Praeparatio Evangelica 7 part 3/4

In this manner, then, we must also conceive of the world among the incorporeal and intelligent essences: the ineffable and infinitely vast power of the God of all things receives all things together at once, while the creative and at the same time illuminating power of the divine Word holds second place after the Father. Wherefore the Hebrews are fond of calling him the true light and the sun of righteousness.

And already in third place after the second essence, occupying the position of the moon, is the Holy Spirit, which they too reckon as belonging to the first and royal dignity and honor of the origin of all things, appointed as a source for those things generated after it—I mean those lower beings that stand in need of supply from it—and itself having been assigned this rank by the Maker of all things.

But this Spirit, holding the third rank, supplies to the beings below it the better powers that are within it; yet it also in turn receives from another—namely, from the Word of God—who is indeed higher and superior, whom we said holds second place after the highest and unbegotten nature of God the great King. And from him the God-Word himself, being also supplied, and drawing as it were from an ever-flowing spring welling forth deity, imparts—together to all things and indeed to the Holy Spirit itself, which is nearest and closest to him above all others, and to the intelligent and divine powers that come after this Spirit—all at once and without grudging, the gleams of his own light.

As for the ungenerated first principle of all things—which is the fountain of all good things, the cause of deity and life together and light and every virtue, and indeed the first of the first and the origin of origins, or rather beyond origin and the first and every expressible and comprehensible conception—it shares communion in all the things it embraces within its ineffable powers with the first offspring alone, since only he is able to receive and take in the unattainable and incomprehensible-to-others abundance of good things belonging to the Father.

But the partial goods it bestows in part upon those worthy of them in part, through the ministry and mediation of the second, according to what is attainable for each; and of these, the perfect and utterly holy things have been granted to the third, who from himself is ruler and leader of those that come after, receiving from the Father through the Son the things brought to him.

Hence all the theologians of the Hebrews, after the God who is over all and after his firstborn Wisdom, deify the third and holy power, addressing it as the Holy Spirit, by whom also, being borne along by God, they were illumined.

Next, after heaven and sun and moon, they say that star differs from star in glory. Now it is not possible for mortal nature to find the number of the stars, but the oracles of the Hebrews say that God the great King is not ignorant of the multitudes and names of the host of heaven. Wherefore among them it is said: 'He who numbers the multitude of the stars, and calls them all by name.'

Thus, then, after the first among those stars conceived among the incorporeal powers—excelling in the power and essence of intelligent light—there occurs a great and, to us, inconceivable diversity, and countless tribes and kinds, though not inconceivable to the Maker of all.

Wherefore also, presenting them as comprehensible to God alone, a certain theologian says: 'A myriad myriads ministered to him, and a thousand thousands stood before him'—by the number indicating their comprehensibility to God, but by the vastness of the quantity indicating their infinity to us; for which reason also we are accustomed, for emphasis by hyperbole, to call things that are many and boundless 'myriad.'

And another prophet, discoursing concerning their essence, thus speaks theologically of the Maker of all things, saying: 'O Lord my God, how greatly you have been magnified; you have put on thanksgiving and majesty, wrapping yourself in light as with a garment, stretching out the heaven like a curtain; who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.'

Do not suppose that the things spoken of partake of the essence of the mortal and earthly fire that is among us, nor of winds arising from the irrational nature of air; rather, they are of the same sort as that by which they also name God himself—incorporeal, immaterial, and self-intelligent, or rather in nature above mind and above all reason—but is called, more figuratively, both spirit and fire and light, and by certain other appellations suited to mortal ears: angels indeed and archangels, spirits and divine powers and heavenly hosts, principalities and authorities and thrones and dominions—as it were countless upon countless stars and luminaries. And the divine oracles, having thus named these intelligent and rational essences, say that the sun of righteousness rules and presides over all, together with his consort, the Holy Spirit.

But all things together—together with the Son himself and the Holy Spirit, the intelligent and rational living beings, along with those things that appear in heaven, heaven itself, and whatever things it contains and encompasses within itself—the divine and prophetic Scripture enjoins that the fitting hymn and the appropriate theology be rendered to the one God over all alone, who is King and Ruler of all through all things and in all things, and the cause of the universe, as the Craftsman, Maker, Provider, and Savior of all, saying:

'Praise God from the heavens; praise him in the highest. Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts. Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all stars and light. Praise him, heavens of heavens, and let the waters above the heavens praise the name of the Lord; for he spoke, and they were made, he commanded, and they were created. He established them forever and ever; he set an ordinance, and it shall not pass away.'

Such, then, are also the doctrines of the Hebrews, which we have preferred to the polytheistic and demonic error of the Greeks—knowing the divine powers to be servants and ministers of God the great King, and honoring them accordingly, but confessing one God alone, and worshiping him alone, whom heaven itself, and all things in heaven, and the things beyond heaven have been taught to worship and hymn and theologize concerning; since even the Only-begotten of God himself and Firstborn of all, the origin of all things, exhorts us to regard his own Father alone as the true God and to worship him alone.

Next it follows also to examine what the oracles of the Hebrews hand down concerning the opposing power. Now, the divine powers, established over the whole cosmos by the nod of the Father, and the ministering spirits sent out for service on account of those who are to inherit the kingdom, and the holy angels of God and archangels, and every ministering intelligent essence of good things, being luminous, and the servant of all the good things bestowed on men by God—these, they teach, form the bodyguard of God the great King of all; and thereafter, like stars in heaven, the sun of righteousness together with his consort the Holy Spirit revolve, enjoying the supply of light that comes from these; wherefore they are also fittingly compared to the luminaries in heaven.

But that power which has turned aside from these, and which, on account of its own baseness, has been deprived of the company of the better beings, having exchanged darkness for light—contrary to the former—Scripture names with appellations fitting to the wickedness of its character.

Him, then, who began the fall, and became the cause for himself and others of apostasy from the better beings—as one who has utterly fallen to the ground from the piety of the more divine beings, and who has become for himself the fashioner of the venom of wickedness and impiety, and, by voluntary withdrawal from the light, the maker of darkness and irrationality—Scripture is accustomed to call a dragon and serpent, dark and crawling, generative of death-bringing venom, and a savage beast, and a man-devouring lion, and again the basilisk among reptiles.

The divine oracles say that the cause of his fall was a madness of the mind and a derangement of understanding, thus narrating together both his fall and his mental derangement: 'How has Lucifer, who rose in the morning, fallen from heaven? He who sent forth to all the nations has been broken upon the earth. But you said in your mind, \"I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven, I will be like the Most High.\"'

And again the Lord says these things: 'Because your heart was lifted up, and you said, \"I am a god; I have taken my seat in the dwelling place of God.\"' And further: 'You were the seal of likeness, and a crown of beauty; you were in the delight of the paradise of God; you were adorned with every precious stone,' and so on.

To which he adds: 'You were on the holy mountain of God; you were born in the midst of fiery stones. You were blameless in your days, from the day you were created, until iniquities were found in you. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; your understanding was corrupted along with your beauty. Because of the multitude of your sins, I cast you down to the earth.'

By these words, then, we have plainly learned both the former sojourn of the one just spoken of together with the more divine powers, and his fall from the better beings on account of his own arrogance and his warring against God. And there is a countless other kind of being under him, guilty of similar offenses, which, having fallen from the lot of the pious on account of impiety, has exchanged, in place of its formerly light-formed and more divine covering, its honor in the royal courts, and its sojourn among the blessed and angelic choirs, for dwelling in the region fitted to the impious—by the just judgment and sentence of the great God—that is, Tartarus, which the divine oracles call the Abyss, and darkness—not the darkness among us, but that which is signified by the divine oracles.

A small and brief portion of these, left around the earth and the air beneath the moon for the sake of the exercise of the athletes of piety, has become a contributing cause of the polytheistic error among men, which in no way differs from atheism.

Divine Scripture has set fitting names for these too: more plainly, when it calls them evil spirits and demons, principalities and powers, and world-rulers, and spiritual forces of wickedness; symbolically, when it urges the one beloved of God to fear nothing from the host of hostile demons, in words such as: 'You shall tread upon the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample underfoot the lion and the dragon.'

A proof of their enmity toward God is their wanting to be proclaimed gods themselves, and to snatch for themselves the honors due to God, and to attempt, by means of divinations and oracles, as by certain charms and lures, to entice the credulous, and to drag them away from turning toward the God of all, dragging them down instead into the utterly destructive abyss of impious and godless superstition. Wherefore, from earliest ages, it was the special concern of the Hebrews alone to flee headlong from their deceptions; they teach expressly that all the gods of the nations are demons.

But now, if I may say so with God's help, through the evangelical teaching of our Savior, all the nations of the inhabited world from every quarter, freed from demonic bonds, hymn God—him whom we have learned to be alone the Savior and King and God of all.

Here again, the zoogony of the Phoenicians and Egyptians introduced a spontaneous generation of all the animals and men upon the earth, describing one and the same nature as coming forth by chance from the earth, and supposing that the irrational soul and essence in no way differs from the rational.

These things, at any rate, were made clear by the previously cited words of the writers among them. But the children of the Hebrews, again, have rightly been preferred by us, having understood most excellently, wisely, and truly the matters concerning the first constitution of man.

For they say that one part of what is in us is divine and immortal, without flesh in its nature and incorporeal, and that this is the true man, having come to be according to the image and likeness of God; and that he is the work of God, not of chance nor of spontaneous nature, but of the very Cause of all things, who by divine judgment willed that not even the things on earth should lack a portion of intelligent and rational essence, so that through all things—heavenly and ethereal beings, as well as the rational beings on earth capable of apprehending his divinity—the fitting hymn might be sent up to him.

Thus, then, the oracles of the Hebrews contain: 'And God said, \"Let us make man according to our image and likeness\"; and God made man, in the image of God he made him.' And again: 'And God took dust from the earth and formed man, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.' And these things, again, the Hebrew Philo interprets, adding, moreover, to his stated words the following:

But others, saying that our mind is a portion of the ethereal nature, have joined man in kinship to the ether. The great Moses, however, likened the form of the rational soul to none of the things that have come into being, but said that it is a genuine coinage of that divine and invisible Spirit, marked and stamped with the seal of God, whose impress is the eternal Word. 'For God,' he says, 'breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul'; so that it is necessary that the recipient be made in the likeness of the one who sends it forth.

Wherefore it is also said that man came to be according to the image of God, not indeed according to the image of any created thing. It followed, then, that once the soul of man had been modeled after the archetypal Word of the Cause, the body too should be raised up and stretch its gaze toward the purest portion of the universe, heaven.

This, then, is what he says. Fittingly, indeed, divine Scripture also says that man did not come into being in the same way as the rest of the animals; for these came forth from the earth by one command of God the great King, while others flew forth again from the moist essence at his nod; but only we ourselves, the most God-beloved of the animals on earth, came to have a soul according to the image of God and likeness—wherefore man is also seen to be by nature ruling and kingly, and alone among earthly beings to be rational, creative, judicial, and legislative, and capable of apprehending arts and sciences; for the soul in man alone is an intelligent and rational essence, which the other animals on earth do not share.

Wherefore the other animals serve and occupy the place of servants to man, while he, as master and ruler, enslaves and subjects those that are far superior to him in bodily strength, but inferior in that they lack an intelligent essence.

This inward man, then, they say, subsists according to the image of God and after the likeness of God himself, with a certain distinguishing superiority. Wherefore he also comes to a conception of God, and forms apprehensions of wisdom and justice and every virtue, and is able to reckon the courses of the sun and moon and stars and the cycles of days and seasons, on account of his kinship with the things above—a kinship which man alone among mortal beings displays.

But that which is molded around this inward man from without is of a different kind in its essence, and earth-born, and it too is a work of God, taken from the earth and returning to it. Wherefore it is necessary to care for it just as a master cares for a burdensome irrational beast of burden, leading it gently, and feeding it as a slave well suited to the service of human life; but the inward master, as being noble and akin to God in nature, must be honored in liberal ways, since he too has been honored by the Cause of all things.

The oracles, then, say that the great King, having adorned the first nature of man with divine powers and the likeness of God, allotted to him, as fitting to the gifts he had bestowed, his first sojourn of life in a paradise of good things, numbering him among the divine choirs.

And that the Father, being all-good, bestowed these things upon him at the beginning; but that he, by his own voluntary choice, fell away from the better things, and exchanged them for the mortal region, through disregard of the divine commandment.

Wherefore it is especially fitting to lay claim first of all to piety, and to correct the first offense by favorable second measures, and to hasten toward the return and restoration of what belongs to us. For the end of human nature is not here on earth, turning to corruption and destruction, but there, whence the first man also fell away.

Wherefore it is necessary to recover again the purity and God-likeness of the intelligent essence within us, toward which all men who care for piety and virtue must eagerly strive to ascend with all their strength.

Such, then, are also the things philosophized by the Hebrews concerning human nature from ancient times, before the Greeks even came into existence as a people—men who sprang up from the earth only yesterday, so to speak, and quite recently, and who, having conceived the plan of pilfering from the barbarians, did not refrain even from the teachings of the Hebrews, as the argument proceeding will presently demonstrate.

But since it was a distinctive feature of Hebrew doctrines that the God who is over all should be considered the Maker of all things, including the very substrate essence underlying bodies, which the Greeks call matter—and since countless barbarians and Greeks alike have stood in opposition to this, some declaring matter to be the fountain of evil and unbegotten, others declaring it in its own nature to be without quality and without form, but that the world has, by the power of God, taken on its qualities—it must be shown how far superior is the opinion held by the Hebrews, presenting itself to the problem with rational demonstration, and setting aside the opposing view by right reasoning.

I will set forth the words of those before us who have examined this doctrine with precision, and first of all Dionysius, who in the first of the treatises he composed Against the Sabellians writes as follows concerning the matter before us:

Nor indeed are those pious who give matter over to God, as unbegotten, to be his raw material at hand for ordering the universe; for since it is passible and mutable, it yields to the changes wrought upon it by God.

Let them, then, make plain whence come both the likeness and the unlikeness between God and matter. For one must conceive something superior to each of the two — which it is not even lawful to conceive concerning God. For the 'unbegotten,' said to be common to both, yet understood as something distinct from each of them, whence did it come to be present in them?

For if God himself is the unbegotten, and, as one might say, unbegottenness is his very being, then matter would not be unbegotten — for matter and God are not the same thing. But if each of the two, matter and God, is what it is in its own right, and yet unbegottenness belongs to both, it is clear that it is something other than each of them, and older and higher than both.

And utterly subversive too of the claim that these two coexist — or rather, that matter subsists on its own as something distinct from him — is the difference in their contrary conditions.

For let them state the reason why, though both are unbegotten, God is impassible, immutable, immovable, and productive/active, while matter, on the contrary, is passible, mutable, unstable, and constantly being transformed.

And how did they harmonize and concur? Did God fashion matter by adapting himself to its nature? But this at least is absurd — that God should work like men, hammering gold, carving stone, and practicing the other crafts by which materials can be shaped and molded.

But if he made matter to be of such a kind as he himself willed according to his own wisdom, impressing upon it the manifold and richly varied shape and pattern of his own creative work, then this account is both reverent and true, and moreover confirms that God, as the unbegotten one, is the ground of the subsistence of all things.

For along with being unbegotten he at once also imparted a particular manner of being. Much, indeed, could be said in reply to these men as well, but that is not our present concern; yet in comparison with the most godless polytheists, these are the more reverent. This much, then, is from Dionysius; now hear also what comes from Origen.

But if someone stumbles over this because of human craftsmen, unable to accept that God fashions existing things without unbegotten matter lying ready beneath him — since not even a sculptor can produce his own work without bronze, nor a carpenter without wood, nor a builder without stones — one must inquire of him concerning the power of God: whether, when God wills to bring into being whatever he wishes, his will being neither at a loss nor lacking in strength, he is unable to bring into being what he wills.

For by the same reasoning by which — according to all who introduce providence, each in his own way — he brings into being, for the ordering of the universe, by his ineffable power and wisdom, qualities which do not exist as he wills them, by that same reasoning his will is also sufficient to make come into being as much substance as he needs.

For we shall press those who do not wish this to be so with the question whether it does not follow, on their view, that God simply happened to be fortunate, having chanced upon unbegotten substance — without which, had it not lain ready beneath him, he would have been able to do no work at all, but would have remained not a creator, not a father, not a benefactor, not good, nor anything else of what is rightly said concerning God.

And whence, too, comes the measuring-out of the underlying substance to just such an amount as would suffice for the constitution of so vast a universe? For it will necessarily be as though some providence older than God had laid matter beneath him, taking forethought that the skill inherent in him should not be exercised in vain, there being no substance with which he might engage and so order such great beauty of the cosmos.

And whence, too, did it become receptive of every quality that God wills, if God himself did not make it for himself to be of such an amount and such a kind as he willed it to be?

At any rate, granting for the sake of argument that matter is unbegotten, we shall say this to those who hold this view: if the substance became such as it is without any providence having supplied it, then, had there been an existing providence, what more would it have accomplished than mere spontaneity/chance?

And if he himself, matter not existing, had willed to construct it, what more would his wisdom and divinity have accomplished than what has subsisted out of the unbegotten? For if it turns out that the very same thing would have come to be through providence as has subsisted even without providence, why should we not, in the case of the world as well, set aside the Creator and the Craftsman?

For just as it is absurd to say, concerning a world constructed with such skill, that it came to be such without a wise craftsman, so too it is equally unreasonable to say that matter, being of such an amount and such a kind, and so readily yielding to God's artistic word, subsists unbegottenly.

But to those who make the comparison that no craftsman works without matter, it must be said that they compare unlike things. For providence supplies matter to every craftsman, coming from some prior craft, whether divine or human. This, then, will for the present suffice against those who, because it is said that the earth was invisible and unformed, suppose the corporeal nature to be unbegotten. So much, then, from him. And Philo the Hebrew, too, in his treatise On Providence, discusses matter as follows:

As to the amount of the substance, if indeed it came to be at all, this must be said: God took aim, for the coming-to-be of the cosmos, at the most sufficient amount of matter, so that it should neither fall short nor exceed. For it would be absurd that individual craftsmen, whenever they make something — especially something costly — should be able to gauge the sufficient quantity of their materials, while he who discovered numbers and measures and the equalities found among them should take no thought for what is adequate.

I will say boldly that the world needed for its construction neither less nor more substance than it received; for otherwise it would not have become perfect, nor whole in all its parts, but, being well fashioned, it was brought to completion out of a perfect substance. For it is proper to one whose art is all-wise, before beginning any construction, to discern first the sufficient material.

A man, then, even if he excelled others in knowledge, being unable altogether to escape the error inherent in mortal beings, might perhaps be deceived concerning the quantity of matter when practicing his craft, at one time adding to it as insufficient, at another taking away from it as excessive; but he who is a very fountain of the sciences was not going to lay down anything deficient or excessive, since he employs measures wrought with extraordinary precision, altogether praiseworthy.

But whoever wishes to talk nonsense otherwise would go so far as to lay this fault upon the works of all craftsmen too, claiming that they might have attained a better construction by some addition or subtraction in their materials. But indeed it is the work of sophistry to invent clever arguments, while it is the work of wisdom to investigate thoroughly each of the things in nature.

Let the words of Philo, then, stand thus. And Maximus, a man of no small repute in the discipline of Christ, has also composed a treatise of his own on this subject, entitled On Matter. From this I think it fitting to set forth, usefully, a moderate selection, for a precise examination of the problem.

That it is impossible for two unbegotten things to exist at once, I do not think you are unaware either, even though you seem, having anticipated this, to have added to your argument this point above all: that in every case one must necessarily say one of two things — either that God is separated from matter, or, on the contrary, that he is undivided from it.

If, then, someone should wish to say that he is united with matter, he will thereby speak of the unbegotten as one; for each of the two would then be a part of the other, and things that are parts of one another cannot be two unbegotten things — just as, when different parts are divided into many begotten things, we do not say they are many unbegotten things, but rather, as the argument requires, we say that man, though made up of many parts, has come to be by God as one single begotten thing. So too it is necessary, if God is not separated from matter, to say that the unbegotten is one.

But if someone should say that they are separated, there must necessarily be something in between the two, which also shows their separation. For it is impossible for one thing to be examined as at a distance from another, if there is no other thing in respect of which the distance between the two arises; and this does not stop at this point alone, but extends to a great many more.

For the argument we made concerning the two unbegottens must of necessity likewise proceed, should the unbegottens be granted to be three. For in this case too I would ask whether they are separated from one another, or again whether each is united to its neighbor.

For if someone wishes to say they are united, he will hear the same argument as before; but if, on the other hand, he says they are separated, he will not escape the necessary existence of that which separates them.

But if, then, someone should say there is even a third account fitting to be given concerning the unbegottens — namely, that God is neither separated from matter, nor again united to it as a part, but rather that God is in matter as in a place, or matter in God — let him hear the crucial point: that if we say matter is the place of God, we must of necessity say also that he is containable, and circumscribed by matter.

But indeed it is also necessary that he be borne about disorderly along with matter, and that he neither stand still nor remain in himself, since that in which he is is borne about now this way, now that. And besides this, it is necessary to say that God has come to be in worse circumstances. For if matter was once without order, and he ordered it, choosing to turn it toward what is better, then there was once a time when God was among things without order.