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.
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, "quĉ 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 "divitiĉ
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 fo