Refutatio et Eversio 1 part 8/21

What could be more irrational than this folly? What more senseless than such derangement, that you should think honor is offered by Christians to the colors themselves? How then were those seized by this madness not going to tear down even the figures of the cross -- which indeed is shown to have been done by them in many places? In this way, indeed, they have also trampled underfoot the Gospel books, and many other sacred things, whatever has been made of colors or engraved, they hand over to fire.

Ascribing to those who honor them the charge that this honor is an object of the veneration due to worship, they further bring against them the accusation of idolatry.

Then, those who charge others with excessive honor toward colors -- to what fitting and appropriate honor have they themselves come and taken their stand, so that, escaping the apparent excess, they might not fail of due measure and the mean? But they do nothing of this sort;

for nowhere have they beheld anything happening that was worthy of being called excess, but in truth, advancing with unrestrained and lawless excesses, they have proceeded to every kind of dishonor, so that from the very things for which they irrationally blamed others, they themselves bring the accusation upon themselves to an excessive degree.

For if those others are to be blamed on account of excess, how much more are these men to be shunned for this very reason, since indeed, foolishly confounding the colors and the things -- that is, the things formed and signified by means of the colors -- they reject them, openly parading their own ingratitude concerning divine things and toward those who view and venerate divine things in a God-befitting manner with reverence.

For being thick and grovelling in mind, and imagining nothing beyond what is seen, but fixing their understanding only upon these things, and moreover having the eye of their mind maimed, unable to look upward, they are so far from knowing the power of the mystery of our faith, that they neither understand nor have ever been initiated into what manner of veneration is due to sacred objects, or to what point the reverence is led up through them.

In vain, then, do they claim for themselves the name of Christians, having denied the power of the name;

for Christians, knowing how to be pious, do not enclose their mind within the dyes and colors (for then they would have worshipped all matter and colors from the beginning), but through these as intermediaries we are led up to the things signified to us from that source, and we reap the fruits of the benefit that accrues to us through the remembrance that comes from them;

for indeed they are, as it were, the outer porches of the sacred inner sanctuaries.

Through them, then, the mind of the pious is led in or led up to that place, since they are interpretive and explanatory and clarifying of the Gospel, of those things which, as is likely, sometimes escape through hearing alone, making the understanding clear, distinct, and complete through the visible sight given.

For such is the principle and nature of symbols, that through their intermediary they direct and lead forward the mind to soar up to the things of which they are symbols.

And let this suffice on these matters;

but they, having foolishly rushed on to the very summit of vanity, add the following:

'But the sacred synod convened at Blachernae, in the church of the all-pure Virgin, in the time of the formerly pious emperors Constantine and Leo, we gladly accept, as having been fortified by the doctrines of the Fathers, preserving unaltered the things set forth in it; and we decree that the making of images is unworthy of veneration and useless, refraining from calling these images idols;'

'for there is indeed a distinction even between one evil and another evil.'

Those who babble these vain things buzz around our ears like wild wasps, and produce for us a mass of unpleasantness and disorder;

for they babble at length, and I do not know if anyone is capable of measuring the magnitude of such insensibility and lack of counsel.

And has it not fallen far from every ecclesiastical ordinance? But they suffer this so that they may establish themselves in their own wickedness, having cast all priestly good order behind their backs.

As for the church of the all-pure Virgin, I do not know how they even dare to call it by that name, or profess to honor it -- this church which they, condemned and dishonored on every side, have filled entirely with disgrace and dishonor, since they destroyed the sacred and venerable likeness of the God-receiving body which had formerly been depicted and shone forth prominently within it, through which the church had also been deemed worthy of such great honor;

and defiling all the holy things throughout the church with the most numerous outrages, they had no reverence for the holy things; but in order to derive glory from this, they take refuge in this sacred church, and pretend to honor what they have spat upon, while they have entirely abandoned the fair-branched, high-crested plane trees, not deigning to remember them at all -- trees which have flourished outside the walls of the imperial city, where rather that mob-gathering assembly convened, weaving their drunken outrage against Christ and the holy Virgin and the saints.

which, if indeed one must call it a synod, one might call the 'Synod of the Plane-tree,' having caught the disease of the barrenness of those very plants;

for indeed the very fact of their having gathered there seems to hint at this -- that it bore fruit in nothing else but impiety, abundant and most all-producing, having given itself over solely to wickedness.

But from what patristic doctrines it arrogantly boasts to have been fortified, from which it set upon this innovation, it is easy to discern.

For, fabricating them, they put forward as fathers those associated with Eusebius and Epiphanides, and any others of the Arian godlessness — that is to say, of the superstition of Valentinus and Marcion and Manes — who indeed dwell very far off, indeed outside the Christian portion; and now they even set these up as teachers.

Having been taught by them the term "uncircumscribed," they bark against the saving economy of Christ, these truly ghost-like men imagining that it came to be in semblance and not in truth.

For if anywhere they have brought forward a saying of our God-bearing fathers and teachers who are truly of the Church, they have contrived this either by cutting it short or by falsifying and corrupting it, running down thereby against the simplicity of the less-learned, so that by the credibility of these persons they might drag people into their own pits of error.

For the teachers of correct doctrines have neither thought nor proclaimed the same things as the impious — far from it!

But as to whether they partook at all of the scriptural oracles of the Spirit, what need is there to speak of it? — seeing that they did not even hesitate shamefully to insult those gold-chased Cherubim which the ancient Tabernacle bore, set above the Ark by divine commands and constructed through the ministry of the all-wise Moses, assailing them with countless slanders and dishonors, and mocking them.

From that foul initiation, then, as if made drunk with the fruits of the vine of Sodom and the tendril of Gomorrah, having poured for themselves, as it were, the unmixed wine of impiety, they belch forth from the evil treasury of the heart words full of gall and bitterness.

And indeed, fortified by the God-hated teachings from those men, they now speak boldly in wickedness, and, defining what seems good to them, they declare it.

What then do they define, and what indeed is the horos brought forth by them, and of what force is it, and whether it is consonant and consistent with the six holy councils which they pretentiously boast of accepting, and from which of their doctrines, taking their start, do they attempt to confirm their own views, and whether they have kept the sequence and order found in those councils — the hour now calls us to examine closely.

And its impiety concerning theology, seen to be of equal force, having poured out through practically the whole inhabited world, the council, moved by God, cast it down and drove it out, and divinely and clearly declared the Son consubstantial with the Father — that is, of the same essence and glory — and proclaimed the connatural and equally honored, in both realities and names, superessential and supremely divine Trinity: the one Godhead, kingship, authority, and lordship known and worshiped in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, uniting them in essence and Godhead, yet dividing them, as it were indivisibly, by the hypostases, and preserving for each of these its own property unconfused and unmingled.

And the second holy council, which follows this one in truths and comes after it, employing the same order and practice — since it partook of the same grace of the Spirit — having cast down the Macedonian blasphemy against the all-holy and life-originating Spirit, proclaimed it consubstantial with the Father and the Son and equally honored, and, as God, co-worshiped together with them.

And these things, then, concern theology.

But concerning the economy, the God-chosen assembly that follows these councils refuted the Nestorian derangement and Jewish grossness, which introduced a duality of sons and unlawfully divided and split the one Son, and for this reason fabricated man-worship as a myth; it condemned with anathemas both the impious Nestorius himself and those around him.

It made known to us one Son, God and Lord of all, having an invisible and ineffable begetting from God the Father before the ages, being co-unoriginate and co-eternal with him; and that this same Son, as time drew toward its setting, having been made man from the all-holy and ever-virgin Mother of God unchangeably and immutably, and having appeared like us apart from sin — it also proclaimed the all-pure Virgin properly and truly Theotokos.

Perfect in humanity and perfect in divinity — the fourth council, the followers of these preceding councils, I mean the God-called and numerous multitude, godly-mindedly decreed concerning the one and the same Son, our Savior Christ and God; and it condemned already the division of the God-driven Nestorius, and, having branded the dark and senseless confusion advocated by the God-hated and abominable Dioscorus and Eutyches and those around them, it clearly expounded the duality of the natures, but the unity of the person, that is, the union according to hypostasis, in the economy of Christ our Master and God.

For Eutyches suffered the same thing with respect to the economy in relation to Nestorius, as Sabellius did with respect to theology in relation to Arius.

The fifth, Spirit-moved assembly, following in the footsteps of these councils, having publicly exposed and thrown down the countless blasphemies of the Christ-fighting and most abominable Theodore, who was ill-named bishop of Mopsuestia — blasphemies just then arising anew and being renewed, as if from a shattered pit of impiety, by his unholy disciples.

These men, indeed, being in a kind of Corybantic frenzy and beside themselves, said that God the Word was one thing, and Christ another, as one improved by progress in works and baptized as a mere man, and having received the grace of the Holy Spirit from baptism, and having been deemed worthy of adoption — impiously devising, just as those around the impious Nestorius did, certain relational and manifold unions.

They dared to blaspheme the all-holy Virgin as man-bearing but not God-bearing, and they cast out very many other and most evil things against the economy of our Savior — things which defile both soul and body merely by coming to mind — and, besides these, certain other absurdities similar to these, foolishly written against our unblemished faith.

...the essence of the Word not having passed over into the flesh, but each nature remaining what it is even after the union — consubstantial with the Father according to divinity, and the same one consubstantial with us according to humanity;

...that God the Word together with the flesh is worshiped with a single act of veneration, according to the ecclesiastical tradition, and that the miracles and the sufferings both belong to him;

And properly and truly they confessed the all-hymned Virgin to be Theotokos.

And the celebrated and God-inspired assembly of sacred teachers that came after these councils expelled from the courts of the Church those who thoughtlessly and erroneously glorified one will and one energy in Christ — that is, those around Honorius and Sergius and Macarius, and however many others were of that faction — and, following the preceding God-revealing fathers, clearly proclaimed two natural wills and two natural energies in the same Christ our God.

The holy and truly ecumenical councils, then — that is, the God-wise fathers gathered at them, and the teachers of the inhabited world — thus, whatever was foreign and alien to our theosophy they cast off by the power and grace of the Spirit visiting and cooperating with them, and, having banished it from the piety of Christians, made it vanish; and whatever was proper, genuine, and befitting the Church of God, having introduced it in a manner worthy of God, they established, accomplishing this through the divine horoi and types proclaimed by them, in accordance with the prophetic voice which commands:

"Go forth, pass through my gates, clear the way, make a road for my people, cast the stones out of the way" — that is, going through the evangelical and prophetic teachings of the Spirit, which indeed open wide for us the gates of salvation and lead us by the hand to the faith of him who says:

"If anyone enters through me, he will be saved, and will go in and go out, and will find pasture."

Therefore, the obstacles along the road of life, roughened and made impassable by unholy heresies and unclean slanders, having hardened like stones and being cast aside as stumbling-blocks — such as are indeed the stumblings and offenses of souls — cleansing and smoothing these away, they prepare the people of the Lord to walk by the smooth and royal road of piety and divine knowledge.

Since, then, to censure is no great thing (for it is easiest for anyone who wishes), but to introduce in its place one's own opinion is the mark of a pious and sensible man — an old and sound saying (which has been kept among the saints, who vigorously and most opportunely rebuked what was alien, and effected the destruction of things impiously advanced, while for what was proper and exceedingly good among their own they worked out its counter-introduction) — let us see, then, whether the Christ-fighters have proceeded according to these principles, and whether what is set forth in their horos is consistent with what they promised.

But they define nothing at all; rather, having overturned and dismissed what is alien to them (for indeed the great mystery of the incarnation of God the Word is truly alien to them, and everything that pertains to piety is foreign to them —

and this was their view: that the making of icons should be unvenerated and useless) — they established nothing at all of their own, nor did they construct anything.

For they had nothing to establish, having destroyed everything that had been well decreed and that stood firmly and was well founded in the Church of God.

For, fighting against truth itself and imagining that they were overturning it, they had nothing that they would define or introduce.

For falsehood is undefined and non-existent, and has no place where it will ever stand.

Their horos, at any rate, contains only the force of negation and privation, but possesses absolutely no account of positive assertion, so that it runs the risk of not even being named a horos, if indeed proper horoi proceed rather from positive and affirmative statements, and declare what the subject is, not what it is not.

For a horos is a concise statement declarative of the essence of the subject matter, not one that abolishes it, as they vainly assert.

That it is discordant and inconsistent with the horoi of the hierophants set forth before it (and I do not know how they promised to accept them) is testified to by the sacred precinct, which has been raised up in the name of those who convened the first holy council, displaying even to this day their very images, almost as if crying out clearly their confession and mind, in demonstration of the sound faith of the God-loving emperor who convened it by divine impulse.

Which images the men of destruction, though they attempted even to tear down, have nevertheless not been permitted to accomplish this transgression.

And if the second council is also in the same rank and consistent with that first one, then necessarily it too is torn away from this grace.

What then will these wretches say concerning the sacred third council, being struck by its terrible anathemas? How will they follow the councils after these, when they remove the perfection of the bodily incarnation according to the Savior Christ? For how could a body be at all uncircumscribed, being wholly bounded by circumscription and limit, even though it has been united hypostatically to God the Word, not having departed from its natural perfection? And if the council numbered among these also glorifies the same things as those preceding it, how will they not also oppose it and fall into the same absurdities? What manner of consistency will remain to them with respect to the God-wise fathers who fulfilled the sixth holy council, these men insolently glaring back with a shameless face and impudent mind, standing as impious men against them? For what those fathers piously established, these men impiously tore down;

and what those fathers built harmoniously and in a godly manner, these men destroyed godlessly and senselessly.

Whence, then, will consonance and consistency with the councils come to belong to them, who go contrary to them in all things? They have nothing to say, even though they boast countless things, so that it is shown that they have no share at all in the ecclesiastical institution and canon.

But having acquired a mind well-trained for erring in speech, out of the words which they monstrously fabricate they wish to procure acceptance for their own false opinion, so that, babbling as though indeed following the councils, they might become readily accepted by the many in their impiety.

For this reason, then, the horos cobbled together by them is judged by the Church to be entirely fallen and cast out;

for it could not even be called a horos, in matters where, above all, nothing definable and no proper subject has been given to it.

For it would be far indeed from the truth to call a synod that servile mob which spoke discordantly;

what then must it be called? What else indeed than what the prophetic divine oracles have already cried out beforehand:

"A turbid overturning, which they gave their neighbor to drink, making him drunk, so that he might look upon their caves;"

"a surfeit of dishonor instead of glory;"

which have been threatened against those who teach falsehoods.

For indeed those who utter such empty words, according to what is written:

"They trust in vain things and speak empty words, for they conceive trouble and bring forth iniquity, truly weaving a spider's web."

For these things are, in an idle way, mere babble, laboriously produced by them in vain and put together disorderly and unholily; and it is an irrational and Satanic sedition, disturbing and troubling the simpler folk; and a hidden snare, sending men down to the bottom of death and leading down to the floor of Hades, in which those who pass by unguarded terribly fall; and an evil catastrophe and an evil workshop, put together out of fleshly and passionate wills — or rather, of wills leading in the opposite direction.

For they did not know how to do good, before the Lord and before their neighbor;

nor indeed do they know how to build, but only to tear down;

not to honor the holy things, but to fill them with every dishonor;

not to revere the things worthy of reverence, but to revere in a perverse manner;

not to gather, but to scatter;

not to do anything toward concord, but to cut and split off the Church of Christ, well united and divinely established, and to tear apart and divide what has been well gathered together, like grievous wolves that have fallen upon the flock of Christ and devour the rational sheep with their whole mouth, and drive them off to their own precipice.

Following such horoi, for this reason it results for them from every side that they are driven far off from the sacred enclosures of the Church, and in vain they carry about the name of Christ, still less can they be, or be called, priests.

And not even the contrivance concocted by them in the name of a horos could ever hold any stability;

for it is indeed truly undefined and unstable and irrational and incomplete and disorderly and unadorned and unestablished and aimless and unlovely and idle and powerless and dark, and itself in no way whatsoever existing, as being already foreign and alien and driven far off from our theosophy.

Whenever an inquiry should arise concerning one and the same matter, and the opposition should stand concerning the same point, it would be necessary, having overturned the views of one's opponents, to set forth by all means one's own views in their place;

and so, these men, having torn down the icon of Christ, ought surely, by all means, to newly set up in its place another icon of someone else instead.

What remains, then, is evident.

And what is this but what they are seen doing everywhere? For if anywhere they should behold an icon of the Antichrist, or of any other forbidden figure, they let it remain in its form, while they destroy the holy things — thinking and doing things truly worthy of their own impiety and abomination, so that they may be shown plainly to be idolaters.

To whom must these men be compared? They say that leopards have a certain natural wrath against man.

Some, then, mocking the beast's madness, display beforehand an image on paper;

and the beast, under excessive impulse, tears the paper as if it were a man, and there shows its man-hating nature.

So indeed do these men also, in the icon of Christ, display their Christ-hating nature;

for, not being able to touch the archetype, out of hatred toward him, with a leopard-like mind they leap upon the icon, tearing and destroying it;

so that their hostility against his likenesses shows them to be fighters against God, having taken up war against Christ himself.

Perhaps, following the godlessness of their teacher Mamonas, they will say that the divine mysteries celebrated by the worthy are an image of the body of Christ — legislating against the gospel, and in this fighting both against common opinion, against sense-perception, and against the whole tradition of the Christians.

For let them first show where they have received that these things are to be called an image of Christ, and in which oracles of the Spirit they found it written.

But they would not be able to show it;

and here too they are convicted of being opposed to the evangelical tradition.

For our Lord and God, on that sacred night on which he was about to be delivered up to those who would crucify him, mystically and ineffably sacrificing himself, and delivering these things to his renowned disciples, did not say 'an image of body or blood,' but imparted body and blood themselves in very fact, saying:

'Take, eat and drink' — not an image, but:

'This is my body,' and:

'This is my blood, which is poured out for you and for many.'

Moreover, either they will grant that the consecrated elements are uncircumscribable (so that they would incur not only the charge of impiety, but also, in addition to this, become liable to ridicule —

for what could be more absurd or more laughable than to hold that things which are visible and tangible and receivable by human beings and ground fine by teeth and made into food are uncircumscribable?) — or else they will declare that the Word is co-sacrificed with the things consecrated, as though, according to their own opinion, it were not separated from the body.

But they will raise these objections not in order to honor the divine things, but in order to dishonor the image of Christ together with Christ himself.

For why do they not rather agree with the common doctrine of the Church, thereby escaping untimely contentiousness and blasphemy? But it is evident that Christ, even when seen in an image, is burdensome to them.

Such then, and in this state, are the affairs of those alien to us;

but what of our own affairs? For it remains now to discuss briefly a few points concerning these.

...to the church, inasmuch as she has been deemed worthy of the same grace as those, and is worked upon by the same Spirit, cherishes all things and receives with gladness, as her own, and tends the things proclaimed and set forth by them —

and just as in place, so also in manner and in doctrines, the last has communed with the first, employing the same rule and pattern, so that where the firstfruits of our sacred doctrines flourished, there also the end and, as it were, the seal of our God-inspired confession might be set.

For this one, having overthrown the innovation introduced by those who fought against the glory of Christ, together with their opposing and wicked doctrine, confirmed the tradition that had prevailed in the catholic Church from the beginning and of old;

and piously assigned to it order and comeliness, having decreed that the sacred symbols of the economy of our Savior be venerated rightly and in a manner pleasing to God, according as is the custom and law for Christians who live piously.

Since, then, the God-fighting horos directed against those unholy men has been refuted and cast down, what is there to hinder, or what obstacle stands in the way of our also, in turn, setting forth a definition and declaring — from what has been established through many arguments and proofs — that the making of the sacred images of Christ is useful, and their veneration is necessary and beneficial and altogether just and to be honored; and that, while the veneration which consists in worship and is true, offered toward God, indeed holds the precedence, this veneration of images itself follows upon it and is accordingly honored and venerated, each according to its own proper definition and principle? And thus, in like manner, let us also consider analogously, according to its proper principle, the matter of the venerable likenesses of the saints.

But we must lead our argument back again, retracing our steps to the point from which we departed.

'...though sparing to call these idols...'

It is necessary that those who have slipped away from the light of truth and have willingly deserted to the darkness of falsehood, being ensnared by manifold error, should fall into many crookednesses and be dragged about by very many contradictions and stumbling-blocks.

And this is now clearly shown to have happened to those exceedingly learned and wise and sharp-witted men;

for having fallen away from the correct doctrines of piety, they not only take the field against our pure teaching, but here also are plainly caught becoming opposed even to themselves.

For these men, having gladly professed to accept that Plane-tree Synod — or rather, the Wandering one — that pestilential company and Judaizing band, and carrying about in outstretched hands what was determined by it, insisting that they keep it unaltered and setting it up as an inviolable rule and honoring it above all things — it is worth carefully examining how far, in the present matter, they are found to be in agreement and consistent with themselves.

The whole aim, then, of those men, and their purpose, and their undertaking, and all their zeal, the well-attended assembly, the toil and the scrutiny and the ordeal, the meddlesome inquiry and investigation, the great expenditure and prolongation of time, so much labor and concern — aimed at nothing else than this: that with unveiled and loud voice and unblushing face, having impiously and godlessly raged against Christ our God, and having set in motion a licentious and lawless tongue against the Creator, they might accuse the right hand that holds all things together and grasps all things, that it was in no way able to free mankind from the error of idols; and that they might openly declare the sacred images fashioned in the name of Christ and of the saints to be idols, and thereby fasten upon Christians, from this point on, the charge of idolatry — just as indeed, in the horos which they devised and regarded as law, they proclaimed clearly and unhesitatingly.

from which the heaviest persecution burst forth against those who lived piously.