in order that, the vice which has been mixed up
in them being melted away after long succeeding ages, their nature may
be restored pure again to God. Since, then, there is a cleansing
virtue in fire and water, they who by the mystic water have washed
away the defilement of their sin have no further need of the other
form of purification, while they who have not been admitted to that
form of purgation must needs be purified by fire.
Footnotes
[2026] ek tes kata didachen huphegeseos. This is what Krabinger finds
in three Codd., and Morell and Hervetus have rendered in the Latin.
But the editions have diadochen ;;Uphegesis does not refer to any
"preceding" ("præeunte," Hervetus) teaching; but to "instruction" of
any kind, whether "in the way of teaching," or of example, as below.
[2027] the flesh which He has assumed, and at the same time deified.
"Un terme cher aux Pères du IV^e siècle, de nous déifier" (Denis,
Philosophie d'Origène, p. 458). This theopoiesis or theosis is more
than a metaphor even from the first; "vere fideles vocantur theoi, non
naturâ quidem, sed te homoiosei, ait Athanasius;" Casaubon, In Epist.
ad Eustath. "We become `gods' by grasping the Divine power and
substance;" Clement, Stromata, iv. That the Platonists had thus used
the word of to pros meizona doxan anupsothen is clear. Synesius in one
of his Hymns says to his soul:-- "Soon commingled with the Father Thou
shalt dance a `god' with God." Just as elsewhere (in Dione, p. 50) he
says, "it is not sufficient not to be bad; each must be even a `god.'"
Cf. also Gregory Thaum. Panegyr Origenis, §142. When we come to the
Fathers of the 4th century and later, these words are used more
especially of the work of the Holy Spirit upon man. Cf. Cyrill. Alex.:
"If to be able to `deify' is a greater thing than a creature can do,
and if the Spirit does `deify,' how can he be created or anything but
God, seeing that he `deifies'?" "If the Spirit is not God," says
Gregory Naz., "let him first be deified, and then let him deify me his
equal;" where two things are implied, 1. that the recognized work of
the Holy Spirit is to `deify,' 2. that this "deification" is not
Godhead. It is "the comparative god-making" of Dionysius Areopag.
whereby we are "partakers of the Divine nature" (2 Pet. i. 4). On the
word as applied to the human nature of our Saviour Himself, Huet
(Origeniana, ii. 3, c. 17), in discussing the statement of Origen, in
his Commentary on S. Matthew (Tract 27), that "Christ after His
resurrection `deified' the human nature which He had taken," remarks,
"If we take this word so as to make Origen mean that the Word was
changed into the human nature, and that the flesh itself was changed
into God and made of the same substance as the Word, he will clearly
be guilty of that deadly error which Apollinaris brought into the
Church (i.e. that the Saviour's soul is not `reasonable,' nor His
flesh human); or rather of the heresy perpetrated by some sects of the
Eutychians, who asserted that the human nature was changed into the
Divine after the Resurrection. But if we take him to mean that
Christ's human nature, after being divested of weakness after death,
assumed a certain Divine quality, we shall be doing Him no wrong." He
then quotes a line from Gregory's Iambics:-- "The thing `deifying,'
and the thing `deified,' are one God:" and this is said even of
Christ's Incarnation; how much more then can it be said of His
Resurrection state, as in this passage of the Great Catechism? Huet
adds one of Origen's answers to Celsus: "His mortal body and the human
soul in Him, by virtue of their junction or rather union and blending
with that (deity), assumed, we assert, qualities of the very greatest
kind....What incredibility is there in the quality of mortality in the
body of Jesus changing, when God so planned and willed it, into an
ethereal and Divine" (i.e. the matter, as the receptacle of these
qualities, remaining the same)? It is in this sense that Chrysostom
can say that "Christ came to us, and took upon Him our nature and
deified it;" and Augustine, "your humanity received the name of that
deity" (contr. Arian.).
[2028] Heb. ii. 10; xii. 2.
[2029] adiexodon...phrouran. Krabinger's excellent reading. Cf. Plato,
Phæd. p. 62 B, "We men are in a sort of prison."
[2030] S. John iii. 31: 1 Cor. xv. 47 (anothen = ex ouranou).
[2031] epicheomenos. This may be pressed to imply that immersion was
not absolutely necessary. So below to hudor tris epicheamenoi
[2032] ephapax. So Rom. vi. 10, "He died unto sin once" (A.V.); i.e.
once for all.
[2033] analuein. Cf. Philip. i. 23 (analusai).
[2034] hois de proseporothe ta pathe.
Chapter XXXVI.
For common sense as well as the teaching of Scripture shows that it is
impossible for one who has not thoroughly cleansed himself from all
the stains arising from evil to be admitted amongst the heavenly
company. This is a thing which, though little in itself, is the
beginning and foundation of great blessings. I call it little on
account of the facility of the means of amendment. For what difficulty
is there in this matter? viz. to believe that God is everywhere, and
that being in all things He is also present with those who call upon
Him for His life-supporting power, and that, thus present, He does
that which properly belongs to Him to do. Now, the work properly
belonging to the Divine energy is the salvation of those who need it;
and this salvation proves effectual [2035] by means of the cleansing
in the water; and he that has been so cleansed will participate in
Purity; and true Purity is Deity. You see, then, how small a thing it
is in its beginning, and how easily effected; I mean, faith and water;
the first residing within the will, the latter being the nursery
companion of the life of man. But as to the blessing which springs
from these two things, oh! how great and how wonderful it is, that it
should imply relationship with Deity itself!
Footnotes
[2035] S. John iii. 5
Chapter XXXVII.
But since the human being is a twofold creature, compounded of soul
and body, it is necessary that the saved should lay hold of [2036] the
Author of the new life through both their component parts.
Accordingly, the soul being fused into Him through faith derives from
that the means and occasion of salvation; for the act of union with
the life implies a fellowship with the life. But the body comes into
fellowship and blending with the Author of our salvation in another
way. For as they who owing to some act of treachery have taken poison,
allay its deadly influence by means of some other drug (for it is
necessary that the antidote should enter the human vitals in the same
way as the deadly poison, in order to secure, through them, that the
effect of the remedy may be distributed through the entire system), in
like manner we, who have tasted the solvent of our nature [2037] ,
necessarily need something that may combine what has been so
dissolved, so that such an antidote entering within us may, by its own
counter-influence, undo the mischief introduced into the body by the
poison. What, then, is this remedy to be? Nothing else than that very
Body which has been shown to be superior to death, and has been the
First-fruits of our life. For, in the manner that, as the Apostle says
[2038] , a little leaven assimilates to itself the whole lump, so in
like manner that body to which immortality has been given it by God,
when it is in ours, translates and transmutes the whole into itself.
For as by the admixture of a poisonous liquid with a wholesome one the
whole drought is deprived of its deadly effect, so too the immortal
Body, by being within that which receives it, changes the whole to its
own nature. Yet in no other way can anything enter within the body but
by being transfused through the vitals by eating and drinking. It is,
therefore, incumbent on the body to admit this life-producing power in
the one way that its constitution makes possible. And since that Body
only which was the receptacle of the Deity received this grace of
immortality, and since it has been shown that in no other way was it
possible for our body to become immortal, but by participating in
incorruption through its fellowship with that immortal Body, it will
be necessary to consider how it was possible that that one Body, being
for ever portioned to so many myriads of the faithful throughout the
whole world, enters through that portion, whole into each individual,
and yet remains whole in itself. In order, therefore, that our faith,
with eyes fixed on logical probability, may harbour no doubt on the
subject before us, it is fitting to make a slight digression in our
argument, to consider the physiology of the body. Who is there that
does not know that our bodily frame, taken by itself, possesses no
life in its own proper subsistence, but that it is by the influx of a
force or power from without that it holds itself together and
continues in existence, and by a ceaseless motion that it draws to
itself what it wants, and repels what is superfluous? When a leathern
bottle is full of some liquid, and then the contents leak out at the
bottom, it would not retain the contour of its full bulk unless there
entered in at the top something else to fill up the vacuum; and thus a
person, seeing the circumference of this bottle swollen to its full
size, would know that this circumference did not really belong to the
object which he sees, but that what was being poured in, by being in
it, gave shape and roundness to the bulk. In the same way the mere
framework of our body possesses nothing belonging to itself that is
cognizable by us, to hold it together, but remains in existence owing
to a force that is introduced into it. Now this power or force both
is, and is called, nourishment. But it is not the same in all bodies
that require aliment, but to each of them has been assigned a food
adapted to its condition by Him who governs Nature. Some animals feed
on roots which they dig up. Of others grass is the food, of others
different kinds of flesh, but for man above all things bread; and, in
order to continue and preserve the moisture of his body, drink, not
simply water, but water frequently sweetened with wine, to join forces
with our internal heat. He, therefore, who thinks of these things,
thinks by implication [2039] of the particular bulk of our body. For
those things by being within me became my blood and flesh, the
corresponding nutriment by its power of adaptation being changed into
the form of my body. With these distinctions we must return to the
consideration of the question before us. The question was, how can
that one Body of Christ vivify the whole of mankind, all, that is, in
whomsoever there is Faith, and yet, though divided amongst all, be
itself not diminished? Perhaps, then, we are now not far from the
probable explanation. If the subsistence of every body depends on
nourishment, and this is eating and drinking, and in the case of our
eating there is bread and in the case of our drinking water sweetened
with wine, and if, as was explained at the beginning, the Word of God,
Who is both God and the Word, coalesced with man's nature, and when He
came in a body such as ours did not innovate on man's physical
constitution so as to make it other than it was, but secured
continuance for His own body by the customary and proper means, and
controlled its subsistence by meat and drink, the former of which was
bread,--just, then, as in the case of ourselves, as has been
repeatedly said already, if a person sees bread he also, in a kind of
way, looks on a human body, for by the bread being within it the bread
becomes it, so also, in that other case, the body into which God
entered, by partaking of the nourishment of bread, was, in a certain
measure, the same with it; that nourishment, as we have said, changing
itself into the nature of the body. For that which is peculiar to all
flesh is acknowledged also in the case of that flesh, namely, that
that Body too was maintained by bread; which Body also by the
indwelling of God the Word was transmuted to the dignity of Godhead.
Rightly, then, do we believe that now also the bread which is
consecrated by the Word of God is changed into the Body of God the
Word. For that Body was once, by implication, bread, but has been
consecrated by the inhabitation of the Word that tabernacled in the
flesh. Therefore, from the same cause as that by which the bread that
was transformed in that Body was changed to a Divine potency, a
similar result takes place now. For as in that case, too, the grace of
the Word used to make holy the Body, the substance of which came of
the bread, and in a manner was itself bread, so also in this case the
bread, as says the Apostle [2040] , "is sanctified by the Word of God
and prayer"; not that it advances by the process of eating [2041] to
the stage of passing into the body of the Word, but it is at once
changed into the body by means of the Word, as the Word itself said,
"This is My Body." Seeing, too, that all flesh is nourished by what is
moist (for without this combination our earthly part would not
continue to live), just as we support by food which is firm and solid
the solid part of our body, in like manner we supplement the moist
part from the kindred element; and this, when within us, by its
faculty of being transmitted, is changed to blood, and especially if
through the wine it receives the faculty of being transmuted into
heat. Since, then, that God-containing flesh partook for its substance
and support of this particular nourishment also, and since the God who
was manifested infused Himself into perishable humanity for this
purpose, viz. that by this communion with Deity mankind might at the
same time be deified, for this end it is that, by dispensation of His
grace, He disseminates Himself in every believer through that flesh,
whose substance comes from bread and wine, blending Himself with the
bodies of believers, to secure that, by this union with the immortal,
man, too, may be a sharer in incorruption. He gives these gifts by
virtue of the benediction through which He transelements [2042] the
natural quality of these visible things to that immortal thing.
Footnotes
[2036] ephaptesthai. Krabinger prefers this to ephepesthai (Paris
Edit.), as more suitable to what follows.
[2037] Gregory seems here to refer to Eve's eating the apple, which
introduced a moral and physical poison into our nature. General
Gordon's thoughts ("in Palestine") took the same direction as the
whole of this passage; which Fronto Ducæus (as quoted by Krabinger)
would even regard as a proof of transubstantiation.
[2038] 1 Cor. v. 6.
[2039] dunamei.
[2040] 1 Tim. iv. 5.
[2041] by the process of eating, dia broseos. There is very little
authority for kai poseos which follows in some Codd. If Krabinger's
text is here correct, Gregory distinctly teaches a transmutation of
the elements very like the later transubstantiation: he also
distinctly teaches that the words of consecration effect the change.
There seems no reason to doubt that the text is correct. The three
Latin interpretations, "a verbo transmutatus," "statim a verbo
transmutatus," "per verbum mutatus," of Hervetus, Morell, and Zinus,
all point to their having found pros to soma dia tou logou
metapoioumenos in the text: and this is the reading of Cod. Reg. (the
other reading is pros to soma tou logou). A passage from Justin Mart.,
Apol. ii. p. 77, also supports Krabinger's text. Justin says, "so we
are taught that that food which has been blessed by the pronouncing of
the word that came from Him, which food by changing nourishes our
blood and flesh, is the flesh and blood of that Incarnate Jesus." As
to the nature of the change (pros to soma metapoioumenos), another
passage in Gregory (In Baptism. Christi, 370 A) should be compared:
"The bread again, was for a while common bread, but when the mystic
word shall have consecrated it (hierourgese), it is called, and
moreover is, the body of Christ." He says also at the end of this
chapter, "He gives these gifts by virtue of the benediction through
which He transelements (metastoicheiosas) the natural quality (phusin)
of these visible things to that immortal thing." Harnack does not
attempt to weaken the force of these and other passages, but only
points out that the idea of this change does not exactly correspond
(how could it?) with the mediæval scholastically-philosophical
"transubstantiation." Gregory's belief is that, just as the Word, when
Christ was here in the flesh, rendered holy His body that assimilated
bread, which still in a manner remained bread, so now the bread is
sanctified by the Word of God and by prayer. "The idea," says Neander,
"of the repetition of the consecration of the Logos had taken hold of
his mind." The construction is proi& 241;n (hoste) genesthai eis to
soma tou logou, "eo progrediens, ut verbi corpus evadat."
[2042] metastoicheiosas. Suicer labours, without success, to show that
the word is not equivalent to transelementare or metousioun, but only
to substantiam convertere, i.e. to change by an addition of grace into
another mode or use. In the passages from Epiphanius which Suicer
adduces for "figure," "mode," as a meaning of stoicheion itself, that
word means a sign of the zodiac (as in our Gregory's De Animâ et
Resurr., it means the moon), only because the heavenly bodies are the
elements or first principles as it were of the celestial alphabet. The
other meaning of metastoicheioun which he gives, i.e. to unteach, with
a view to obscure the literal meaning here, is quite inapplicable.
Gregory defines more clearly than Chrysostom (metarruthmizesthai),
Theophylact (metapoieisthai), and John Damascene (metaballesthai), the
change that takes place: but all go beyond Theodoret's (Dial. ii),
"not changing nature, but adding grace to the nature," which Suicer
endeavours to read into this word of Gregory's. It is to be noticed,
too, that in Philo the word is used of Xerxes changing in his march
one element into another, i.e. earth into water, not the mere use of
the one into the use of the other.
Chapter XXXVIII.
There is now, I think, wanting in these remarks no answer to inquiries
concerning the Gospel mystery, except that on Faith [2043] ; which we
give briefly in the present treatise. For those who require a more
elaborate account we have already published it in other works of ours,
in which we have explained the subject with all the earnestness and
accuracy in our power. In those treatises we have both fought [2044]
controversially with our opponents, and also have taken private
consultation with ourselves as to the questions which have been
brought against us. But in the present discussion we have thought it
as well only to say just so much on the subject of faith as is
involved in the language of the Gospel, namely, that one who is
begotten by the spiritual regeneration may know who it is that begets
him, and what sort of creature he becomes. For it is only this form of
generation which has in it the power to become what it chooses to be.
Footnotes
[2043] Faith. Cf. Church Catechism; "Faith whereby they steadfastly
believe the promises of God made to them in that Sacrament (of
Baptism)."
[2044] suneplakemen, i.e. against Eunomius, in defence of the equality
of the Trinity in the Baptismal symbol. Often as Gregory in that
treatise opposes Eunomius for placing the essence of Christianity in
mere gnosis and dogmaton akribeia, as against God's
incomprehensibility, and knowledge only by the heart, he had yet spent
his whole life in showing the supreme importance of accuracy in the
formulas upon which the Faith rested. This helps to give a date for
the Great Catechism.
Chapter XXXIX.
For, while all things else that are born are subject to the impulse of
those that beget them, the spiritual birth is dependent on the power
of him who is being born. Seeing, then, that here lies the hazard,
namely, that he should not miss what is for his advantage, when to
every one a free choice is thus open, it were well, I think, for him
who is moved towards the begetting of himself, to determine by
previous reasoning what kind of father is for his advantage, and of
what element it is better for him that his nature should consist. For,
as we have said, it is in the power of such a child as this to choose
its parents. Since, then, there is a twofold division of existences,
into created and uncreated, and since the uncreated world possesses
within itself immutability and immobility, while the created is liable
to change and alteration, of which will he, who with calculation and
deliberation is to choose what is for his benefit, prefer to be the
offspring; of that which is always found in a state of change, or of
that which possesses a nature that is changeless, steadfast, and ever
consistent and unvarying in goodness? Now there have been delivered to
us in the Gospel three Persons and names through whom the generation
or birth of believers takes place, and he who is begotten by this
Trinity is equally begotten of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost--for thus does the Gospel speak of the Spirit, that "that
which is born of Spirit is spirit [2045] ," and it is "in Christ
[2046] " that Paul begets, and the Father is the "Father of all;"
here, then, I beg, let the mind of the hearer be sober in its choice,
lest it make itself the offspring of some inconstant nature, when it
has it in its power to make the steadfast and unalterable nature the
founder of its life. For according to the disposition of heart in one
who comes to the Dispensation will that which is begotten in him
exhibit its power; so that he who confesses that the Holy Trinity is
uncreate enters on the steadfast unalterable life; while another, who
through a mistaken conception sees only a created nature in the
Trinity and then is baptized in that, has again been born into the
shifting and alterable life. For that which is born is of necessity of
one kindred with that which begets. Which, then, offers the greater
advantage; to enter on the unchangeable life, or to be again tossed
about by the waves of this lifetime of uncertainty and change? Well,
since it is evident to any one of the least understanding that what is
stable is far more valuable than what is unstable, what is perfect
than what is deficient, what needs not than what needs, and what has
no further to advance, but ever abides in the perfection of all that
is good, than what climbs by progressive toil, it is incumbent upon
every one, at least upon every one who is possessed of sense, to make
an absolute choice of one or other of these two conditions, either to
believe that the Holy Trinity belongs to the uncreated world, and so
through the spiritual birth to make It the foundation of his own life,
or, if he thinks that the Son or the Holy Ghost is external to the
being of the first, the true, the good, God, I mean, of the Father,
not to include these Persons in the belief which he takes upon him at
the moment of his new birth, lest he unconsciously make himself over
to that imperfect nature [2047] which itself needs some one to make it
good, and in a manner bring himself back again to something of the
same nature as his own by thus removing his faith [2048] from that
higher world. For whoever has bound himself to any created thing
forgets that, as from the Deity, he has no longer hope of salvation.
For all creation, owing to the whole equally proceeding from
non-existence into being, has an intimate connection with itself; and
as in the bodily organization all the limbs have a natural and mutual
coherence, though some have a downward, some an upward direction, so
the world of created things is, viewed as the creation, in oneness
with itself, and the differences in us, as regards abundance or
deficiency, in no wise disjoint it from this natural coherence with
itself. For in things which equally imply the idea of a previous
non-existence, though there be a difference between them in other
respects, as regards this point we discover no variation of nature.
If, then, man, who is himself a created being, thinks that the Spirit
and the Only-begotten God [2049] are likewise created, the hope which
he entertains of a change to a better state will be a vain one; for he
only returns to himself [2050] . What happens then is on a par with
the surmises of Nicodemus; he, when instructed by our Lord as to the
necessity of being born from above, because he could not yet
comprehend the meaning of the mystery, had his thoughts drawn back to
his mother's womb [2051] . So that if a man does not conduct himself
towards the uncreated nature, but to that which is kindred to, and
equally in bondage with, himself, he is of the birth which is from
below, and not of that which is from above. But the Gospel tells us
that the birth of the saved is from above.
Footnotes
[2045] S. John iii. 6
[2046] 1 Cor. iv. 15.
[2047] imperfect nature: i.e. of a creature (ktistos); for instance,
of a merely human Christ, which himself needs, and therefore cannot
give, perfection.
[2048] removing his faith: i.e. as he would do, if he placed it on
beings whom he knew were not of that higher, uncreated, world
[2049] and the Only-begotten God. One Cod. reads here hui& 231;n (not
theon), as it is in S. John i. 18, though even there "many very
ancient authorities" (R.V.) read theon. The Latin of Hervetus implies
an ouk here; "et unigenitum Deum non esse existimant;" and Glauber
would retain it, making ktiston = theon ouk einai. But Krabinger found
no ouk in any of his Codd.
[2050] pros heauton analuon, as explained above, i.e. eis to homogenes
heauton eisagage.
[2051] S. John iii. 4
Chapter XL.
But, as far as what has been already said, the instruction of this
Catechism does not seem to me to be yet complete. For we ought, in my
opinion, to take into consideration the sequel of this matter; which
many of those who come to the grace of baptism [2052] overlook, being
led astray, and self-deceived, and indeed only seemingly, and not
really, regenerate. For that change in our life which takes place
through regeneration will not be change, if we continue in the state
in which we were. I do not see how it is possible to deem one who is
still in the same condition, and in whom there has been no change in
the distinguishing features of his nature, to be any other than he
was, it being palpable to every one that it is for a renovation and
change of our nature that the saving birth is received. And yet human
nature does not of itself admit of any change in baptism; neither the
reason, nor the understanding, nor the scientific faculty, nor any
other peculiar characteristic of man is a subject for change. Indeed
the change would be for the worse if any one of these properties of
our nature were exchanged away [2053] for something else. If, then,
the birth from above is a definite refashioning of the man, and yet
these properties do not admit of change, it is a subject for inquiry
what that is in him, by the changing of which the grace of
regeneration is perfected. It is evident that when those evil features
which mark our nature have been obliterated a change to a better state
takes place. If, then, by being "washed," as says the Prophet [2054] ,
in that mystic bath we become "clean" in our wills and "put away the
evil" of our souls, we thus become better men, and are changed to a
better state. But if, when the bath has been applied to the body, the
soul has not cleansed itself from the stains of its passions and
affections, but the life after initiation keeps on a level with the
uninitiate life, then, though it may be a bold thing to say, yet I
will say it and will not shrink; in these cases the water is but
water, for the gift of the Holy Ghost in no ways appears in him who is
thus baptismally born; whenever, that is, not only the deformity of
anger [2055] , or the passion of greed, or the unbridled and unseemly
thought, with pride, envy, and arrogance, disfigures the Divine image,
but the gains, too, of injustice abide with him, and the woman he has
procured by adultery still even after that ministers to his pleasures.
If these and the like vices, after, as before, surround the life of
the baptized, I cannot see in what respects he has been changed; for I
observe him the same man as he was before. The man whom he has
unjustly treated, the man whom he has falsely accused, the man whom he
has forcibly deprived of his property, these, as far as they are
concerned, see no change in him though he has been washed in the laver
of baptism. They do not hear the cry of Zacchæus from him as well: "If
I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore
fourfold [2056] ." What they said of him before his baptism, the same
they now more fully declare; they call him by the same names, a
covetous person, one who is greedy of what belongs to others, one who
lives in luxury at the cost of men's calamities. Let such an one,
therefore, who remains in the same moral condition as before, and then
babbles to himself of the beneficial change he has received from
baptism, listen to what Paul says: "If a man think himself to be
something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself [2057] ." For what
you have not become, that you are not. "As many as received Him," thus
speaks the Gospel of those who have been born again, "to them gave He
power to become the sons of God [2058] ." Now the child born of any
one is entirely of a kindred nature with his parent. If, then, you
have received God, if you have become a child of God, make manifest in
your disposition the God that is in you, manifest in yourself Him that
begot you. By the same marks whereby we recognize God, must this
relationship to God of the son so born be exhibited. "He openeth His
hand and filleth every living thing with His good pleasure." "He
passeth over transgressions." "He repenteth Him of the evil." "The
Lord is good to all, and bringeth not on us His anger every day." "God
is a righteous Lord, and there is no injustice in Him [2059] ;" and
all other sayings of the like kind which are scattered for our
instruction throughout the Scripture;--if you live amidst such things
as these, you are a child of God indeed; but if you continue with the
characteristic marks of vice in you, it is in vain that you babble to
yourself of your birth from above. Prophecy will speak against you and
say, "You are a `son of man,' not a son of the Most High. You `love
vanity, and seek after leasing.' Know you not in what way man is `made
admirable [2060] '? In no other way than by becoming holy."
It will be necessary to add to what has been said this remaining
statement also; viz. that those good things which are held out in the
Gospels to those who have led a godly life, are not such as can be
precisely described. For how is that possible with things which "eye
hath not seen, neither ear heard, neither have entered into the heart
of man [2061] "? Indeed, the sinner's life of torment presents no
equivalent to anything that pains the sense here. Even if some one of
the punishments in that other world be named in terms that are well
known here, the distinction is still not small. When you hear the word
fire, you have been taught to think of a fire other than the fire we
see, owing to something being added to that fire which in this there
is not; for that fire is never quenched, whereas experience has
discovered many ways of quenching this; and there is a great
difference between a fire which can be extinguished, and one that does
not admit of extinction. That fire, therefore, is something other than
this. If, again, a person hears the word "worm," let not his thoughts,
from the similarity of the term, be carried to the creature here that
crawls upon the ground; for the addition that it "dieth not" suggests
the thought of another reptile than that known here. Since, then,
these things are set before us as to be expected in the life that
follows this, being the natural outgrowth according to the righteous
judgment of God, in the life of each, of his particular disposition,
it must be the part of the wise not to regard the present, but that
which follows after, and to lay down the foundations for that
unspeakable blessedness during this short and fleeting life, and by a
good choice to wean themselves from all experience of evil, now in
their lifetime here, hereafter in their eternal recompense [2062] .
Footnotes
[2052] We need not consider this passage about Regeneration as an
interpolation, with Aubertin, De Sacram. Eucharist. lib. ii. p. 487,
because Gregory has already dealt with Baptism in ch. xxxv.-xxxvi.;
and then with the Eucharist: his view of the relation between the two
Sacraments, that the Eucharist unites the body, as Baptism the soul to
God, quite explains this return to the preliminaries of this double
union.
[2053] hupameiphtheie. A word almost peculiar to this Gregory.
[2054] Is. i. 16.
[2055] to kata ton thumon aischos. Quite wrongly the Latin
translators, "animi turpitudo," i.e. baseness of mind, which is
mentioned just below.
[2056] S. Luke xix. 8
[2057] Gal. vi. 3.
[2058] S. John i. 12
[2059] These quotations are from the LXX. of Ps. cxlv. 16; ciii. 12
(Is. xliii. 25); Joel ii. 13; Ps. vii. 11 (Heb. "God is angry every
day"); xcii. 15.
[2060] Ps. iv. 2, 3. In the last verse the LXX. has ethaumastose;
which the Vulgate follows, i.e. "He hath made his Saint wonderful"
(the Hebrew implies, "hath wonderfully separated"). That thaumastoutai
(three of Krabinger's Codd., and Morell's) is the reading here
(omitted in Editt.), is clear from the whole quotation from the LXX.
of this Psalm.
[2061] Is. lxiv. 4; 1 Cor. ii. 9.
[2062] The section beginning here, which one Cod. (Vulcobius'), used
by Hervetus, exhibits, is "evidently the addition of some blundering
copyist." P. Morell considers it the portion of a preface to a
treatise against Severus, head of the heretics called Acephali. But
Severus was condemned under Justinian, a.d. 536: and the Acephali
themselves were no recognized party till after the Council of Ephesus
(those who would follow neither S. Cyril, nor John of Damascus, in one
meaning of the term, i.e. "headless"), or after the Council of
Chalcedon (those who rejected the Henoticon of the Emperor Zeno,
addressed to the orthodox and the Monophysites, in the other meaning).
It is quoted by Krabinger, none of whose Codd. recognize it.
Also, see links to 3500 other Manuscripts:
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