Great Catechism 1 part 2/6

but just as non-being is set in contradistinction to being, and one cannot say that non-being is opposed to being in hypostasis, but we say that non-existence is set over against existence, in the same manner vice too stands opposed to the principle of virtue, not being something in itself, but conceived in the absence of the better;

and just as we say that blindness is set against sight—blindness not being something in nature in itself, but a privation of a previously held state—so also we say that vice is contemplated in the privation of the good, like a certain shadow that supervenes on the withdrawal of the ray.

Since, then, the uncreated nature is unsusceptible of motion by way of turning, change, and alteration, while everything that has subsisted through creation has a kinship toward alteration, because the very subsistence of creation began from alteration, the non-existent being transferred into being by divine power;

and the aforementioned power was also created, choosing what seemed good by a self-determined movement;

since it closed its eye against the good and ungrudging, just as one who in the sun puts his sight under his eyelids sees darkness, so that one too, by the very not willing to perceive the good, perceived the opposite of the good.

And it is confessed that the beginning of any matter is the cause of the things that follow it in consequence, as for health: good condition, working, living pleasantly;

and for disease: being weak, being inactive, having life in disagreeableness.

So also all other things follow their proper beginnings in consequence.

Just as, then, impassibility becomes the beginning and basis of the life according to virtue, so the inclination toward vice that came about through envy became the road of all the evils that were displayed after it.

[continuation]

For since he who, by the turning away from goodness, begat envy in himself, once had the inclination toward evil, like a stone broken off from a mountain peak driven by its own weight down the slope, so he too, torn away from the natural growth toward the good and weighed down toward vice, was of himself, as by a certain weight, thrust and carried away toward the uttermost limit of wickedness; and the intellectual power, which he had from his Creator for cooperation in the participation of the better, this he made a fellow-worker for the discovery of things devised according to vice, and ingeniously goes about deceiving man, persuading him to become his own murderer and self-slayer.

For since man, empowered through the divine blessing, was lofty in dignity;

for he was appointed to reign over the earth and all things upon it;

for he had become an image of the archetypal beauty;

for he was an imitation of the impassible;

and full of confidence, delighting in the very face-to-face manifestation of the divine;

these things were fuel of the passion of envy to the adversary.

But by some strength and force of power he was not able to accomplish his purpose;

for the power of God's blessing prevailed over his violence;

on this account he contrives to remove [man] from the power that strengthens him, so that he might become easy prey to him for the plot.

And just as on a lamp, when the fire has laid hold of the wick, if one unable to quench the flame by blowing should mix water into the oil, by this device he will dim the flame; so the adversary, having by deceit mixed vice into the free will of man, brought about a certain quenching and dimming of the blessing, which failing, the opposite of necessity enters in its place.

And opposed to life is death, weakness to power, the curse to the blessing, shame to confidence, and to all goods the things conceived as their contraries.

On this account mankind is now in the present evils,

that beginning having furnished the occasions for such an end.

And let no one ask whether God, foreknowing the human calamity that would befall man through ill-counsel, came to create man, for whom not to have come into being might perhaps have been more profitable than to be in evils.

For these things those who have been deceitfully swept into the Manichaean dogmas put forward for the establishment of their own error, as thereby demonstrating that the Creator of human nature is evil.

For if God is ignorant of nothing that is, and man is in evils, the principle of God's goodness would no longer be preserved, if indeed He brought into life a man destined to live in evils.

For if the activity according to the good is altogether of a good nature, this grievous and perishable life, he says, could no longer be referred to the creative work of the good, but one must think of another cause for such a life, to which nature is prone toward wickedness.

For all these things and such as these seem to have a certain strength, through their superficial plausibility, for those who have received the heretical deceit deep within like a fast-dyed stain;

but to those more discerning of the truth, they are clearly seen to be rotten and to have the proof of their deceit ready at hand.

And it seems good to me to set forth the Apostle in these matters as an advocate for the accusation against them.

For in his word to the Corinthians he divides the fleshly and the spiritual states of souls, showing, I think, through what is said, that one ought not to judge the good or the evil by sensation, but, having withdrawn the mind outside the things that appear according to the body, to discern the nature of the good and its opposite in itself.

"For the spiritual man," he says, "discerns all things."

This, I think, is the cause that has engendered in those who advance such things the fable-making of these dogmas, namely that

defining the good by reference to the pleasure of bodily enjoyment, because the nature of the body, being composite and flowing toward dissolution, is of necessity subject to passions and infirmities, and a certain painful sensation somehow follows upon such sufferings, they suppose that the making of man is the work of an evil god.

Whereas if their understanding had looked to the higher, and, having removed the mind from the disposition toward pleasures, had contemplated the nature of things dispassionately, they would not have thought anything else to be evil except wickedness.

And all wickedness is characterized in the privation of the good, not being something in itself, nor contemplated in hypostasis;

for no evil lies in itself outside free choice, but it is so named by the not-being of the good.

But the non-being does not subsist, and of that which does not subsist the Creator of subsisting things is not the maker.

Therefore God is outside the cause of evils, being the maker of the things that are, not of the things that are not;

who fashioned sight, not blindness;

who displayed virtue, not its privation;

who set the reward of goods as the prize of free choice for those who live according to virtue, not yoking human nature by some forcible necessity to what seemed good to Him, as if drawing a soulless vessel unwillingly toward the noble.

But if, when the light shines purely from a clear sky, one should willingly put his sight under his eyelids, the sun is outside the cause of his not seeing.

But one who looks toward the dissolution of the body is altogether vexed, and counts it grievous that our life is dissolved by death, and says this is the uttermost of evils, that our life is extinguished by deadness.

Therefore let him consider, through this gloomy thing, the surpassing greatness of the divine beneficence;

for perhaps through these very things he might rather be led to marvel at the grace of God's care concerning man.

Living is, for the sake of the enjoyment of things desired, choiceworthy to those who partake of life;

so that if one should pass his life in pains, to such a one not-being is judged far preferable to existing in pain.

Let us, then, examine whether the giver of life looks to something else, and not to how we might live in the noblest things.

For since by a self-determined movement we drew to ourselves communion with evil, mixing evil into our nature through some pleasure, like a poison seasoned with honey, and on this account having fallen from the blessedness conceived in impassibility, we were transformed toward vice; for this reason man, like some earthenware vessel, is again dissolved into earth, so that, the filth now caught up in him being separated off, he may be re-fashioned through the resurrection into his original form.

This dogma Moses sets forth for us more in the manner of narrative and through enigmas;

yet the enigmas too plainly hold the teaching.

For when, it says, the first men came to be among the forbidden things and were stripped of that blessedness, the Lord casts garments of skin upon the first-formed;

it does not seem to me [right] to bring the mind of the passage to such skins;

for of what slaughtered and flayed animals is their covering conceived? But, since every skin separated from the animal is dead, I altogether think that He who heals our vice afterward cast upon men, out of providence, the capacity for being deadened, which was a property of the irrational nature—not so as to abide forever;

for the garment is of those things put on us from without, providing its use to the body for a time, not having grown together with the nature.

Therefore the deadness was, by way of dispensation, placed around the nature created for immortality, out of the nature of the irrational creatures, covering its outside, not its inside, comprising the sensible part of man, but not touching the divine image itself.

And the sensible is dissolved, not annihilated;

for annihilation is the passing over into non-being;

but dissolution is the diffusion back into the elements of the cosmos, from which it had its constitution.

And that which has come to be among these has not perished, even if

it escapes the apprehension of our sensation.

And the cause of the dissolution is clear through the example given by us.

For since sensation has a kinship toward the gross and earthly, while the intellectual nature is better and higher than the movements according to sensation, on this account, the judgment concerning the good having gone astray in the testing of the senses, and the failure concerning the good having brought into being the subsistence of the opposite state, the part of us that has become useless is dissolved by the reception of the opposite.

And the account of the example is of this sort.

Let it be granted that some vessel is composed of clay, and that this has been filled, by some malice, with molten lead, and that the lead, having been poured in, has set fast and remains unpourable; and that the owner lays claim to the vessel, and, having the skill of the potter, breaks the earthenware off around the lead;

then thus again, according to the former shape, re-fashions the vessel for his own use, it having become empty of the matter mixed into it.

So then also the moulder of our vessel, vice having been mixed into the sensitive part—I mean that according to the body—dissolving the matter that received the evil, and again re-fashioning it unmixed with the opposite through the resurrection, will re-compose the vessel into its original beauty.

But since there comes about a certain bond and communion of the passions according to sin both to the soul and to the body, and there is a certain analogy of bodily death to the death of the soul;

for just as in the flesh we name the separation from sensible life death, so also in the case of the soul we name the separation from true life death;

since, then, the communion with evil is one and the same, as has been said before, contemplated both in soul and in body;

for the wicked thing proceeds into activity through both;

on this account the death of dissolution, from the putting on of the dead skins, does not touch the soul.

For how could that be dissolved which is not composite? But since there is need that the stains implanted in it from sins be removed through some healing, on this account, in the present life the medicine of virtue was applied for the treatment of such wounds.

But if it should remain untreated, the healing is reserved in the life after this.

But just as there are certain differences of the sufferings according to the body, of which some admit treatment more easily, others with more difficulty, in which case both cuttings and cauterizations and bitter draughts of medicine are employed for the removal of the affliction that has fallen upon the body, such a thing also is the judgment after this proclaimed for the healing of the soul's infirmities—which to the more careless is a threat and a correction through gloomy things, so that by fear of the painful requital we might be brought to sobriety toward the flight from vice;

but to the more understanding it is believed to be a healing and treatment from God, who leads His own creature back to the grace it had at the beginning.

For just as those who scrape off, by cutting or burning, the warts and excrescences that have grown against nature upon the body do not bring about the cure painlessly to the one benefited, yet they do not perform the cutting to the harm of the one who endures it; so also whatever material superfluities have hardened upon our souls, made fleshly through the communion of the passions, are at the time of the judgment cut away and scraped off by that ineffable wisdom and power of Him who, as the Gospel says, heals the sick.

"For the healthy," He says, "have no need of a physician, but those who are ill."

And because there has come to be in the soul a great cohesion toward evil, just as the cutting of a wart stings the surface;

for that which has grown into the nature against nature clings to the subject through a certain sympathy, and there comes about a certain unnatural blending of the alien with what is ours, so that the sensation is pained and bitten when what is against nature is separated off;

so also, when the soul is being made thin and melted away in the reproofs over sin, as the prophecy somewhere says, on account of the affinity toward evil that has come to be in its depths, there of necessity follow certain unspeakable

and inexpressible pains, the description of which has the inexpressibility equal to the nature of the hoped-for goods.

For neither these nor those are brought under the power of words or the conjecture of the understanding.

Therefore one who looks toward the end of the wisdom of Him who administers the whole would no longer reasonably name the Creator of men the author of evils out of small-mindedness, either saying that He is ignorant of what shall be, or that, knowing and having made, He is not outside the impulse toward the wicked.

For indeed He both knew what would be and did not hinder the impulse toward what was coming about;

for that mankind would turn aside from the good, He who comprehends all things by His cognitive power and who looks equally upon the future and the past did not fail to know.

But just as He beheld the turning aside, so also He perceived the recall of man again toward the good.

What then was better—not to bring our nature into existence at all, since He foresaw that the one to come into being would fail of the good, or, having brought it forth and it having fallen sick, to recall it again through repentance to the grace it had at the beginning? But to name God the author of evils on account of the bodily pains which of necessity supervene upon the fluidity of nature, or to think Him not even the Creator of man at all, lest He be suspected as the cause also of the things that pain us—this is of the utmost small-mindedness of those who distinguish the good and the evil by sensation, who do not know that this alone is by nature good, of which sensation does not take hold, and that alone is evil which is alienation from the true good.

But to judge the good and the not-good by pains and pleasures is proper to the irrational nature, in which the comprehension of the truly good has no place, because they do not partake of mind and understanding.

But that man is the work of God, having come to be good and for the noblest ends, is clear not only from what has been said, but also from countless other things, the multitude of which we will pass over because of their immeasurableness.

And in naming God the maker of man, we have not forgotten the things clarified by us in the preface against the Greeks, in which it was demonstrated that the Word of God is something essential and subsisting, being Himself both God and Word, comprehending all creative power, or rather being self-power and having the impulse toward every good and accomplishing whatever He may will by having the power running together with the will, whose will and work is the life of the things that are, from whom man too was brought forth into living, adorned godlike-ly with all the noblest things.

But since that alone is by nature unalterable which does not have its genesis through creation, while all that has come to subsist from the uncreated nature out of non-being, beginning straightway from a turning of being, always proceeds through alteration—if it acts according to nature, the alteration coming about for them toward the better forever; but if it should be turned aside from the straight, the movement toward the opposite succeeding them;

since, then, man too was among these, in whom the changeableness of nature slipped aside toward the opposite, and the withdrawal from the goods once made introduces in consequence every kind of evil, so that to the turning away from life death is introduced in its place, to the privation of light darkness supervenes, to the absence of virtue vice is introduced, and to every kind of good the catalogue of the opposites is counted up against it—the one who through ill-counsel had fallen into these and such things;

for it was not possible for one who had turned away from prudence to be in prudence, nor for one who had withdrawn from wisdom to counsel anything wise;

by whom must he be recalled again to the grace at the beginning? To whom belonged the setting upright of the fallen, the recall of the lost, the leading by the hand of the strayed? To whom else than altogether to the Lord of nature? For to Him alone who at the beginning had given life was it both possible and fitting also to recall it when it had perished.

This we hear from the mystery of the truth, learning that God made man at the beginning and saved him when he had fallen.

But up to these points one who looks to the sequence will perhaps agree with the argument, because none of the things said seems to be outside the conception befitting God;

but toward the things that follow he will not be similarly disposed, through which especially the mystery of the truth is confirmed;

human birth, and the growth from infancy to maturity, food and drink, and toil, and sleep, and grief, and tears, and false accusation, and the tribunal, and the cross, and death, and the laying in the tomb;

for these things, taken up together with the mystery, somehow dull the faith of the more small-minded, so that they do not accept even the sequel of what is said, on account of the things aforesaid.

For they do not admit the God-befitting character of the resurrection from the dead, on account of the unseemliness about death.

But I think it necessary first, having a little withdrawn the reasoning from the grossness of the flesh, to consider the good in itself and what is not such, by what marks each of these is apprehended.

For I think none of those who have reasoned will contradict that one thing alone among all is by nature shameful, namely the passion according to vice, while that which is outside vice is alien to all shame.

And that with which nothing shameful is mixed is altogether apprehended in the portion of the good, and the truly good is unmixed with its opposite.

And there befits God everything that is contemplated in the region of the good.

Either, then, let them show that birth, nurture, growth, the advance toward the perfection of nature, the experience of death, the return from death, are vice;

or, if they agree that the things said are outside vice, they will of necessity confess that what is alien to vice is nothing shameful.

And since that which is freed from all shamefulness and vice is altogether shown to be good, how are those not pitiable in their unreasonableness who dogmatize that the good does not befit God? "But," he says, "human nature is small and easily circumscribed, while the Godhead is infinite; and how could the infinite be comprised in the atom?" And who says this, that the infinity of the Godhead was comprised, as in some vessel, in the circumscription of the flesh? For not even in our own life is the intellectual nature shut up within the bounds of the flesh.

But the mass of the body is circumscribed by its own parts, while the soul, by the movements of the understanding, spreads out at will over all creation, both ascending up to the heavens and treading upon the depths, and traversing the breadth of the inhabited world, and penetrating by its inquisitiveness into the regions beneath the earth, and often coming to be in contemplation of the heavenly wonders, in no way weighed down by the encumbrance of the body.

But if the soul of man, blended with the body by the necessity of nature, comes to be everywhere at will, what necessity is there to say that the Godhead is shut up in the nature of the flesh, and not rather, through the examples within our reach, to take some fitting conjecture concerning the divine economy? For just as fire is seen upon the lamp laying hold of the underlying material, and reason distinguishes both the fire upon the material and the material that kindles the fire, yet in fact it is not possible, having cut these apart from one another, to show the flame separated by itself from the material, but the two together become one; so also in this case.

And let no one bring in the destructive quality of fire together with the example, but having received only so much as is fitting in the image, let him reject what does not correspond.

In the same manner, then, as we see the flame both kindled from the underlying material and not shut up within the material, what hinders us, having contemplated a certain union and approach of the divine nature toward the human, from preserving the God-befitting conception even in the approach, believing the Deity to be outside all circumscription, even if He be in man? But if you seek how the Godhead is mingled with the human, it is time for you first to seek what is the union of the soul with the flesh.

But if the manner of your own soul is unknown, according to which it is united to the body, neither think that altogether the other must come to be within your apprehension;

but just as here too we have believed the soul to be something other than the body

from the fact that the flesh, isolated from the soul, becomes dead and inactive, and yet we do not recognize the manner of the union, so also there we confess that the divine nature differs, in the direction of the more majestic, from the mortal and perishable, yet we are not able to comprehend the manner of the blending of the divine with the human.

But that God came to be in the nature of man we do not doubt, through the recorded miracles; but the how, as being greater than the approach of reasonings, we decline to investigate.

For not even believing that all the corporeal and intelligible creation has subsisted from the incorporeal and uncreated nature do we, together with the faith concerning these things, examine the whence or the how.

But, accepting the that-it-came-to-be, we leave uninvestigated the manner of the constitution of the whole, as being altogether ineffable and inexplicable.

But concerning God's having been manifested to us in flesh, let one who seeks the proofs look to the activities.

For indeed of God's existing at all one could have no other proof than the testimony through the activities themselves.

Just as, then, looking to the whole, and surveying the dispensations throughout the cosmos and the benefits wrought from God concerning our life, we apprehend that there transcends a certain power, creative of the things that come to be and preserving of the things that are; so also in the case of the God manifested to us through flesh, we have made the miracles according to the activities a sufficient proof of the manifestation of the Godhead, having contemplated all by the recorded works, through which the divine nature is characterized.

It is of God to give life to men, of God to preserve the things that are through providence, of God to bestow food and drink upon those who have obtained life through flesh, of God to do good to the one in need, of God to lead the nature that had been turned aside by weakness back again to itself through health, of God to preside in like manner over all creation—earth, sea, air, and the regions above the air—of God to have power sufficient for all things, and before all to be superior to death and corruption.

If, then, the account concerning Him were deficient in any of these and such things, those outside the faith would reasonably set aside our mystery;

but if all the things through which God is conceived are seen in the narratives concerning Him, what is it that hinders the faith? "But," he says, "birth and death are proper to the fleshly nature."

But that which is before birth and that which is after death escapes the commonness of our nature.

For looking to both the limits of human life, we know both whence we begin and at what we end.

For man, having begun to be from passion, is brought to completion by passion.

But there [in His case] neither did birth begin from passion, nor did death end in passion;

for neither did pleasure precede the birth, nor did corruption succeed the death.

Do you disbelieve the miracle? I rejoice at your unbelief;

for you altogether confess, by the very things in which you hold what is said to be beyond faith, that the miracles are beyond nature.

Let this very thing, then, be to you a proof of the Godhead of the One who appeared: that the proclamation does not proceed by the things according to nature.

For if the narratives concerning Christ were within the bounds of nature, where is the divine? But if the account transcends nature, in the very things in which you disbelieve, in these is the proof that the One proclaimed is God.

For man is begotten from union and after death comes to be in corruption;

if the proclamation had comprised these things, you would altogether not have thought Him to be God who was attested in the properties of our nature.

But since you hear that He was born, yet that He went beyond the commonness of our nature both by the manner of His birth and by His unsusceptibility to the alteration into corruption, it would be well, by consequence, to use your unbelief toward the other point: namely, not to think Him to be a mere man, one of those displayed in our nature.

For it is altogether necessary that one who does not believe such a one to be a man should be led to the faith that He is God.

After recounting his birth, he also related together that he was born of a virgin.

If, then, it is credible from these statements that he was born, by these same statements it is in no way incredible that he was born in this manner.

For he who spoke of the birth also added that it was from virginity;

and he who mentioned the death also testified to the resurrection along with the death.