On the Soul and the Resurrection 1 part 3/7

while for us it was agreed that what is brought to light through the sacred teachings of Scripture is more trustworthy than all the conclusions of technical art,

I think we ought to inquire, concerning what has been said, whether the God-inspired teaching agrees with these conclusions.'

{Macrina} And she said: 'And who could gainsay it? Let truth be placed in this alone—that upon which rests the seal of the testimony of Scripture. Therefore, if it is fitting that something from the teaching of the Gospel also be taken up in support of this doctrine, the consideration of the parable of the tares would not be out of season for us.

For there the householder sowed the good seed (and we are surely the house);

but while men were sleeping, the enemy lay in wait and sowed in among the nourishing crop that which is useless, placing the tares right in the midst of the wheat itself.

And the two kinds of seed sprang up together with one another.

For it was not possible that the seed sown in the very midst of the wheat should not sprout up along with it.

But the overseer of the husbandry forbids his servants to pluck out the useless growth, because of the intertwining of the opposing kinds at the root, lest in pulling out the alien growth they should at the same time uproot the nourishing one.

For we suppose that the discourse indicates such impulses of the soul by means of the good seed, each of which—if only it were cultivated toward the good—would assuredly bring forth in us the fruit of virtue.

But since there was sown in among them, through sin, a confusion concerning the judgment of the good, and that which is truly and alone good according to its own nature was darkened by the growth of deceit that sprang up together with it;

(for the faculty of desire did not grow up and rise toward the naturally good for whose sake it was implanted in us, but, through the failure of discernment concerning the good, transformed its growth toward the bestial and irrational, directing toward this the impulse that it bore for desire;)

Likewise the seed of anger, too, was not sharpened toward courage, but was armed for fighting against those of one's own kind;

and the power of love deserted intelligible things, going utterly mad beyond all measure for the enjoyment of the things of sense; and the rest in like manner brought forth the worse shoots instead of the better. For this reason the wise Husbandman allows the growth that is implanted in the seed to remain in it, taking care lest we be stripped of the better things, since desire is altogether rooted together with the useless shoot.

For if nature should suffer this, what will there be to raise us up to communion with the heavenly things? Or if love be taken away, in what manner shall we be joined to the Divine? And if the faculty of spiritedness be removed, what weapon shall we have against the adversary that wrestles with us? Therefore the Husbandman permits the spurious seeds within us, not that they should ever prevail over the more precious sowing, but that the field itself—for so he figuratively names the heart—through the natural power lying within it, which is reason, may dry up some of the growths and render others fruitful and flourishing.

But if this should not come to pass, He reserves the discrimination of the husbandry for the fire.

Accordingly, if a man should use these things by the proper rule, taking them into himself and not being himself taken into them, but rather—like some king employing the many hands of his subjects as fellow-workers—he will the more easily accomplish what is striven after in respect of virtue.

But if it should happen the other way—as when certain slaves rise up against their master—and from the means by which he is enslaved he ignobly submits to slavish devices, and so becomes a possession of those who by nature are subjected to him,

he will of necessity be transferred toward those things to which the dominance of the things that lead him forces him.

But if these things are so, we shall declare neither virtue nor vice to belong to them in themselves—that is, to all those movements of the soul which lie within the power of those who use them to be either good or otherwise.

But when the movement in them is toward the better, they become matter for praise—as desire was for Daniel, and spiritedness (anger) for Phinehas, and grief for him who mourns rightly.

But if the inclination should be toward the worse, then these become and are named passions.

(G.) When she had gone through these things, since she paused a little and gave the discourse a brief interval, and I had gathered in my mind the things that had been said, I again ran back to the former sequence of the argument, in which it was being established that it is not impossible for the soul to exist among the elements when the body has been dissolved.

And this I said to the Teacher:

"Where, then, is that much-talked-of name of Hades—

a name much current in the common usage of life, and much current in the writings both of those outside and of our own, into which all suppose that souls remove from here as into some receptacle? For surely you would not call the elements 'Hades.'"

(M.) And the Teacher said, "It is plain that you have not very closely attended to the argument.

For in speaking of the soul's removal from the visible to the unseen, I thought I had left nothing wanting as to the question concerning Hades.

For this name seems to me to signify nothing else, both according to those outside and according to the divine Scripture, than the state in which they say souls come to be—namely, that they partake of the unseen and the invisible.

(G.) "And how is it," I said, "that some suppose the subterranean region to be so called, and that in it the souls of those people lodge as in an inn, as though it were some space, receptive of such a nature, drawing to itself those that have already flown away from human life?" (M.) "But none the more for this," said the Teacher, "will the doctrine be harmed by this supposition, even if the account according to you be true.

For if the heavenly vault is continuous with itself and unbroken, encompassing all things within its own circle, and in the midst the earth and the things about it are suspended, and the movement of the things that wholly revolve takes place about that which stands fixed and immovable, then it is altogether necessary—she said—that whatever of the elements belongs to each thing on the upper part of the earth should also be on the opposite part, since one and the same substance runs round its whole mass in a circle.

And just as, when the sun appears, the shadow of the sphere-shaped figure is turned upon the part beneath it—for the sun cannot, by the embrace of its ray, encircle it all at once, but of all necessity, whatever part of the earth the sun strikes with its rays, coming as it does upon some point of the sphere, there will be darkness at the other extremity along the straight diameter—

and thus continually, by the sun's course, the darkness travels around together with the straight line of the ray to the opposite side, so that equally the region above the earth and the region below the earth come to be by turns in light and in darkness;

so it is reasonable, concerning all other things too, that whatever is observed in our hemisphere of the earth in respect of the elements—one need not doubt that the same is also the case concerning the other hemisphere.

And since the envelope of the elements is one and the same throughout every part of the earth, I think one ought neither to contradict nor to side with those who insist upon these matters—as though one must suppose that either this region or the infernal one is assigned to the souls released from their bodies.

For so long as the objection does not unsettle the foregoing doctrine—namely, that souls exist after the life in the flesh—our argument will not be at issue concerning place, grasping only that position in place is proper to bodies alone;

but the soul, being incorporeal, has no necessity from its nature of being confined to any places.

(G.) "What then," I said, "if the objector should put forward the Apostle, who says that all the rational creation, in the restoration of the universe, looks toward the One who governs the universe—

in which passage he makes mention of certain 'things under the earth' (infernal things), having said in the Epistle to the Philippians:

that 'to Him every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth'?" (M.) "We shall abide by the doctrine," said the Teacher, "even if we hear these things said; for as concerns the soul's existing, we have the objector himself in agreement with us, while concerning place, as has been said in what preceded, we do not take a stand.

(G.) "Then to those who seek out," I said, "the apostolic meaning in this expression, what would one say, if you remove the phrase from its local signification?" (M.) And she said, "The divine Apostle does not seem to me, in distinguishing the intellectual substance, to have named one part 'heavenly,' another 'earthly,' and another 'infernal' in a local sense.

But since there are for us three states of the rational nature: the one which from the beginning obtained the incorporeal life, which we call angelic;

and the one we call human, interwoven with the flesh;

and the one released from things of the flesh through death.

This is what is observed in the case of souls; and the divine Apostle, beholding it, I think, in the depth of wisdom, signifies the harmony of all rational nature that shall one day come to be in the good:

calling 'heavenly' the angelic and incorporeal;

and 'earthly' that which is interwoven with the body;

and 'infernal' (under the earth) that which is now separated from the body—or whatever other nature beyond those mentioned is observed among the rational ones, which, whether one wishes to name them demons or spirits or some such thing, we shall not dispute.

For it is believed, both from the common supposition and from the tradition of the Scriptures, that there is a certain nature apart from such bodies, disposed contrary to the good and harmful to human life, which willingly fell away from the better disposition;

and by the falling away from the good, it brought into substantial existence within itself that which is conceived as the contrary;

and this is the nature which they say the Apostle reckons among 'things under the earth' (infernal things), signifying by that word this: that when evil has at some time, in the long cycles of the ages, been done away with, nothing shall be left outside the good.

But even from those there shall be, in one accord, the confession of the lordship of Christ.

These things being so, no one could any longer compel us to understand by the name 'things under the earth' the subterranean region;

since the air is poured around the earth equally on every side, so that no part of it is found bare of the encompassing of the air.

(G.) When the Teacher had gone through these things, restraining myself a little, I said, "I am not yet sufficiently satisfied concerning the matter sought;

but my mind still somehow hesitates at the things that have been said, and I beg that the discourse be led back again for me to the same sequence, after being freed from the points already agreed upon between us.

For I think it is moderate (reasonable) that, through what has been said, those who are not too obstinate would be brought not to lead the soul into annihilation and non-existence after the dissolution of the bodies, nor to maintain that it can nowhere be among the things that are, because it is of a different kind in relation to the substance of the elements.

For even if the intellectual and immaterial nature does not coincide with these (the elements), it is not thereby hindered from existing—this supposition being confirmed to us from two sides: both from the fact that even now in this life the soul is in the bodies, while being something other than the body in respect of its substance; and from the fact that the argument has demonstrated the divine nature to be something altogether other than the sensible and material substance,

and yet it pervades each of the things that are, and by its commingling with the whole holds the things that are in being—so that by these considerations it follows consistently that the soul too is not to be supposed outside the things that are, when it has removed from the life observed in form to the unseen.

"But how," I said, "when the elements in their union take on, through their mutual mixture, a certain other form—to which the soul's affinity (familiarity) has come about—when by the dissolution of the elements that form too, as is likely, vanishes along with them, by what mark will the soul follow after, since that which it knew has not remained?"

(M.) And she, pausing a little, said, "Let it be granted me, by way of license, to fashion a certain account in the form of an illustration, for the clarification of the matter before us, even if what is said should seem to be beyond the bounds of possibility.

For let it be granted possible for the painter's art not only to mix the colors from opposites, as it is their custom to do for the likeness of a form, but also to separate the things that have been mixed, and to render again to each of the colors its natural dye.

So then the white, the black, or the red, and the golden-hued, or whatever other dye is blended for the likeness of the subject before one—if it should again be separated from the mixture with another and come to be by itself, we say that the very form of the color is none the less recognized by the craftsman, and that no forgetfulness of it arises in him, neither of the red nor of the black, if, having become other-colored through the mixture with one another, they should again return to their natural dye;

and bearing in mind the manner of the mutual blending of the colours with one another,

to know what kind of colour each, when combined with another, produced, and how, when one was withdrawn and released from the other, it ran back again to its own native hue; and if it should be needful once more to produce the same effect by mixing, the construction will be easier for him, having been practised in the previous work of creation.

"But if the analogy in this illustration is consistent," she said, "we must now examine the very point that lies before us."

For in place of the painter's art, let the nature of the elements be conceived; and the mixture, the variegated dyeing of the different-coloured pigments; and again, the return granted to us by hypothesis of these to their own places, let it sketch out the running-together and the separation of the elements.

Just as, then, we say in the illustration that the artist is not ignorant of the dye of the colour after it has, following the mixture, returned again to its proper hue, but recognises both the red and the black, and whatever else by a certain association with another kind produced the form—both what it was in the mixture, and what it now is in what comes to be according to its nature;

and again what it will be, if the colours should once more be mixed together with one another in like manner:

—so the soul knows the elements that ran together for the construction of the body in which it was implanted, even after their dissolution, by their natural distinctiveness.

And even if nature should draw them far apart from one another, because of the contrarieties inherent in them, keeping each of them from mingling with its opposite, none the less will the soul be present beside each one, touching what is its own by its cognitive power, and abiding there until the running-together of the things that had been separated comes again into one and the same, for the re-composition of what had been dissolved—which is and is properly named resurrection.

{Γ.} And I said: "You seem to me to have fought admirably, for the present, on the side of the argument concerning the resurrection."

"For by these considerations those who war against the faith might gently be brought round, so as not to suppose it among the impossible things that the elements should come together with one another again and produce the same man." {Μ.} And the teacher said:

"For one may hear those who object to this argument saying that, since the dissolution of the elements takes place into the universe according to kinship,

what contrivance is there whereby the heat in this particular body, having become commingled in the universal whole, should be separated off again from its kindred so as to constitute the man who is being released? For if it should not return precisely as its own, but something from the homogeneous mass be taken up in place of what was peculiarly its own,

one thing will come to be in place of another, and such a thing would no longer be a resurrection, but the fashioning of a new man.

But if the same man must return again into himself, he must be wholly the same throughout, having taken up again, in all the parts of the elements that are his own, the nature he had from the beginning."

{Γ.} "Then," said I, "as I said, such a supposition concerning the soul would be sufficient for us against this objection:

namely, that in those very elements in which it was originally implanted it also abides after the dissolution, set as it were a guardian over what is its own, and in the commingling with what is akin not letting go of its own peculiar part by the subtle and easily-moving power of its intelligent

faculty, undergoing not a single wandering astray in the fine divisibility of the elements;

but it is dissolved together with its own parts as they are commingled with what is akin, and does not grow weak in passing out together with them, when it is poured forth into the universe, but ever remains within it, wherever they are, and however nature may dispose it.

But if again there should be given, by the power that governs the universe, to the dissolved elements the signal for their coming-together;

then, just as if various cords were attached to one starting-point, all of them together and along it follow the one who draws them;

so, by the one power of the soul, when the diversity of the elements is drawn together all at once in the coming-together of what is its own, the chain of our body will be interwoven through the soul, each part again being woven onto what is ancient and accustomed, and embracing what is familiar. {Μ.} "But this illustration too," said the teacher, "might reasonably be added to those already examined, as a demonstration that it is no great learning for the soul to discern its own among the elements from what is alien.

For let there be set before the potter, by hypothesis, clay—and let it be granted that this is plentiful—of which some part has already been shaped for the making of vessels, while the rest is still to come.

And let the vessels all be shaped differently from one another, not in the same form, but let one be a storage-jar, another an amphora, another a small plate, or a bowl, or some other of the things useful for daily need; and let it be supposed for the argument that all these are not owned by one person, but each belongs to its own master.

Now, so long as they remain intact, these are evident to their owners;

and even if they should be shattered again, none the less will they be recognisable from the fragments to their owners—which the piece from the storage-jar is, and what kind the shard from the cup is.

And if they should even be mixed in with unworked clay, far more does the identification of the already-finished pieces from that clay become unerring.

In this way, each individual man is, as it were, a kind of vessel, fashioned from the running-together of the elements out of the common matter, having in his altogether peculiar shape much difference from what is of the same kind.

And when he is dissolved, none the less does the soul that owns the vessel recognise its own even from the remnants, neither in the commingling of the fragments nor, if it should be mixed in with the unworked matter of the elements, withdrawing from what is its own; but ever knowing its peculiar thing—what kind it was when it stood constituted in its shape—and, after the dissolution, not wandering astray concerning its own, from the marks that remain in the remnants.

{Γ.} And, having received what had been said as both fitly and aptly discovered with a view to the proposed aim, I said: "These things, then, are well stated and well believed in this way;

but if someone should bring forward, against what has been said, the Lord's narrative in the Gospel concerning those in Hades, as not agreeing with what has been examined, how must one prepare oneself for the answer?" {Μ.} The teacher said: "The discourse sets forth the narrative in a rather bodily manner, but it sows abroad many starting-points, through which it summons the attentive examiner to a subtler contemplation.

For he who, by a great chasm, separates the evil from the better, and who, by the bringing of a single drop on a finger, makes the one in torment to be in want of it, and who places the patriarch's bosom as a rest for the one who had been ill-treated through this life, and who before these things had narrated that they had died and been given to burial—this not slightly removes from the obvious sense the one who follows what is said not unintelligently.

For what kind of eyes does the rich man lift up in Hades, having left those of the flesh in the tomb? And how did the incorporeal perceive flame? And what kind of tongue does he desire to have cooled by the drop, the fleshly one not being present to him? And what is the finger that conveys to him the droplet? And the very bosom of rest—what is it? For since the bodies are in the tombs, while the soul is neither in a body nor composed of parts, it would be impossible to fit the staging of the narrative, as understood according to the obvious sense, to the truth, unless one should take each detail into

—so that one should not suppose the chasm which separates the fellowship of the unmingled to be a gulf of earth;

for to that which is incorporeal and intelligent, what toil is it to fly across the chasm, even were it very great? For that which is intelligent by nature comes to be, timelessly, in whatever place it may will.

{Γ.} "What then," I say, "would the fire be, or the chasm, or the rest of the things spoken of, if not the things that are said?" {Μ.} "It seems to me," she says, "that through each of these the Gospel intimates certain doctrines concerning the things sought regarding the soul.

For the patriarch, having first said to the rich man, 'You received your portion of good things in the life through the flesh,' and having said the like concerning the poor man, that 'this one also fulfilled, during his life, the ministry of his share of evil things';

then having thus added concerning the chasm, how they are walled off from one another, he seems through these to indicate something great to the discourse.

And the doctrine, according at least to my own reasoning, is of this kind:

The life of men was uniform—and by uniform I mean that which is seen in the good alone, and unmingled with evil.

And such an account is borne witness to by the first law of God, which gave to man the ungrudging participation in the whole of the good things in Paradise, but kept him back from that one alone in which the nature was commingled out of contraries—the evil being blended together with the good—appointing death as the penalty laid upon the transgressor.

But man, of his own will, in the movement of his free choice, having forsaken the share unmixed with the worse, drew upon himself the life compounded out of contraries.

Yet the divine forethought did not leave our ill-counsel uncorrected.

But since, for those who had transgressed the law, the death adjudged upon it necessarily followed, He divided human life in two—into this life through the flesh, and into the one outside the body after this one—not according to an equal measure of extent, but circumscribing the one within a very brief temporal limit;

but extending the other into eternity, He gave, out of His love for mankind, authority that one might have either of these (I mean both the good and the evil) in whichever one wills—either in this brief and short-lived life, or in those unending ages, whose limit is endlessness.

But since the good and the evil are spoken of equivocally, and each of these is divided according to a twofold notion (I mean both with respect to mind and to sense-perception), and since some judge that to be in the portion of good which seems pleasant to sense-perception;

while others have believed that only that which is contemplated according to the understanding is and is named good.

Those in whom reasoning is unexercised, and unobservant of the better, these by gluttony in the fleshly life consume beforehand the portion of the good owed to their nature, treasuring up nothing for the life that comes after;

but those who order their own life by a discerning and temperate reasoning, in this brief life, having been grieved through the things that pain sense-perception, treasure up the good for the age to come, so that the better allotment may be extended together with eternal life for them.

This, then, is, at least according to my reasoning, the chasm: which comes to be, not from earth being parted asunder, but which the judgement during life, being divided toward the opposite choices, brings about.

For he who is once drawn to the pleasant in this life, and does not heal his ill-counsel by repentance, makes for himself thereafter the land of good things impassable, having dug against himself this impassable necessity, like some gaping pit, both yawning wide and impossible to cross.

Therefore it seems to me that Scripture also names that good condition of the soul, in which the word grants rest to the athlete of patient endurance, 'Abraham's bosom.'

For this patriarch is recorded as the first of all who have ever lived to have exchanged the enjoyment of present things for the hope of things to come; for, stripped of all those things in which his life was at first set, he made his dwelling among strangers, and through the present hardship he traded for the prosperity that is hoped for.

Just as we call a certain enclosed part of the sea, by a kind of figure of speech, a 'bosom' (bay), so it seems that Scripture signifies the indication of those immeasurable good things by the name of 'bosom,'

into which all who sail across this present life through virtue, when they depart from here, moor their souls in that good bosom as in a harbour beyond all flooding; but for the rest, the deprivation of the good things that appear to them becomes a flame consuming the soul, which longs for even a single drop from that sea of good things which wash around the holy ones, to gain some consolation, and yet cannot attain it.

But when you see 'tongue,' 'eye,' 'finger,' and the rest of the bodily terms used in the narrative concerning incorporeal things, if you examine the meaning of these expressions, you will acknowledge that the conjecture agrees with the account of the soul which we have already worked out.

For just as the concurrence of the elements makes up the substance of the whole body, so it is likely that the nature of the parts within the body is also completed from the same cause.

If, then, the soul is present to the elements derived from the body when they have been mingled back into the universe, it will not only recognise the full sum of those which had concurred to form the whole composite, and will be in them;

but neither will it be ignorant of the particular composition of each of the parts, namely, from which of the portions in the elements the members in us were brought to completion.

That the soul, then, which is present in the whole fullness of the elements, should also be in each of them individually, is nothing beyond what is reasonable;

and thus, when one looks toward the elements in which the individual members of the body inhere potentially, and supposes that Scripture, after the dissolution of the composite, speaks of finger and eye and tongue and all the rest as being about the soul, he will not miss what is reasonable.

If, then, these particulars draw the mind away from a bodily understanding of the narrative, it is surely reasonable also to think that the Hades now mentioned is not some place so named, but a certain formless and incorporeal condition of life, in which Scripture teaches us that the soul lives on.

But in the narrative concerning the rich man and the poor man we also learn another doctrine, which has much affinity with the matters we have been examining.

It made that man who was passion-ridden and flesh-loving, when he saw the inescapable nature of the calamity that had befallen him by his own doing, take thought for his kinsmen still upon the earth; and when Abraham said that the life of those living in the flesh is not left without provision, but that there lies before them, at their disposal, the guidance from the Law and the Prophets,

the righteous man still persisted in entreating, that by some extraordinary means the preaching might become persuasive to them, being proclaimed by one who had come back to life from the dead.