Refutatio et Eversio 1 part 17/21

Which of the holy fathers venerated a hand-made thing, or who handed down to his own followers to reverence such? Which of the saints, forsaking the inexhaustible wealth — the hope in God — knowingly had himself depicted and commanded that it be venerated? Was not Abraham, the leader of those in faith, called a friend of the living God precisely because he fled from dead things? Or did not Moses, fleeing such error, refuse the present enjoyment?" Whom does he call those who run uncertainly, if not altogether and in every way those who have been justified by grace through faith and who pursue the evangelical character? Against these, reviling them, he seems to talk nonsense, as though they conduct their contest upon uncertain and stale things, not directing their course toward any firm and manifest goal, their faith having proved false, accomplishing an unprofitable and gainless double-course of hope.

In vain, then, have they believed in Christ, deriving no benefit from their faith, having received the gospel to no purpose, gaping after empty hopes of grace, in which nothing is established or firm; they boast of a baptism that is vain, and of possessing knowledge of the Trinity that is likewise vain.

They run, then, uncertainly, having transgressed the Law, and having forsaken hope in God, and having despised the way of life of the fathers, and having turned aside to the veneration of idols.

How, and in what manner? They cut a new road and a new way of life, approaching hand-made things and placing their hope upon them.

"How is it," he says, "that you approach the image of Christ, which none of the fathers ever saw or venerated, and to you the thing seen is God, but not to them? For no one has ever seen God."

"Who, then, would believe that God became man? Who, hearing that a virgin birth took place, would accept it? Who would tolerate God being seen, or comprehended, or depicted — and would he not also refuse even to suppose that one of us perhaps suffered? To him the resurrection has been considered, for no reason at all, mere nonsense and a fabricated myth."

Thus, for him, the whole mystery of Christ's economy has been overturned and scattered to pieces.

Then again he takes up Abraham and Moses to confirm his own words, and, extolling their faith on the grounds of their refusal of hand-made things, he proclaims it, and enjoins that this be emulated — since indeed the one, having called upon God, escaped his ancestral land and its impiety, while the other, abhorring the superstition prevailing in Egypt, fled from it.

"How, then, do you profess to have beheld him whom Moses did not see, whom Abraham did not behold? Are you, then, more venerable than they? More righteous, or more faithful? And how could this even make sense? They, fleeing dead things, did not venerate a hand-made thing, and for this reason were called friends of God — but you, making hand-crafted things, worship them? What was, for them, to be fled, is, for you, to be chosen."

"Therefore you will not be called a friend of God, as they were."

Having once for all begun to speak against Christ and the church, the Christ-fighter does not cease from mention of idols.

Alas, for the abomination and madness of this godless and defiled man!

What is to be charged against him? That he did not think it necessary to distinguish between the holy and the profane must be judged more insane than the behavior of the raving mad and those out of their senses.

In him, I do not know whether irrationality begot impiety, or conversely impiety gave birth to irrationality.

...to insist that it is an image, and thereby to be delivered from the worship of idols? Now by as much time as the affairs concerning Abraham and Moses are removed from the incarnation of our Savior, by so much more—indeed by far more—has this thrice-wretched man fallen away from the truth and from fitting understanding.

Such, then, are the words of the vain-minded man; but we who cling to the evangelical way of life emulate the faith of Abraham—

not in that he departed from the land of the Chaldeans, but in that, having believed God in all things, he was well-pleasing to him—

for, it says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness'—

and we are accounted his children not by kinship of flesh and blood, but by the adoption according to promise, in virtue of which he has been shown to be the father of many nations.

Walking in the footsteps of his love of God, we also know Moses as a prophet and a servant of God—

and for this reason he is most honored among us, not in that he fled from the Egyptians,

and we are instructed in the law of Moses, receiving it not carnally but spiritually, and walking by the Spirit, not being enslaved to the letter—

for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

and we cherish the divine proclamations of the holy prophets, and receive as oracles of God the things ministered by them, and we hold those men themselves in honor—not by worshiping the creature instead of the Creator, but because they have been called worthy of God and have partaken of grace from him, and of kinship with him, on account of the purity of soul and body.

Accordingly, since they have been deemed worthy of this glory, we also honor their sacred images together with those of the other saints.

From this it is clearly shown that the affairs of the prophets and fathers matter to us more than to those who insult both them and God.

Since, then, it has been graciously granted to us, who long ago fled superstitious error, and it has been given us in our power to become children of God, not of blood and flesh, but to be born of God, and, having received divine knowledge, to venerate and worship in truth and sincerity the living and true God, known and venerated in a Trinity—how does this profane and unclean man dare to call and apply to Christians the ordinances and practices of idols? No account can set forth the enormity of his error.

And the magnitude of his madness is especially increased by this, that speaking to those who know the law, he does not accept the things that are in the law, so that he may be seen to be even more disobedient and more unreasonable than the Jews.

For let us now pass over most of the handmade things in the law that are honored and venerable among those who have chosen to live under the law—how Jacob, the former patriarch, without even being commanded to do so, but showing himself well-disposed and faithful toward the one who guides him, anoints a pillar and gives to a certain place the appellation 'form of God,' in honor of the God who had appeared, and whatever was afterward commanded to his descendants—

after the crossing of the Jordan, to set up for themselves two great stones and, having plastered them, to write upon them the words of the law; and further, also to build an altar of stones, upon which to offer burnt offerings to the Lord, and whatever similar thing is written—

which have been ordained by law to be set up not for dishonor but for the glory of God.

But such also are the things pertaining to the tabernacle—that ark, and the things treasured up within it, and the beaten-gold Cherubim set above it—

which were glorified not only among the Jews, but the herald of grace also calls them 'the Cherubim of glory,' that is, the glorified ones.

And the things pertaining to the tabernacle were not forbidden to be honored; rather, each of the people, looking toward it from the door of his own tent, venerated it, just as later also, at the temple of Solomon, standing around it in a circle, they venerated it and were not prevented.

As for making a likeness of everything, of whatsoever is in heaven and on earth and in the waters, since it leads one far away from God, this was, reasonably, already forbidden to the ancients through the enacted laws, so that they should not thereby learn to venerate and worship the creature in preference to the Creator.

having only just been redeemed from idols and from idolatrous madness together with the Egyptian bondage, they were bound fast by the bonds of the law, lest they should return again to the idol-madness that prevailed among the Egyptians.

it was commanded to make what draws one nearer to God rather than what leads one away, and some of these were also to be honored and venerable—

and they were called 'holy of holies,' and were not even accessible or approachable to everyone.

For indeed it was permitted only to the high priest to enter into the place behind the second veil, once a year, and to touch it, in order to perform the prescribed sacrifices—

while to all others it was untouchable and untrodden, and so honored that those who touched the holy things with awe and reverence were sanctified, while those who laid hold of them with boldness and rashness were punished.

and the sacred text confirms these things for us—

for the God of all things, speaking with Moses, says, when he was commanding the holy anointing to be performed—

'And with it you shall anoint the tabernacle of testimony, and the ark of the testimony, and the table, and the lampstand, and the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt offerings, and all their vessels, and the laver and its base;

and you shall sanctify them, and they shall be holy of holies;

and everyone who touches them shall be sanctified.

'And you shall anoint Aaron and his sons, and sanctify them, that they may serve me as priests.'

Thus, then, those things were holy, and those who approached them with reverence were sanctified and sacred—

and what befell those who acted with self-willed arrogance and were disposed contemptuously toward the holy things, we shall likewise learn from the same scriptures—

how Nadab and Abihu, having offered incense with strange fire, were consumed by a strange fire, being punished by the very means through which they had committed impiety, and finding the time and place of their destruction to be the same as that of their impiety—

And indeed Eli the priest was later made to pay the penalty for the lawlessness of his sons, on account of which they had acted presumptuously against the sacrifices—even though he did not approve of their impiety, but had, on many occasions and at length, both rebuked and admonished them.

And that reckless Uzzah, having merely touched the ark when it was jolted by the ox, and it having been saved, he himself immediately perished, God thereby preserving the venerable dignity of the ark.

So greatly, then, were those ancient things honored, and so venerable were the handmade things, and they were known as holy of holies.

But this accursed man is unwilling even to have the things of grace measured by the things of the law.

And what need is there to speak of the things of grace, when he is shown to transgress against the law itself? Let his disciples now learn—those who have transferred from Christianizing to Judaizing—that if the law perfected nothing, but was for the introduction of a better hope, as the divine apostle says—

'For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.'

And yet the things in the law obtained so great a measure of venerability—

how should not the things of grace, which has even perfected the law, be far more exalted and more venerable? Reasonably, then, the believer, having grown rich with what is perfect and complete in grace, honors the symbols of grace.

What law, then, is there any longer that would lead us back to the law and to what is before the law, and from there proclaim to us anew a faith? How great an accusation of irrationality and faithlessness does this not heap upon the fool? What, then, did the wretched man think he was saying, in reply to him who had said—

'I will bow in veneration toward your holy temple, in fear of you'? If indeed that man too venerated in a handmade temple, I think there is no doubt of it—

But what else, after all, do we ourselves venerate, besides the veneration rendered to God? Is it not the life-giving, handmade tomb of Christ, the figure of the precious cross, the sacred book of the Gospel, the divine and life-giving mysteries themselves, and, to put it concisely, the revered temples of God and everything within them? And since the fathers and the prophets did not venerate handmade things, what do the fools suppose? Surely they will declare these things, too, to be dishonored and unworthy of veneration.

Having exhausted vain labor, then, in what has been said before, he appends the following—

'For assuredly, on this pretext, some of you have dared, having plastered the wall within the holy house with varied colors, to depict images of Peter and John and Paul, as I see, according to the inscription on each of the falsely-named images, formed by the folly of the painter according to his own mind—

And first, let those who suppose that in this they honor the apostles learn that, instead of honor, they dishonor them all the more—

for Paul, insulting the falsely-named priest, declared him a plastered wall—

therefore let us set up their commandments as images of them, through the practice of virtues—

But you will say, 'We look upon their images as a reminder of their appearance.' And where, then, did they command you to do this? For we have already charged such people with this beforehand, that, carried along by ignorance, they labor in vain.'

He who everywhere has a corrupted mind now also, out of his own carelessness and ill-counsel, sets forth such reasoning concerning the matters at hand.

For if he had a share of uprightness and right judgment, he ought, upon recognizing that the likenesses of the saints are made by the faithful for the memory and honor of the saints, to have ceased from his folly and from his madness against the saints—

But instead, being already fixed in his conviction, upon seeing these things and already begrudging the honor paid to them, he himself blazed up all the more into enmity.

For those who made and honored the images did so not on the basis of what he wrongly supposed, but on the basis of the grateful and faithful disposition in which they themselves stood.

But, being once possessed beforehand by the preconception concerning idols, he was unwilling to understand in what manner and with what intention Christians make and honor images, nor how immeasurably and incomparably the holy things are set apart from the abomination of the hateful idols.

Whence does he suffer this? Because, having his soul enveloped in the darkness of unbelief and ignorance, he neither knew nor understood that light has no fellowship with darkness, nor the temple of God any agreement with idols, nor that he sets himself in array against the whole inhabited world and the catholic Church, extending from one end of the earth to the other, established in most upright and God-befitting glory.

Hence, I suppose, the disciples of this unholy man will also receive his argument with pleasure and favor, as it fabricates the very greatest slander and accusation against our God-bearing fathers—

how one father, having the image of the great apostle Paul always set before his eyes, treated it with reverence and honored it; and another exhorted the painters to set up the likenesses of the martyrs; and yet another, seeing them painted on walls, became filled with compunction and benefit—

concerning which things it has been variously spoken of before.

And worthy of that man's folly, and of the insensibility of those who have accepted it, is the argument he has adopted for the destruction of the holy images—

which is this: that Paul declared the high priest to be a plastered wall.

For how could this contribute to his vain purpose? For he ought—if indeed it were permitted to him to be impious—to have decreed that the entire holy houses and the very altars themselves be destroyed on this account (which would be more fitting and closer to the point), since they are established and consist of plastered walls, so that not only the images but also the figures of the life-giving cross and everything within them—whatever shines forth especially through colors and any other material—might very easily be obliterated together with them.

What, then, will meet the fool from this? Since another of the apostles likened certain impious and worthless men to autumn trees, unfruitful, shall we for that reason then hasten to cut down every tree? Or shall we also abhor the fruits of trees? Or, since Christ, denouncing the Pharisees as wretched, likened them to whitewashed tombs, shall we on this account dig up all the tombs of the saints? How full these things are of irrationality and of the fool's stupidity!

But from the very things by which the greater burden accrued to him, having thereby conceived enmity against them, he lets loose his defiled tongue—

his words, then, are in no way unlike those of raging and frenzied men.

so that from every side the arguments set forth would be of no use to him as an advocacy for the fool's vanity.

And he calls the holy images 'falsely-named,' attempting by this to destroy the very concept of the archetypes; for if they are called false, as he supposed, then there exists no pattern to which one might, in truth, liken them—so that, by setting the affairs of the Christians alongside those who are devoted to the vanity of idols, he might, as far as it lies with him, declare our mysteries likewise to be phantom-like and non-existent as those idols are, so as to show that even the accounts of the incarnation of our Savior Christ, and the contests of the martyrs, are but a mere show, empty and vainly recited as an accompaniment to life.

concerning which things it has been spoken more fully above.

But you will say, 'We look at their images for a reminder of their form.' We too will say that, regarding the incarnation of God the Word, you wickedly and impiously put forward incomprehensibility, entirely rejecting the flesh along with the whole economy—

but concerning the saints, what argument from incomprehensibility, or any other, will you have that will forbid their being depicted in images? And indeed, where did they command you this?—so he says.

One may observe how he is everywhere dragged toward idols, and does not cease being classed together with idols, even while supposing this to be on account of holy images.

Than which what is more foolish or more vain, as what follows shows? 'For we have already charged such people,' he said, 'that, being carried along by ignorance, they labor in vain.'

For our part, then, we have no concern whatsoever on account of idols;

but if anyone should be at a loss, seeking where the saints commanded this, he will learn from what has been recorded and written beforehand that these things were handed down by the apostles.

And if he still shrinks back even from this, he will opportunely hear that they never even commanded that one should not make or not venerate an icon of Christ, or call it by the name of idols;

and let the faith prevail, and the reverence toward the saints, according to which the faithful, in honoring them, make their images.

The unholy one, then, has been broken off on every side from the glory of the holy fathers, and has been estranged from the whole fullness of the Church.

Where, then, are those who claim to spare the holy things and call [only idols] 'idols,' while making every assault against the Church under the pretext of idols? But since we see that the one whom the originators of this error have ordained bishop of Ancyra, Theodotus, also speaks here (for from one and the same foul pit the stench of abomination is given off—

and his statements have already been refuted in what has preceded—since the present ones too, having been advanced upon similar impieties, are refuted along with them, we consider it superfluous idle talk to say anything more.

Therefore we pass on at once to the matters before us.

'For we know,' John says, 'that when he is revealed, we shall be like him.'

And Paul, too, proclaimed the saints to be conformed to the Son of God.

From the future glory of the saints and their likeness to God, he allots to them here what is shameful and inglorious, and introduces idolatrous ordinances, insulting their sacred memory—

from which the hatred [he bears] toward them is made evident.

For if he preserved even a shadow of goodwill toward them, he would have made this manifest through the honor [given] to their likenesses;

but as it is, he rushes headlong into the complete opposite.

These things, besides being impious, are also ridiculous.

For what sensible person would attempt to write or depict [something] on the basis of what is going to happen? For those who are depicted are painted, in both appearance and deed, not as they are going to be, but as they now are or once were,

recorded according to [the account of] those who saw and those who heard (since it is also thus that what is written in their books has been recorded);

for they were recorded not from the splendors that will be theirs, but from the toilsome and grievous things now past, in which, led through every torment and countless deaths, they laid down the things of this present life—

from which also the future splendor and glory shall accrue to them from God, the awarder of the contest.

'But Paul, too,' he says, 'proclaimed the saints to be conformed to the Son of God.'

He twists this [text] aside, although nothing here at all bears upon things made by hand.

For Paul did not say it this way, but rather: conformed to the image of his Son;

nor indeed were these words spoken concerning the future state, but for the sake of those here [in this life] who have believed by grace.

From this, too, then, we shall again discern him to be a liar and a boaster, one who has no share in, and is a stranger to, all ecclesiastical learning.

And this, again, from those who plead our cause:

for it is possible to hear what mind the teachers of the Church hold concerning these very matters.

The great John, high priest of the imperial city, will speak thus, in his own words:

'What the Only-Begotten was by nature, this they too have become by grace;'

'that is, they have been shown to be conformed and akin [to him], as brothers of the Firstborn.'

But all these things were said concerning the [present] economy;

and not only from these do we know God's providence, but also in that these things were prefigured thus from above, even before we gave proof of ourselves—

through which [trial] men receive proof of [one's] disposition from [their] deeds;

and these he justified through the washing, and glorified through the gifts and the adoption as sons.

Let the ever-memorable Cyril, hierarch of great Alexandria, also speak in accord with these words:

'These have been honored and have stood firm, who were also foreknown, that they would be conformed to the image of his Son;'

'as many, then, as have risen above the things of the flesh, having their citizenship in heaven, these have imitated the image of Christ—that is, the life in sanctification, the blameless conduct in all things.'

So, then, let this stand as how the sacred preachers have expounded the sense of the apostolic teaching.

For concerning the splendor of the saints in the age to come, the Apostle speaks elsewhere.

For he writes this to the Philippians:

'But our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory.'

But the instigator of apostate folly sets alongside these [words quoted above] the following:

'How then can you wish to see, in an inglorious, dead, and speechless [image], the saints who are going to shine forth in glory, when the Lord says concerning them:

\u2018For they will be,\u2019 he says, \u2018like the angels of God\u2014so how then shall we ourselves be conformed to these [images]?\u2019 Since, then, this fine fellow wishes to arrange present matters on the basis of future ones, we for our part will say the following to him: we will not now heed you on the basis of what you used to say while living wickedly and impiously, on the ground that you were going to die; rather, on the basis of the fact that, being about to die, you were destined to remain voiceless, we leave you dead in both soul and body, without speech;

whence, for us and for all who partake of the word of life, there is no reason at all to bear a reply back to [you who are] dead and lifeless.

But since we see that this lifeless and dead speech becomes death-dealing and corrupting for those who heed it—knowing it deadens the soul and consigns it to Gehenna—so that, if they should be willing, we may lead them away from the road bearing them to Hades and guide them onto the living way, come, then, let us say the following, stripping bare his wicked mindset:

this abominable man puts what is holy among us on the same footing as the carved images among the Greeks and the nations, [treating them as] dead, inglorious, and speechless, so that he might not even allow a distinction between Christianity and Hellenism—since indeed 'the idols of the nations have mouths and will not speak,' and whatever else the great David sings in condemnation of them.

What, then, did it seem [to follow], on this reasoning, concerning the holy temples established among us in the name of the saints? That they are altogether to be shunned and spurned, because they are, henceforth, speechless and inglorious? And far more so the sacred books of the Gospels, and those [books] which set forth the saints' struggles unto blood for the sake of piety, and their angelic way of life?

Are they, then, more abominable and more inglorious, because they are in fact made from dead and inanimate bodies? On this basis, then, their sacred relics too would be dishonored, and intercessions on their behalf would be rejected.

...are signified as they are read aloud; so too the things imprinted on panels are laid up in the sight of those who behold them.

But if there is no temple that a statue does not crown (and this has indeed been well said by a holy man), then these images too are, as it were, accounts of the places around which they are set up and which they adorn, and are not speechless\u2014even if in themselves this is how they are (since indeed words too, in that sense, are voiceless)\u2014but they become silent heralds of that whose memory and account they lay up in the hidden and secret storehouse of the soul, and are honorable and glorious on account of the honorable and glorious things signified by them.

But let us see whether these are seeds [i.e., genuine sayings] of the holy Epiphanius, comparing them with his own authentic words.

He says, then, in the books he composed against the heresies, in which he disputes against the Collyridians, discoursing on account of idols, [regarding] certain women who were offering a kollyris-cake in the name of the holy Mother of God:

'Whence is this practice not idol-making, and the undertaking not diabolical? For the devil, ever stealing by pretext into the minds of men, deifying mortal nature before the eyes of men, has depicted man-shaped statues through the variety of the arts.'

'And those who are venerated have died, but their statues—which never lived at all (for what never lived cannot even be called dead)—they introduce as objects of veneration, their mind having committed adultery away from the one and only God, like a promiscuous harlot, roused to the great absurdity of indiscriminate mingling, and having rubbed off all chastity from the lawful order of the one husband.'

'Yes indeed, the body of Mary was holy\u2014yet not God;'

'yes, the Virgin was indeed Theotokos and honored—but not given to us for veneration; rather, she herself venerates him who was born of her according to the flesh, and who came from the heavens, from the bosom of the Father.'

Such, then, are the words of Epiphanius;

in which he indeed indicts the simplicity of women, whose nature has from the beginning been easily susceptible to deception;

yet he does not accuse Christians of having turned aside to idols, just as no such thing will be found in his other genuine books either.

But how could he agree with those who everywhere apply [the term] 'dead' [to holy images], since he does not deem it right to call idols 'dead,' on the ground that they never even lived at all? If, then, one were to grant that those [earlier-cited words too] belong to Epiphanius, one would be compelled to bring the man round into self-contradiction, declaring things contrary to himself\u2014which is indeed absurd even to say.

For if those who are venerated have died, then, so far as this argument goes, he will be forced to number Christ too among those who have died and are still dead\u2014and moreover the divine angels as well\u2014and to declare that they never live at all, if indeed it was one and the same man who said both these things and those, and who placed on equal footing with idols the things honored among Christians.

But this not even the accursed demons would dare to utter.

But it must be observed that the true Epiphanius refers the veneration [given] in the case of statues [of pagan gods] to those of whom they are the representations, himself also knowing that what is done to the image ascends to the prototype.

It is clear, then, from this too, that it is not the holy Epiphanius who composed this slander against the saints; rather, another Eusebius comes to light before us:

whose name they [the iconoclasts] have suppressed, deeming him worthy of mention nowhere in this admirable decree of theirs\u2014even though they have [in him] a teacher of apostasy, indeed the leader and chief of teachers [of it]\u2014yet they publicly proclaim [his] hostility against the divine economy of Christ;

for he is in agreement and of one mind with them in these matters, since they [the iconoclasts] turn out to be devotees of the Arian and Jewish faction, and moreover of Manichaean godlessness as well.