Barlaam and Ioasaph 1 part 3/18

and at daybreak, having clothed himself in black and mourning garments, he went with his wife and children to the door of the palace, weeping and lamenting.

And the king, having brought him in, and seeing him thus wailing, said:

'O senseless and foolish one, if you were so afraid of the herald of your brother, your equal in honor, against whom you know that you have not sinned at all, how did you bring blame upon me, who in humility greeted the heralds of my God, who announce to me, more melodiously than a trumpet, my death and the fearful meeting with the Master, against whom I know that I have myself sinned much and greatly? Behold, then, in this manner have I reproved your folly, just as I shall also quickly reprove those who suggested to you this blame against me, for being foolish.'

And having thus comforted his brother, and benefited him, he sent him home.

And he ordered four caskets to be made of wood;

and two of them, having covered all over with gold, and having placed within them stinking bones of the dead, he fastened securely with golden pins;

and the others, having smeared with pitch and sealed with asphalt, he filled with precious stones and costly pearls and every fragrance of the perfumer's art;

and having bound these tightly round with cords of hair, he summoned the magnates who had blamed him over the encounter with those men, and set before them the four caskets, that they might appraise how much these, and how much those, were worth in value.

And they determined that the two gilded ones were of the greatest value;

'for it is possible,' they said, 'that royal diadems and girdles are stored within them;'

but that the ones smeared with pitch and asphalt were of some cheap and pitiable value.

And the king said to them:

'I too know that you would say such things;

for with the eyes of sense you consider the sensible appearance;

and yet one ought not to do so;

but with the inner eyes one must see whatever honor or dishonor is stored within.'

And he ordered the gilded caskets to be opened.

And when they were opened, a terrible stench breathed forth, and a most unpleasant sight was seen.

This is the type of those who are clothed in bright and glorious garments, who bear themselves haughtily in much glory and power, and within reek of dead and evil deeds.

Then, having ordered the pitched and asphalted ones also to be uncovered, he gladdened all who were present by the brightness and fragrance of what was stored within them.

'Do you know what these are like? They are like those humble men clad in cheap garments, whose outward form when you saw, you deemed my prostration on the ground before their face to be an insult;

but I, having perceived with intellectual eyes the precious and most beautiful thing of their souls, was glorified by contact with them, and considered them more precious than every crown and every royal purple.'"

Thus he put them to shame, and taught them not to be deceived by appearances, but to attend to what is perceived by the mind.

In accordance with that pious and wise king, you too have acted, having received me with good hope,

a hope in which, as I indeed think, you will not be deceived.

And Ioasaph said to him:

All these things indeed you have spoken well and fittingly;

but this I wish to learn: who is your Master, who, as you said at the beginning of your discourse, had spoken concerning that sower?

Then Barlaam, taking up the discourse again, said:

If you wish to learn of my Master, He is the Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, the blessed and only Sovereign, King of those who reign and Lord of those who rule, who alone possesses immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, who is glorified together with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

For I am not one of those who proclaim these many and disorderly beings to be gods, and who worship these lifeless and mute idols;

rather, I know and confess one God, glorified in three hypostases—the Father, I say, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit—in one nature and essence, in one glory and kingdom, undivided.

This one God, then, in three hypostases, without beginning and without end, eternal and everlasting, uncreated, unchangeable and incorporeal, invisible, uncircumscribed, incomprehensible, alone good and just, who brought all things—both visible and invisible—into being out of what did not exist, first creates the heavenly and invisible powers, certain innumerable multitudes, immaterial and incorporeal, ministering spirits of God's majesty;

then this visible world, heaven and earth and the sea, which He also adorned, having brightened it with light—heaven with sun and moon and the stars, earth with all kinds of vegetation and various animals, and the sea again with the vast multitude of swimming creatures.

All these things He spoke, and they came into being; He commanded, and they were created.

Then He fashions man with His own hands, taking dust from the earth for the shaping of the body, and giving him, by His own breathing, a rational and intellective soul, which is written to have been created according to the image and likeness of God;

according to the image, on account of his intellective and self-determining nature; according to the likeness, on account of the likeness in virtue, so far as is possible.

Having honored this man with self-determination and immortality, He established him as king over the things upon the earth;

and He made from him the female, a helper corresponding to him.

And having planted a paradise in Eden, toward the east, filled with every delight and gladness, He placed in it the man He had formed, commanding him to partake without hindrance of all the divine plants there, but appointing a commandment concerning one alone, not to taste of it at all, which is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, speaking thus:

In whatever day you eat of it, you shall die by death.

But one of the aforementioned angelic powers, foremost commander of a single host, having in himself not the slightest trace of natural evil from the Creator, but having come into being for good, by self-determined choice turned from good to evil, and was lifted up in madness, wishing to rise up against the Master and God;

wherefore he was cast out from his rank and his dignity, and, instead of that blessed glory and angelic name, he was called devil and was named Satan.

For God cast him out as unworthy of the glory from above;

and together with him there was dragged away and cast out also a great multitude of the order of angels under him, who, having become evil in their choice, and having followed the apostasy of their ruler instead of the good, were named demons, as deceivers and beguilers.

The devil, then, having wholly renounced the good, and having taken on an evil nature, conceived envy toward man, seeing himself

cast down from such great glory, while that man was being raised up to such honor, and he contrived to cast him out of that blessed way of life.

Taking the serpent, then, as the workshop of his own deceit, through it he conversed with the woman, and, having persuaded her to eat from that forbidden tree by the hope of deification, through her he deceived Adam also—for so the first-formed man was called.

And the first man, having eaten of the plant of disobedience, was exiled by the Creator from the paradise of delight, and, instead of that blessed life and imperishable way of living, fell into this wretched and miserable (woe is me) existence, and in the end was condemned to death.

From this the devil, having gained strength and glorying in his victory, when the race of men had multiplied, suggested to them every path of wickedness;

so that, wishing thereupon to cut off the great torrent of sin, God brought a flood upon the earth, destroying every living soul;

but having found only one righteous man in that generation, him, together with his wife and children, He preserved in a certain ark, and set him alone upon the earth.

But when the race of men again began to grow into a multitude, they forgot God and advanced further into impiety, being enslaved to various sins, corrupted by terrible improprieties, and divided into manifold error.

For some supposed that the universe moved of its own accord, and taught that it was without providence, as though no Master presided over it;

others introduced fate, entrusting the whole to the horoscope of birth;

others worshiped many gods, evil and subject to many passions, so as to have in them advocates for their own passions and dreadful deeds; and having fashioned images of them, they set up mute and senseless carved idols, and, shutting them in temples, worshiped them, serving the creation rather than the Creator—some worshiping the sun and moon and the stars, which God set in place to provide light to this earthly world, though they are lifeless and senseless, illumined and sustained by the providence of the Creator, and able to do nothing of themselves;

others worshiped fire and waters and the rest of the elements of the earth, which are lifeless and senseless;

and they, though living and rational, were not ashamed to worship such things;

others rendered worship to wild beasts and reptiles and four-footed cattle, showing themselves more brutish than the things they worshiped;

others fashioned images of certain shameful and worthless men, and called these gods, naming some of them male, others female—whom they themselves declared to be adulterers and murderers, irascible, jealous, and wrathful, patricides and fratricides, thieves and plunderers, lame and crippled, poisoners, and madmen; and of these, some had died, some had been struck by thunderbolts, and were beaten in mourning and lamented, and had been enslaved to men, and had become fugitives, and had been transformed into animals for wicked and shameful unions;

whence men, taking occasion from their own gods, defiled themselves fearlessly with every impurity.

And a terrible darkness held our race in those times, and there was none who understood, none who sought after God.

But a certain Abraham was found alone in that generation, having the perceptions of his soul sound and vigorous, who, through the contemplation of created things, came to know the Creator.

For having observed heaven and earth and sea, sun and moon and the rest, he marveled at this harmonious ordering;

and seeing the world and all things in it, he did not suppose that it had come into being and was sustained of its own accord, nor did he attribute the cause of such an ordering to the elements of the earth or to lifeless idols;

but through these he came to know the true God, and that He is the Creator and Sustainer of all things.

And God, having accepted him for his right-mindedness and correct judgment, manifested Himself to him—not as He is in His nature (for it is impossible for created nature to see God), but through certain providential theophanies, in the manner He Himself knows—and, having implanted a more perfect knowledge in his soul, He glorified him, and made him His own servant, who, transmitting piety in succession to his descendants, taught them to know the true God.

Wherefore the Master was also pleased that his seed should grow into a boundless multitude, and He named them a people of His own possession; and when they had been enslaved to the Egyptian nation and to a certain tyrant Pharaoh, He led them out from there by fearful and extraordinary signs and wonders, through Moses and Aaron, holy men glorified with the grace of prophecy;

through whom He also punished the Egyptians according to their wickedness, and led the Israelites (for so that people, the descendants of Abraham, were called) through the Red Sea upon dry land, the waters being split apart and forming a wall on the right and a wall on the left;

but when Pharaoh and the Egyptians entered in pursuit of them, the waters turned back and utterly destroyed them.

Then, having led the people through the wilderness for forty years with the greatest wonders and theophanies, and nourishing them with heavenly bread, He gave a law written by God on tablets of stone, which He delivered into the hand of Moses upon the mountain—a type and outline-sketch of things to come—leading them away from idols and all wicked deeds, and teaching them to worship only the God who truly exists, and to hold fast to good works;

by such wonder-workings, then, He led them into a certain good land, which long before He had promised to give to that patriarch Abraham for his seed.

And it would take long to recount how many great and marvelous, glorious and extraordinary things He showed toward them, of which there is no number, through all of which this was the aim pursued: to draw the race of men away from every unlawful worship and practice, and to bring them back to their original condition.

But still our nature was enslaved to the self-will of error, and death reigned over men, through the tyranny of the devil, consigning all to the condemnation of Hades.

Having come, then, into such calamity and misery, we were not overlooked by Him who fashioned us and brought us from non-being into being, nor did He allow the work of His hands to perish utterly; but by the good pleasure of God the Father and the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, the only-begotten Son and Word of God, who is in the bosom of the Father, consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, pre-eternal, without beginning, who was in the beginning, and was with God the Father, and was God, condescends to His own servants with an ineffable and incomprehensible condescension, and, being perfect God, becomes perfect man from the Holy Spirit and Mary the holy Virgin and Theotokos—not from the seed of man, nor from will, nor from union, having been conceived in the undefiled womb of the Virgin, but from the Holy Spirit, just as, even before the conception, one of the archangels was sent to announce to the Virgin that strange conception and the ineffable birth.

For the Son of God was conceived without seed from the Holy Spirit, and, having formed for Himself in the womb of the Virgin flesh animated by a rational and intellective soul, He came forth in one hypostasis but two natures, perfect God and perfect man, preserving intact the virginity of her who bore Him even after the birth, and, having become like us in all things apart from sin, took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.

For since death entered into the world through sin, it was necessary that He who was to redeem us be sinless, and not liable to death through sin.

And having lived among men for thirty years, He was baptized in the

Jordan River by John, a holy man surpassing all the prophets.

And when He had been baptized, a voice was borne from heaven, from God the Father, saying:

This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

And the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove.

And from then on He began to perform great and marvelous signs, raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, driving out demons, healing the deaf and the crippled, cleansing lepers, and renewing on every side our nature that had grown old, instructing and teaching, by deed and by word, the way of virtue, leading away from corruption and guiding toward eternal life.

Whence He also chose twelve disciples, whom He also called apostles;

and He entrusted to them to proclaim the heavenly way of life, which He had come upon the earth to demonstrate, and, by His dispensation, to make us, though lowly and earthly, heavenly.

But out of envy at His marvelous and God-befitting way of life and His countless wonders, the chief priests and leaders of the Jews, among whom indeed He carried on His discourses, being maddened—even though it was for them that He had performed the aforementioned marvelous signs and wonders—having forgotten all these things, condemned Him to death, having suborned one of His disciples for the betrayal;

and, having seized Him, they delivered up the Life of all to the Gentiles, He Himself having accepted this by His own voluntary counsel.

For He came to suffer all things for our sake, that He might free us from the passions.

And having done many things against Him, in the end they condemned Him to the cross.

And He endured all things in the nature of the flesh which He had taken up from us, His divine nature remaining impassible.

For, existing in two natures, the divine and that which He additionally took up from us, the human nature suffered, while the Godhead remained impassible and immortal.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, then, being sinless, was crucified in the flesh.

For he committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth, and he was not subject to death;

For through sin, as I have already said, death entered into the world;

But he died in the flesh for our sake, that he might redeem us from the tyranny of death,

he descended into Hades, and having shattered it, he set free the souls that had been shut up there from the beginning of the age.

Having been laid in a tomb, on the third day he rose again, having conquered death and having granted us victory over it; and he who is the giver of incorruption, having made the flesh incorruptible, appeared to the disciples, granting them peace, and through them to the whole race of mankind.

And after forty days he ascended into the heavens, and thus he sits at the right hand of the Father; and he is to come again to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works.

And after his glorious ascension into the heavens, he sent the all-holy Spirit upon his holy disciples in the form of fire, and they began to speak in strange tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

From then on, by his grace, they were scattered among all the nations, and preached the orthodox faith, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all the commandments of the Savior.

They enlightened, then, the erring nations, and abolished the superstitious delusion of idols; and although the enemy, unable to bear his defeat, even now stirs up wars against us the faithful, persuading the foolish and senseless still to cling to idolatry, yet his power has grown weak, and his swords have utterly failed by the power of Christ.

Behold, I have made known to you my Master and God and Savior in a few words;

but you will come to know him more perfectly, if you receive his grace into your soul and are deemed worthy to become his servant.

When the king's son heard these words, light flashed around his soul;

and rising from his throne in great joy, and embracing Barlaam, he said:

"Perhaps this is, as I conjecture, most honored of men, that priceless stone which you fittingly keep in secret, not showing it to everyone who wishes, but to those whose senses of the soul are sound.

For behold, as I received these words with my ears, a most sweet light entered into my heart, and that heavy veil of sorrow, which for so long a time now has lain about my heart, was swiftly removed.

If, then, I conjecture rightly, tell me;

but if you know something better than what has been said, do not delay to reveal it to me at once."

Then Barlaam answered again:

"Indeed, my lord and king, this is the great mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations, but manifested in the last times to the race of men, whose manifestation many prophets and righteous men long ago foretold by the grace of the divine Spirit, being initiated in many parts and in many ways;

and having proclaimed it with a loud voice, and all foreseeing the salvation that was to come, they longed to behold it, and did not behold it;

but this last generation was deemed worthy to receive salvation.

"He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be condemned."

"All the things you have said, I believe without doubting, and I glorify the God whom you proclaim.

Only make these things clear to me without error, and teach me precisely what I must do;

but also make known to me in order everything about what baptism is, which you said believers must receive."

And he answered him:

"The root, as it were, and the sure foundation of this holy and blameless faith of the Christians is the grace of divine baptism, which contains the cleansing of all sins from birth, and the complete washing away of the stains that have come in from wickedness.

For thus the Savior commanded that we be reborn through water and the Spirit, and be restored to our original dignity, namely through supplication and the saving invocation, the Holy Spirit coming upon the water.

We are baptized, therefore, according to the word of the Lord, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit;

and thus the grace of the Holy Spirit dwells in the soul of the one baptized, brightening it and making it God-formed, and renewing in it that which is according to the image and according to the likeness;

and thenceforth, having cast off all the old works of wickedness, we make with God a covenant of a second life and a beginning of a purer way of living, so that we may also become fellow-heirs with those who have been reborn unto incorruption and have laid hold of eternal salvation.

But without baptism it is not possible to obtain that good hope, even if one should become more pious than all the pious.

For thus said God the Word, who became man for the salvation of our race:

"Truly I say to you, unless you are reborn through water and the Spirit, you shall by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven."

Wherefore, above all, I entreat you to receive the faith into your soul, and to come at once also to baptism with most fervent longing, and not to delay at all in this;

for delay is dangerous, because the appointed time of death is unknown.

And Ioasaph said to him:

"And what is that good hope, which you said cannot be attained without baptism? And what is this kingdom of heaven that you speak of? And from where have you heard the words of the God who became man? And what is that unknown appointed time of death, concerning which great anxiety, having fallen upon my heart, in sorrows and

pains wastes away my flesh, and even lays hold of my very bones? And whether we men, being about to die, shall be dissolved into non-being, or whether there is some other life after our departure from here—these things and what follows from them I have desired to learn."

And Barlaam gave such answers to these questions:

"The good hope, which I have spoken of, is of the kingdom of heaven;

but this is altogether inexpressible by mortal tongue:

"Things which eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him."

But when we are deemed worthy, having laid aside this gross flesh, to attain that blessedness, then he himself, who has deemed us worthy not to fail of that hope, will teach and make known the glory of those good things which surpasses all understanding, the ineffable light, the uninterrupted life, the way of life together with angels.

For if we are deemed worthy to be joined with God, so far as is attainable for human nature, we shall know from him all things which we now do not know.

For this, I, having been initiated in the teaching of the God-inspired Scriptures, consider above all else to be the kingdom of heaven: to draw near to the contemplation of the holy and life-originating Trinity, and to be illumined by its unapproachable light, and, with unveiled face, to reflect as in a mirror, more clearly and more purely, its ineffable glory.

But if it is not possible to set forth in words that glory and the light and the ineffable good things, it is nothing to wonder at;

for they would not be great and exceptional, if indeed they could be grasped by reasoning and set forth in words by us, who are earthly and corruptible and clothed about with this heavy and passible flesh.

Thus, then, knowing about these things by faith alone, receive them without doubting that they contain nothing fabricated, and through good works hasten to lay hold of that immortal kingdom, which, when you attain it, you will learn perfectly.

As for what you asked, how we have heard the words of God who became flesh, know that we have learned all things concerning the divine-human economy through the sacred Gospels.

For that holy book is so called because it announces good tidings of immortality and incorruption and eternal life and forgiveness of sins and the kingdom of heaven to us who are mortal and corruptible and earthly; which book was written by the eyewitnesses and servants of the Word, whom I mentioned above, whom our Savior Christ chose as disciples and apostles;

and they handed down to us in writing, after the glorious ascent of the Master into the heavens, the account of his life on earth, both his teachings and his miracles, so far as it was possible to convey in writing.

For thus, near the end of his account, the most excellent of those divine evangelists said:

"There are also many other things, he says, which Jesus did, which, if they should be written one by one, I do not think the world itself could contain the books that would be written."

In this most divine Gospel, then, is contained the account of his incarnation, his manifestation, his miracles, and his deeds, written by the Spirit of God; and then also concerning the undefiled passion which the Lord endured for our sake, the holy resurrection on the third day, and the ascent into the heavens, and moreover also his glorious and fearful second coming.

For the Son of God is again to come upon the earth, with ineffable glory and a multitude of the heavenly host, to judge our race and to render to each according to his works.

For God, having formed man from the earth from the beginning, as I have already told you before, breathed into him breath, which is called a rational and intellectual soul;

but since we were condemned to death, we all die, and there is no one among men who can escape this cup;

and death is the separation of the soul from the body.

That body, then, which was formed from the earth, having been separated from the soul, returns to the earth, from which it was also taken,

and being corrupted, it dissolves;

but the soul, being immortal, goes where the Creator commands, or rather, as it has itself prepared beforehand for itself a dwelling place while still joined with the flesh.

For as one has conducted his life here, so he is to receive there.

Then, after a very long time, Christ our God will come to judge the world in fearful and indescribable glory, at whose fear the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, and all the hosts of the angels shall stand before him in trembling.

Then at the voice of the archangel and at the trumpet of God the dead shall rise, and shall stand before his fearful throne.

And the resurrection is the reuniting again of soul and body.

That very body, then, which is corrupted and dissolved, that same body shall be raised incorruptible.

And let no thought of unbelief concerning this ever come upon you;