Praeparatio Evangelica 13 part 3/6

And again, both the whole poetic Muse and Greek philosophy as well stole from barbarian philosophy the doctrine of the punishments after death and the chastisement by fire. Plato, at any rate, in the last part of the Republic, says in these very words: 'There indeed stood by fierce men, fiery to behold, who, taking note of their cry, drew some aside privately and led them away; but Ardiaeus and the others they bound hand and foot, and cast them down head first, and flayed them, and dragged them along the road outside, carding them upon thorn-bushes.' Now the 'fiery men' are meant by him to signify angels — those who take the unjust in hand and punish them. He who 'makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire' speaks of this very thing.

It follows from these things that the soul is immortal. For that which is being punished or being disciplined, since it possesses sensation, is alive, even though it be said to suffer. What then? Does Plato not know both the rivers of fire and the depth of the earth — which is called by the barbarians 'Gehenna' — naming it poetically 'Tartarus,' and introducing Cocytus and Acheron and Pyriphlegethon, and certain such places of chastisement for correction and instruction? And as for the small and least, according to Scripture — namely the angels who behold God — moreover indicating also the oversight that comes upon us through the angels set over us, he does not shrink from writing thus: 'Since all the souls had chosen their lives, just as they had drawn their lots, they went in order to Lachesis, and she sent along with each the daemon he had chosen, as guardian of his life and fulfiller of what had been chosen.' Perhaps also to Socrates his 'daemonion' hinted at some such thing.

Indeed, having taken this teaching over, the philosophers laid it down as doctrine that the world is generated/created. And Plato indeed has said outright: 'Did it have a beginning of coming-to-be, or none, or has it come to be, having begun from some beginning? For it is visible and tangible, and it has a body.' And again, when he says, 'to find the maker and father of this universe is a task,' he showed not only that the world is generated, but also signifies that it has come to be from him — as having come to be from him alone, and as having subsisted from what previously was not.

And the Stoics also hold the world to be generated/created. As for the one so much spoken of in barbarian philosophy as 'the devil,' the ruler of the demons, Plato in the tenth book of the Laws says that he is an evil-working soul, in these very words: 'A soul that governs and dwells in all that is moved in every manner — must we not also say that it necessarily governs heaven?' 'Of course.' 'One soul, or more?' 'More — I shall answer on your behalf. Let us posit no fewer than two: the one beneficent, and the one capable of accomplishing the contrary effects.'

And likewise, in the Phaedrus, he writes the following: 'There are indeed other evils, but some daemon has mixed into most of them a pleasure for the present moment.' But also, in the tenth book of the Laws, he plainly shows that apostolic saying, 'our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the spiritual powers in the heavens,' writing something like the following:

'For since we have granted among ourselves that heaven is full of many good things, but also full of the opposite ones, though these are fewer — we say that this is an undying battle, and one requiring wondrous vigilance.'

And again, barbarian philosophy knows a twofold world — the intelligible, and the sensible; the one the archetype, the other the image of that beautiful pattern. And the one it assigns to the Monad, as being intelligible; the other, the sensible, to the Hexad; for among the Pythagoreans marriage is called the Hexad, as being a fruitful/generative number. And in the Monad it composes the invisible heaven and the holy earth and intelligible light; for it says, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth; and the earth was invisible.'

Then it continues: 'and God said, let there be light, and there was light.' But in the sensible cosmogony he fashioned heaven — that is, the sensible firmament — and the visible earth, and the light that is seen. Does it not, then, seem to you that Plato, on this basis, leaves the forms of living things in the intelligible world, and fashions the sensible forms according to their intelligible kinds?

It is fitting, then, that Moses says the body was fashioned out of earth — which Plato calls the 'earthly tent' — while the rational soul was breathed in from above by God into the face. For it is there, they say, that the governing faculty is seated, interpreting the soul's entry as an occurrence taking place, through the sense-organs, upon the first-formed man; wherefore also man came to be according to the image and according to the likeness of God.

For the image of God is the divine and royal Word, man without passion; and the image of that image is the human mind. And if you wish to grasp this likeness by another name, you would find in Moses a sequence called 'divine.' For he says: 'Walk after the Lord your God, and keep his commandments.' And I think that all the virtuous are, indeed, 'followers' and 'servants' of God.

Hence the Stoics have said that the goal of philosophy is to live in accordance with nature, while Plato said it is likeness to God, as we set forth in the second Stromateus; and Zeno the Stoic, having taken this from Plato—who in turn drew from barbarian philosophy—says that all good men are friends to one another. For Socrates says in the Phaedrus that it is not fated for a bad man to be friend to a bad man, nor for a good man not to be friend to a good man.

which he also demonstrated sufficiently in the Lysis, namely that friendship could never be preserved amid injustice and wickedness. And the Athenian Stranger likewise says that one practice is a friend to another and follows God, holding to an ancient principle: that like is friend to like when it is moderate, but the immoderate is friend neither to the immoderate nor to the measured; and God for us would be the measure of all things.

Then, proceeding a little further, Plato adds: 'For every good man is like a good man, and being also like God, he is a friend both to every good man and to God.' Having come to this point, I was also reminded of that other passage; for at the end of the Timaeus he says: 'The one who understands must, according to his ancient nature, make himself like to that which is understood, and having become like it, he attains the end of the best life set before men by the gods, both for the present and for the time to come.'

And after a few words he adds that we are brothers, inasmuch as we belong to the one God and the one teacher—Plato too appears, somewhere, to say something good along these lines: 'For you who are in the city are all brothers,' as we shall say to them in telling the myth. 'But God, in fashioning you, mixed gold into the begetting of those among you fit to rule, wherefore they are most honored; silver into those who are auxiliaries; and iron and bronze into the farmers and the other craftsmen.'

Whence, he says, it has necessarily come about that these embrace and love those things about which there is knowledge, and those others love the things about which there is only opinion. For perhaps he divines by prophecy this elect nature that longs for knowledge—unless indeed, positing three natures, he is describing three polities, as some have supposed: the silver one of the Jews, the third of the Greeks, and that of the Christians, into whom the royal gold—the Holy Spirit—has been mixed.

And manifesting the life of the Christians, he writes word for word in the Theaetetus: 'Let us speak, then, about the leaders of this class; for why should one speak of those who spend their time in philosophy poorly? These men, indeed, know neither the way to the marketplace, nor where the courthouse is, nor the council-chamber, nor any other common assembly of the city; and they neither see nor hear the laws and decrees, whether spoken or written. The rivalries of political clubs, and gatherings, and revels with flute-girls—it does not even occur to them in a dream to take part in such things. Whether something good or bad has happened in the city, or what evil has befallen someone from his ancestors, escapes them more than the proverbial pints of the sea. And this is not because he does not know that he does not know these things, but because in truth only his body is situated and dwells in the city, while he himself flies, as Pindar says, beneath the earth and above the heavens, studying astronomy and searching out the whole of nature everywhere.'

Again, to the Lord's saying, 'Let your yes be yes and your no be no,' those words of Plato may be compared: 'But for me to concede a falsehood and make truth vanish is in no way lawful.' And in agreement with the prohibition concerning oaths is this statement in the tenth book of the Laws: 'Let both praise and oath, in every case, be absent.' And, in general, Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato, when they say they hear the voice of God, observing precisely that the constitution of the universe has come to be by God and is held together without ceasing, have in effect heard Moses saying, 'He spoke, and it came to be,' thereby describing the word of God as being a deed.

And, taking their stand on the formation of man out of dust, the philosophers on every occasion proclaim the body to be earthy; and Homer does not hesitate to set down, as part of a curse, 'But may you all become water and earth,' just as Isaiah too, saying, 'and you shall trample them down like clay.'

And Callimachus writes explicitly: 'That was the year in which once the winged creature, and the creature of the sea, and the four-footed creature spoke thus—being of the clay of Prometheus.' And again the same poet says: 'If Prometheus fashioned you, then you were made of no other clay.' And Hesiod, concerning Pandora, says: 'And he bade renowned Hephaestus, as quickly as possible, mix earth with water, and put in it a human voice and mind.'

Thus the Stoics define nature as an artistic fire, proceeding methodically toward generation; and by Scripture, God and his Word are allegorized as fire and light. What then? Does not Homer too, paraphrasing the separation of the water from the earth and the manifest disclosure of the dry land, say, concerning Tethys and Oceanus, 'For already for a long time they have kept apart from one another's bed and love'?

Again, the most learned among the Greeks also attribute power over all things to God. Epicharmus, being a Pythagorean, says: 'Nothing escapes the divine; this you must know: he himself is our overseer, and God is unable to do nothing.' And the lyric poet says it is possible for God 'to raise up from black night an unsullied light, and to cover with dark-clouded darkness the pure radiance of day.' He who alone, while day is present, is able to make it night—this, he says, is God.

And in the work entitled Phaenomena, Aratus, having said, 'Let us begin from Zeus, whom men never leave unspoken; full of Zeus are all the streets, full are all the marketplaces of men, full is the sea and the harbors, everywhere we all have need of Zeus,' adds, 'for we are also his offspring,' as it were by his craftsmanship—'...and he graciously shows favorable signs to men; for he himself fixed the signs in heaven, distinguishing the stars, and devised for the year which stars would most clearly signal to men the seasons, so that all things might grow steadfastly; wherefore men always propitiate him first and last. Hail, Father, great wonder, great boon to men.' And before this, Homer too, fashioning the world upon the Hephaestus-wrought shield after the manner of Moses, says: 'On it he fashioned the earth, and on it the heaven, and on it the sea,' and 'on it all the constellations with which the heaven is crowned.' For the Zeus who is celebrated through poems and prose writings refers, in his underlying concept, to God.

Already, so to speak, plainly in the light, Democritus writes that there are some few among men who, lifting up their hands here, where we Greeks now call the air, say: 'Zeus recounts all things, and he knows all, and gives and takes away all, and he is king of all.' More mystically, the Boeotian Pindar, being a Pythagorean, hands down concerning matter: 'One is the race of men, one the race of gods, and from one mother do both draw breath'; and he calls the one craftsman of these the 'father, best of artificers,' who also grants advancement, according to merit, unto divinity.

For I pass over Plato in silence—the things which he, quite openly in his letter to Erastus and Coriscus, appears somehow to manifest from the Hebrew scriptures, namely Father and Son, exhorting them word for word to swear together, with an earnestness not lacking in refinement, and with the discipline that is sister to earnestness, by the God who is cause of all things, and swearing by the father of their guide and cause, the Lord, whom, if you philosophize rightly, you shall come to know. And the discourse in the Timaeus calls the Demiurge 'Father,' saying something like this: 'Gods of gods, of whom I am father and maker of your works.'

So that also when he says, 'Around the king of all things all things exist, and for his sake are all things, and he is the cause of all good things; the second exists concerning the second things, and the third concerning the third things,' I, for my part, hear this as nothing other than a disclosure of the Holy Trinity. For the Holy Spirit is the third, and the Son is the second, through whom all things came into being according to the will of the Father.

And the same Plato, in the tenth book of the Republic, mentions Er, son of Armenius, by race a Pamphylian, who is said to be Zoroaster. Zoroaster himself, at any rate, writes as follows: 'Zoroaster, son of Armenius, by race a Pamphylian, having died in war, wrote down what he learned from the gods when he came to be in Hades.' Now this Zoroaster, Plato says, having lain twelve days upon the funeral pyre, came back to life. Perhaps he does not hint at the resurrection, but rather at this: that the path for souls to their ascent comes about through the twelve signs of the zodiac; and he himself also says that the same descent occurs for souls coming into being. These things one should also suppose are meant when the labors of Heracles are said to be twelve, after which the soul comes to be released from this whole world. Nor do I pass over Empedocles: this natural philosopher mentions the taking-up of all things, as one day to be a transformation into the substance of fire.

Most clearly of all, Heraclitus of Ephesus holds this opinion: having judged that a certain world is eternal, and a certain world perishable—the one according to its ordered arrangement—knowing that the latter is not other than that eternal one, but in a certain state. That he makes it clear the world is eternal—already eternally qualified out of all substance—he shows by saying thus: 'This world-order, the same for all, none of the gods nor of men made, but it always was and is and shall be: an ever-living fire, kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures.' But that he also held it to be both generated and perishable is shown by what follows concerning the turnings of fire: 'first sea, and of sea half is earth, half is fiery storm-cloud.' For in effect he says that fire, through the governing Word and God of the universe, is turned by means of air into moisture, which is as it were the seed of the world-order, which he calls 'sea'; and from this again come to be heaven and earth and the things contained in them. And how it is again taken back up and consumed in fire he shows clearly through these words: 'Sea is dispersed and measured out into the same proportion it was before it became sea.' And likewise the same holds concerning the other elements.

Similar to this, the most distinguished of the Stoics also hold doctrines about the conflagration, discoursing at length also about the governance of the world and the specific quality of the world and of man, and about the continued survival of our souls. Again, Plato too, in the seventh book of the Republic, has called this day here a night-like day, on account, I suppose, of the world-rulers of this darkness; and he calls the soul's journey into the body 'sleep' and 'death,' in the same manner as Heraclitus. And might this not be what the Spirit foretold, through David, concerning the Savior, saying: 'I lay down and slept; I awoke, because the Lord will sustain me'? For it allegorizes not only the resurrection of Christ as a rising from sleep, but also the Lord's descent into flesh as sleep.

Immediately, the Savior himself likewise enjoins: 'Watch'—that is, practice living in this way, and strive to separate the soul from the body. And Plato, in the tenth book of the Republic, divines the Lord's Day through the following: 'And when seven days had passed for each of those in the meadow, they must, rising up from there, journey on the eighth day and arrive on the fourth day thereafter.' Now by 'meadow' one must understand the sphere of the fixed stars, as a gentle and pleasant region, and the place of the holy; by 'seven days,' each of the motions of the seven planets, and every laboring art hastening toward the goal of rest; and the journey after passing through the wandering planets leads to heaven, that is, to the eighth motion and day; and he says the souls depart 'on the fourth day,' signifying the journey through the four elements.

But not only the Hebrews, but the Greeks too, know the seventh day as holy, according to which the whole world of all things generated and growing revolves in its cycle. Hesiod, then, speaks of it thus: 'First, the fourth, and the seventh, a sacred day.' And again: 'And on the seventh again, the bright light of the sun.' Homer: 'And on the seventh thereafter came down the sacred day.' And: 'The seventh was sacred.' And again: 'It was the seventh day, and on it all things had been accomplished.' And again: 'And on the seventh dawn we left the stream from Acheron.' Indeed, Callimachus the poet also writes: 'And on the seventh dawn, and all was accomplished for him.' And again: 'The seventh is among the good, and the seventh is a birthday.' And: 'The seventh is among the first, and the seventh is perfect.' And: 'And seven things were all fashioned in the starry heaven, appearing in circles as the years came round.'

But the elegies of Solon too greatly extol the number seven. And not unlike the Scripture that says, 'Let us take away the righteous man from among us, because he is troublesome to us,' Plato, almost prophesying the saving dispensation, says thus in the second book of the Republic: 'Being disposed in this way, the just man will be scourged, his eyes will be gouged out, and finally, having suffered every evil, he will be impaled.' And Antisthenes the Socratic, paraphrasing that prophetic scripture, 'To whom will you liken me? says the Lord,' says that he is like nothing, wherefore no one is able to learn him fully from any image. Xenophon the Athenian says similar things, word for word: 'He who shakes and steadies all things is manifestly great and powerful, but in form he is invisible; nor indeed does even the sun, which seems all-radiant, permit itself to be looked upon, but if anyone gazes upon it shamelessly, it takes away his sight.' For 'what flesh is able with its eyes to see the true heavenly God, the immortal one who dwells in the vault of heaven? Nor indeed are men, mortal as they are, able to stand facing the rays of the sun'—thus foretold the Sibyl.

Well indeed does Xenophanes of Colophon, teaching that God is one and incorporeal, add: 'One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way like mortals in body, nor in thought.' And again: '...but mortals suppose that gods are born, and that they have clothing, voice, and body like their own.' And again: '...but if oxen, or lions, had hands, or could draw with their hands and accomplish works as men do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, oxen like oxen, and would make their bodies such as each kind itself possessed.'

Let us hear again, then, Bacchylides the lyric poet, saying concerning the divine: 'They are untamed by unseemly diseases and blameless, in nothing resembling men.' And Cleanthes the Stoic, having written these things about God in a certain poem: 'You ask me what the good is like? Listen then: ordered, just, holy, pious, master of itself, useful, noble, fitting, austere, self-consistent, ever-beneficial, fearless, painless, profitable, without grief, helpful, pleasing, secure, dear, honored, agreed upon, glorious, unassuming, careful, gentle, intense, enduring, blameless, ever-abiding.'

And the same poet, tacitly censuring the idolatry of the many, adds: 'Ignoble is every one who looks to outward glory, as though he were about to obtain some good from it.' No longer, then, must one hold opinions about the divine according to the opinion of the many—'...for I do not think that I, secretly assuming the shape of a treacherous light, came to this your bed, as a man would'; thus Amphion says to Antiope. And Sophocles writes plainly: 'For Zeus married this one's mother, not in golden form, nor clothed in swan's plumage, so as to impregnate the maiden of Pleuron, but as an utterly complete man.' Then, proceeding further, he adds: 'And swiftly the adulterer took his stand at the bridal threshold.' On which, still more plainly, he relates the incontinence of the mythologized Zeus in this way: 'But he, touching neither feast nor washing-water, went to the bed, his heart gnawed with desire, and reveled the whole night through.'

Let these things, then, be left to the folly of the theaters. But directly, Heraclitus says: 'Although the Word is always valid, men become uncomprehending, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it.' And Melanippides the lyric poet, singing, says: 'Hear me, O Father, wonder of mortals, ruler of ever-living souls.' And Parmenides the great, as Plato says in the Sophist, writes somewhat as follows concerning the divine: 'Very many indeed are the proofs that it is ungenerated and imperishable, whole, only-begotten, unshaken, and ungenerated.' But Hesiod too says: 'He himself is king and lord of all the immortals, and no other power vies with yours.'

Yes indeed, tragedy too, drawing men away from idols, teaches them to look up to heaven. For Sophocles, as Hecataeus, who composed the histories, says in his work Concerning Abraham and the Egyptians, cries out directly upon the stage: 'One in very truth, one is God, who fashioned heaven and the far-stretching earth, and the sea's gleaming swell, and the might of the winds. But we mortals, many of us, erring in heart, have set up, as a solace for our woes, images of gods made of stone, or of bronze, or wrought of gold, or forms of ivory; and offering to these sacrifices and beautiful festal assemblies crowned with garlands, we suppose that in this way we are pious.'

And Euripides, tragedizing on the same stage, says: 'Do you see this boundless ether on high, and the earth which it holds round about in its moist embrace? Consider this to be Zeus, hold this to be God.' And in the drama Pirithous, the same poet also tragedizes as follows: 'You, the self-originate, who in the ethereal whirl have interwoven the nature of all things, around whom light, and around whom the many-colored gloomy night, and the countless throng of stars dance continually round about.' For here he has spoken of the self-originate as the creative mind, and what follows is assigned to the ordering of the cosmos, in which are also the oppositions of light and darkness. And Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, speaks very solemnly concerning God: 'Zeus is the ether, Zeus is the earth, Zeus is the heaven; Zeus indeed is all things, and whatever is above these.'

I know too that Plato bears witness to Heraclitus, who writes: 'The one, the only wise thing, is unwilling and yet willing to be called by the name of Zeus.' And again: 'It is law also to obey the counsel of the One.' And if you wish to trace back that saying, 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear,' you will find it thus set forth by the Ephesian: 'The uncomprehending, when they have heard, are like the deaf; of them the saying bears witness that though present they are absent.' But do you desire to hear of one first principle directly from the Greeks as well? Timaeus the Locrian, in his treatise on nature, will bear me witness word for word, thus: 'There is one principle of all things, unbegotten; for if it had come to be, it would no longer be a principle, but rather that from which the principle came to be.' For from that source flowed the true opinion: 'Hear,' he says, 'O Israel: the Lord your God is one, and him alone shall you serve.' This one, behold, is manifest to all and unerring, as the Sibyl says.

And Xenocrates the Carthaginian, by calling one Zeus 'the highest' and the other 'the lowest,' leaves an intimation of father and son. And, most paradoxical of all, he who introduces the gods as subject to human passions appears to know something of the divine — divine reality which not even so far does Epicurus revere. He says, at any rate: 'Why, son of Peleus, do you pursue me with swift feet, being yourself mortal, a god immortal? Have you not yet perceived that I am a god?' Thus he has shown that the divine cannot be caught or comprehended by a mortal, neither by feet nor by hands nor by eyes, nor at all by the body. 'To whom then will you liken the Lord? Or what likeness will you compare to him?' says the Scripture. 'Has a craftsman made an image, or has a goldsmith, having smelted gold, overlaid it with gold?' And what follows upon this.

The comic poet Epicharmus also speaks clearly about the Logos in his Republic, somewhat as follows: 'Human life has very great need of reckoning and number; for we live by number and reckoning, and these preserve mortals.' Then he expressly adds: 'Reason governs men, and rightly preserves them.' Then: 'if there is a human reckoning, there is also a divine Logos.' 'Reason is native to man for the changes and chances of life. But it is the divine Logos that accompanies all the arts, itself teaching men what is expedient to do. For man did not discover art, but god brings it.' 'And human reason is by nature derived from the divine Logos.'

Indeed also, through the Spirit crying out by Isaiah: 'What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?' says the Lord. 'I am full of whole burnt offerings, and I do not desire the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls'; and a little further on he adds: 'Wash yourselves, become clean, remove your wicked deeds from your souls' — and what follows. And to this the comic poet Menander writes in these very words: 'If anyone, Pamphilus, in offering sacrifice — a multitude of bulls or goats, or, by Zeus, other such things, or costly furnishings, fashioning cloaks of gold or of purple, or little figures wrought of ivory or emerald — supposes that he has thereby rendered the god well-disposed, he is deceived and has a shallow mind. For a man ought by nature to be useful: not corrupting virgins nor committing adultery, not stealing nor slaying for money's sake. Do not so much as covet the eye of a needle, Pamphilus; for God is present nearby and sees you.'

'I am a God who draws near, and not a God far off. Will a man do something in secret places, and shall I not see him?' he says through Jeremiah. And again, Menander, paraphrasing that scripture, 'Offer the sacrifice of righteousness, and hope in the Lord,' writes somewhat as follows: 'Never, dearest friend, covet another's needle. For God delights in righteous works, and not in unrighteous ones. He allows the one who toils to raise up his own livelihood, tilling the earth night and day. But sacrifice to God by being righteous to the end, and being resplendent in your cloak just as in your heart. If you hear thunder, do not flee — if you are conscious of nothing amiss yourself, master; for God is present nearby and sees you.'

'While you are yet speaking, I will say, Here I am,' says the Scripture. And Diphilus the comic poet, again, discourses somewhat as follows concerning judgment: 'Do you suppose, Niceratus, that the dead, having partaken of every luxury in life, have thereby escaped the divine, as though unnoticed? There is an eye of Justice which sees all things. For we hold that even in Hades there are two paths: one the boundary of the righteous, the other of the impious. And even if, as they say, earth will cover both alike for all time — so go, steal, defraud, ravage; be deceived in nothing — there is judgment even in Hades, which the god, master of all, whose name is dreadful and which I would not even dare to utter, will execute: he who grants sinners length of days. But if any mortal supposes that, doing some evil day by day, he has escaped the notice of the gods, he thinks a wicked thought, and in so thinking he is caught, whenever Justice, though she takes her time, at last comes upon him. See, all you who suppose there is no god — there is, there is! But if anyone does evil, being evil by nature, let him make gain of the time; for in time he will later pay the penalty.'