On the Making of Man 1 part 4/7

And just as the Gospel calls the image stamped on the coin "the image of Caesar," by which we learn that there is, in outward form, a likeness of the figure to Caesar, but in the underlying substance a difference;

so also, according to the present argument, perceiving in place of stamped features those things observed in the divine nature and in the human—in which the likeness consists—we discover in the underlying substance the difference, which is seen in the uncreated and the created.

Since, then, the one remains the same and ever so, while that which has come into being through creation began its existence from change and is by kinship subject to such alteration;

for this reason He who knows all things before their coming-to-be, as the prophecy says, having followed out—or rather having foreknown by His prescient power—toward what the motion of human choice would incline according to its self-governing and free will, since He saw what would come to be, devised for the image the distinction of male and female, which no longer looks toward the divine archetype, but, as has been said, is allied to the more irrational nature.

The reason for such a device only those could know who are eyewitnesses of the truth and ministers of the Word.

But we, in so far as is possible, having imagined the truth through certain conjectures and images, set forth what comes to mind not in dogmatic fashion, but as in the form of an exercise, offering it to the fair-minded among our hearers.

What then is it that we have thought concerning these things? When the text said that "God made man," by the indefiniteness of the expression it indicates the whole of humanity.

For Adam was not now named together with the creature, as the narrative states in what follows;

but the name given to the man who was created is not the individual, but the universal.

We are therefore led by the universal designation of the nature to suppose some such thing as this: that by the divine foreknowledge and power the whole of humanity was comprehended in the first formation.

For one must hold that nothing is indefinite among the things made by God,

but that each of the things that exist has some limit and measure, circumscribed by the wisdom of its Maker.

As, then, the individual man is bounded by the quantity belonging to his body, and the measure of his subsistence is the size which is rounded off with the surface of the body;

so, I think, just as in one body, the whole fullness of humanity was embraced by the prescient power of the God of all, and this is what the text teaches when it says that "God also made man, and made him in the image of God."

For the image is not in a part of the nature, nor is the grace in any one of the things observed in him;

but such power extends equally over the whole race.

And a sign of this is that the mind is enthroned alike in all;

all have the power of thinking and forethought, and all the other faculties through which the divine nature is imaged in that which was made according to it.

In like manner does the man who was manifested at the first formation of the world, and he who shall come to be at the consummation of all things; equally do they bear upon themselves the divine image.

The whole nature, therefore, extending from the first to the last, is one single image of Him who is;

while the distinction of the race into male and female was added last to the formed being, for this reason, as I think.

What must one say to those who raise the difficulty: if procreation came after sin, how would souls have come into being, had the first men remained without sin?

Or rather, before examining the matter before us, it is perhaps better to seek the solution of the objection brought forward by those who contend against us.

For they say that before sin there is no record of birth, nor of travail, nor of the impulse toward procreation;

but that, after they were banished from paradise following the sin, and after the woman was condemned to the punishment of travail, then Adam came to know his consort in wedlock, and only then did the beginning of procreation take place.

If, then, there was no marriage in paradise, nor travail, nor birth, they say one is compelled by logical consequence to reckon that the souls of men would not have come into being in multitude, unless the grace of immortality had fallen away into mortality, and unless marriage, through those who are born afterwards, had preserved the nature, bringing in those who come from them in place of those who pass away—so that in a certain manner the sin that entered into the life of men proved profitable.

For the human race would have remained in the pair of the first-formed, had not the fear of death stirred up nature to succession.

But here again, what the truly true account may be, whatever it is, would be clear only to those who, like Paul, have been initiated into the unspeakable things of paradise.

But our account is this:

When the Sadducees once disputed the doctrine of the resurrection, and brought forward, as a refutation of their own teaching, that much-married woman who had belonged to the seven brothers, and then inquired whose wife she would be after the resurrection, the Lord answered their argument—not only instructing the Sadducees, but also revealing to all who came after them the mystery of the life in the resurrection.

For in the resurrection, He says, they neither marry nor are given in marriage; for neither can they die any more,

for they are equal to the angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

Now the grace of the resurrection promises us nothing else than the restoration of the fallen to their ancient state;

for the grace we look for is a certain return to the first life, bringing back again into paradise him who was cast out from it.

If, then, the life of those restored is closely akin to that of the angels, it is clear that the life before the transgression was a kind of angelic life;

and for this reason our return to the ancient state of our life is likened to the angels.

Yet surely, as has been said, although there is no marriage among them, the hosts of the angels exist in countless myriads;

therefore in the same way, if no deviation and falling away from the angelic equality of honor had come upon us through sin, neither should we have needed marriage for our increase.

But whatever is the mode of increase in the nature of the angels—unspeakable and inconceivable by human conjectures, yet assuredly existing—

this same mode would have operated also in the case of men, who were made a little lower than the angels, increasing mankind to the measure determined by the counsel of their Maker.

But if anyone is perplexed, seeking out the manner of the generation of men, supposing that man did not need the cooperation that comes through marriage, we in turn will ask him about the manner of the angelic existence: how those beings are in countless myriads,

and yet are of one essence, and are numbered in multitude.

For this is the fitting answer we shall give to one who asks, How could man have existed apart from marriage?—saying that it is even as the angels exist without marriage;

for that man was like to those beings before the transgression is shown by his restoration again to that condition.

Now that these things have been thus clearly distinguished by us, we must return to our former discourse:

how, after the construction of the image, God devised for His creature the distinction of male and female.

For with regard to this, I say that the consideration already worked out by us is useful.

Having formed the whole of man, in His own will, after the divine image, He did not wait to see the number of souls completed to its own fullness by the gradual additions of those coming into being;

but having by His foreknowing power comprehended in their entirety, in one fullness, the whole of human nature, and having honored it with the lofty and angelic portion, since He foresaw by His power of beholding that the choice would not move straight toward the good, and would for this reason fall away from the angelic life;

so that the multitude of human souls might not be cut short, having fallen from that mode by which the angels were increased to multitude;

for this reason He devised for our nature the kind of increase suited to those who had slipped into sin, implanting in humanity, instead of the angelic majesty, the bestial and irrational mode of succession one from another.

[hence the Scripture says] that Man being in honor did not understand—speaking of the honor as the equality of honor with the angels.

For truly he became like the beasts, who received into his nature this fluid mode of generation, because of his inclination toward what is material.

That the irrational passions in us have their origins from our kinship with the irrational nature.

For I think that from this beginning the individual passions also, as if issuing from some fountain, flood into human life;

and a proof of these statements is the kinship of the passions, which appears alike in us and in the irrational animals.

For surely it is not lawful to ascribe the first beginnings of the passionate disposition to human nature, which was formed after the divine likeness.

But since the life of the irrational creatures entered this world first, and man, for the cause already mentioned, came to have something of that nature too—I mean as regards generation—he thereby came to share also in the other things observed in that nature.

For man's likeness to the Divine is not according to anger, nor is the surpassing nature characterized by pleasure; cowardice and rashness, the craving for more and the hatred of having less, and all such things are far from the character that befits God.

These things, then, human nature drew to itself from the irrational part.

For the things by which the irrational life was safeguarded for its own preservation, when transferred to the human life, became passions.

For by anger the carnivorous beasts are preserved;

by love of pleasure the prolific animals are saved;

cowardice preserves the weak, fear preserves the one easily caught by the stronger, and gluttony preserves the well-fleshed.

And to miss any of the things that pertain to pleasure is among the irrational creatures an occasion of grief.

All these and such things entered together, through the bestial mode of generation, into the constitution of man.

And let it be granted me to delineate in my discourse the human image after the manner of some marvel of the modeler's art.

For just as one may see in figures the double-carved forms which those skilled in such craft contrive to astonish their beholders, carving beneath on one head two forms of faces;

so, it seems to me, man bears a twofold likeness to things opposed:

in the godlike quality of his understanding being formed after the divine beauty, but in the impulses that arise according to passion bearing an affinity to the bestial.

And often the reason itself is brutalized through its inclination and disposition toward the irrational, covering over the better with the worse;

there comes about a kind of turning of the good character toward the irrational image, the whole nature being remolded toward this, as the reasoning faculty cultivates the beginnings of the passions and increases them from small to great.

For by lending its own cooperation to the passion, it has wrought the generation of absurdities, abundant and far-spreading.

Thus love of pleasure had its beginning from the likeness to the irrational, but grew up among human transgressions, begetting as many varieties of sins committed in pleasure as it is not possible to find among the irrational creatures.

Thus the rising up to anger is akin to the impulse of the irrational creatures, but it grows by the alliance of the reasonings.

For thence come wrath, envy, falsehood, conspiracy, hypocrisy;

all these are the produce of the evil husbandry of the mind.

For if the passion be stripped of the alliance that comes from the reasonings, the anger is left short-lived and feeble, like a bubble, coming into being and at once perishing. Thus the gluttony of swine introduced covetousness, and the high spirit of the horse became the beginning of pride;

and all the several things which set out from the bestial irrationality became, through the evil use of the mind, vice; just as, on the contrary, if the reasoning takes over the mastery of such movements, each of these is transformed into a form of virtue.

For anger produces courage, timidity produces caution, and fear produces obedience, hatred produces the turning away from vice, and the power of love produces the desire for that which is truly good.

And the loftiness of character lifts itself above the passions, and preserves the mind unenslaved by evil.

And the great Apostle commends this kind of elevation, continually exhorting us to set our minds on the things that are above.

And thus one may find that every such movement, when uplifted by the loftiness of the understanding, is conformed to the beauty of the divine image.

But since the inclination of sin is something heavy and downward-tending, the other prevails the more;

for the ruling part of the soul is dragged down by the weight of the irrational nature, rather than the heavy and earthy being uplifted by the loftiness of the understanding.

Therefore those are in some way to be excused who, looking upon such things, then do not readily agree that the divine form is in these.

But it is possible, through those who have rightly ordered their lives, to behold the divine image in men.

For if one who is passionate and fleshly causes man to be disbelieved as adorned with the divine beauty,

the one who is altogether lofty in virtue and pure from defilements will confirm for you the higher estimate concerning men.

It would be better, perhaps, to set forth the argument by an example:

someone among those notorious for wickedness blotted out the beauty of his nature with the defilement of vice—Jeconiah, perhaps, or whoever else is remembered for evil;

but in Moses and those like him the form of the image was preserved pure.

In those, then, in whom the beauty was not darkened, in these there is clear proof of what is said, that man has become a copy of God.

But perhaps someone is ashamed that our life is sustained by food after the likeness of the irrational creatures, and for this reason thinks man unworthy to be regarded as fashioned after the image of God.

But let him hope that release from this service shall one day be granted to our nature, in the life that is looked for.

For the kingdom of God, as the Apostle says, is not food and drink;

nor did the Lord declare that man shall live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

Moreover, since the resurrection shows us a life equal to the angels, and there is no eating among the angels, there is sufficient proof that man, who is to live after the likeness of the angels, shall be delivered from such a service.

Against those who say that the enjoyment of the hoped-for good things will again consist in food and drink, because from the beginning it was written that man lived by these in paradise.

But perhaps someone says that man will not return again to the very same form of life, seeing that formerly we were in the state of eating, but afterward shall be released from such a service.

But I, hearing the Holy Scripture, know not only bodily food, nor the gladness that comes through the flesh, but I know also another kind of nourishment, having a certain analogy to that of the body, the enjoyment of which passes over to the soul alone.

Eat of my bread, Wisdom commands the hungry;

and the Lord blesses those who hunger for such food.

And if anyone thirst, He says, let him come to me and drink. And the great Isaiah, Drink gladness, commands those who are able to perceive the loftiness of his meaning.

There is also a certain prophetic threat against those who deserve punishment, that they shall be chastised with famine;

but this famine is not a lack of bread and water, but a failure of the word.

For he says not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

It is fitting, then, to understand the fruit of God's planting in Eden (and Eden is interpreted as 'delight') to be something worthy, and not to doubt that man was nourished by it;

and not to imagine this transient and effluent nourishment in connection with life in Paradise.

'Of every tree,' he says, 'that is in the garden you shall surely eat for food.' Who will give to one who hungers in a wholesome way that tree which is in Paradise, that which comprehends every good, whose name is 'the All,' the partaking of which the Word grants to man? For in the generic and transcendent principle every form of good is by nature bound up with itself, and the whole is one single thing.

And who will keep me from the mixed and ambiguous tasting of the tree? For surely it is not unclear to those of keener sight what that 'All' is whose fruit is life, and again, what this mingled thing is whose end is death.

For he who ungrudgingly set forth the enjoyment of the All, by some reason and forethought keeps man from partaking of the things held in common.

For both alike regard the one grace of the permitted delight to be the very thing that is truly good, which indeed is also all good.

Therefore the All-tree, whose food the Word gives to him who was formed according to God, is the same as the tree of life.

Set over against this tree is another tree, whose food is the knowledge of good and evil—not that each of the contrary things it signifies bears fruit separately and in turn;

but it puts forth a certain confused and mixed fruit, blended with contrary qualities, the eating of which the Author of life forbids, but the serpent counsels, that he might prepare the entrance for death.

And he becomes persuasive in his counsel, having tinged the fruit with a certain fair colour and pleasure, so that it might appear pleasant to the sight and excite the appetite toward tasting.

What was the life in Paradise, and what was the forbidden tree.

What then is that which has the knowledge of good and evil mingled together, bedecked with the pleasures that come through sense? Surely I shall not stray far from the truth in using the meaning of 'the known' as a starting point for the inquiry.

Here I find that what Scripture means is not 'knowledge' in the ordinary sense, but a certain distinction, drawn from scriptural usage, between knowledge and discernment.

For to discern skillfully the good from the evil belongs, the Apostle says, to a more perfect habit and to senses that have been exercised;

wherefore he also makes it a command to prove all things, and says that discernment is proper to the spiritual man.

But 'knowledge' does not everywhere signify, according to its meaning, science and understanding, but rather a disposition toward what is pleasing;

as in 'The Lord knew those that are His'; and to Moses He says, 'I knew you above all'; while concerning those condemned in wickedness, He who knows all things says, 'I never knew you.' Therefore the tree from which the mixed knowledge bears fruit is among the things forbidden.

And that fruit is mixed through contraries—the fruit that has the serpent as its advocate—perhaps according to this reasoning: that evil is not set forth bare in itself, appearing according to its own nature.

For wickedness would be ineffectual if it were not tinged with some good that draws the deceived one toward desire of it.

But as it is, the nature of evil is somehow mixed, having ruin hidden in its depth like some snare, while in the deceit that appears on the surface it displays some semblance of good.

The fair colour of money seems good to the lovers of money;

but the love of money becomes a root of all evils.

And who would have slid down into the stinking mire of licentiousness, if he who was dragged by this bait toward passion had not supposed pleasure to be something good and desirable? So too the rest of sins, having corruption hidden within, seem at first sight desirable, being eagerly pursued by the heedless instead of the good through a certain deception.

Since, then, the many judge the good by what gratifies the senses, and there is a certain equivocation between the good that truly is and that which only seems to be good;

for this reason the desire which arises toward evil as toward good was named by Scripture 'the knowledge of good and evil,' since 'knowledge' here interprets a certain joint-disposition and intermixture.

It is neither unqualifiedly evil, because it is tinged with good, nor purely good, because evil lies hidden beneath;

but he says that the fruit of the forbidden tree is mixed of both, the tasting of which he said leads to death for those who touch it—all but openly proclaiming the doctrine that the truly good is simple and uniform in nature, foreign to all duplicity and conjunction with its contrary.

But evil is varied and disguised, reckoned to be one thing yet found through experience to be another; so that 'knowledge'—that is, the apprehension gained through experience—becomes the beginning and the occasion of death and corruption.

For man would not have been deceived by manifest evil;

but having brightened the appearance with a certain beauty, and bewitched the taste with a certain pleasure of sense, it appeared persuasive to the woman, as Scripture says;

'For the woman saw,' it says, 'that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasing to the eyes to behold, and beautiful to contemplate; and taking of its fruit she ate.'

And that eating became the mother of death for men.

This, then, is the mixed fruit-bearing, the Word clearly interpreting the meaning according to which that tree was named the knowable of good and evil—because, like the harmful poison mingled with honey, insofar as it sweetens the sense it seems good, but insofar as it destroys the one who partakes, it becomes the uttermost of all evil.

When, then, the wicked poison had taken effect against the life of man;

then man—that great thing both in fact and in name, the image fashioned of the divine nature—was made like to vanity, as the Prophet says.

For the image was made akin to the better of the things conceived in us;

but all that is grievous and miserable about life is far from the likeness to the Divine.

That the resurrection is hoped for not so much from the scriptural proclamation as from the very necessity of things, by logical consequence.

But evil is not so strong as to prevail over the good power;

nor is the folly of our nature mightier and more abiding than the wisdom of God.

For it is not possible that what is mutable and changeable should be more dominant and more abiding than that which is ever the same and fixed in the good;

but the divine counsel has the unchangeable wholly and altogether, while the mutability of our nature does not even abide fixed in evil.

For that which is ever in motion, if it has its advance toward the good, will never cease its forward course because of the boundlessness of the thing traversed.

For it will find no limit to that which is sought, at which, once grasped, it might ever come to rest from its motion.

But if it should have its inclination toward the contrary,

when it has run through the course of evil and arrived at the uttermost measure of evil;

then the ever-moving impulse, finding by nature no stopping-place, when it has traversed the span of evil, of necessity turns its motion toward the good.

For since evil does not extend to infinity but is bounded by necessary limits, the succession of the good consequently follows upon the end of evil.

And thus, as has been said, the ever-moving quality of our nature again at last runs back to the good course, chastened by the memory of its former misfortunes so as not to be caught again in the same.

Therefore our course will again be among good things, because the nature of evil is circumscribed by necessary limits.

For just as those skilled in things on high say that the whole cosmos is full of light, and that darkness comes about by the obstruction of the earth's body casting a shadow (but this, according to the shape of the spherical body, is enclosed cone-wise behind the sun's ray; while the sun, exceeding the earth by a manifold magnitude, embracing it on every side with its rays in a circle, joins the meetings of its light at the apex of the cone, so that, supposing one had the power to pass beyond the measure to which the shadow extends, one would surely come to be in light not cut off by darkness)—

so too, I think, one must reckon concerning ourselves: that having passed through the boundary of evil, when we come to be at the extremity of the shadow of sin, we shall again live in light, since the nature of good things abounds beyond all measure in comparison with the measure of evil.

Again, then, comes Paradise; again that tree, which is indeed the tree of life; again the grace of the image, and the dignity of dominion.

It seems to me that none of these things are such as have now been subjected by God to men for the use of this life;

but the hope is of some other kingdom, the account of which remains in things unutterable.

Against those who say: if the resurrection is something fair and good, why has it not already come about, but is hoped for after certain periods of time?

But let us hold to the sequence of what has been examined.

For perhaps someone, his mind taking wing toward the sweetness of the hope, regards it as a burden and a loss that he does not more quickly come to be among those good things which are beyond human sense and knowledge, and finds grievous the intervening stretch of time before what is longed for;

like a child, vexed at the brief postponement of his pleasures.

For since all things are administered by reason and wisdom, it is wholly necessary to deem nothing of the things that come to pass to be without share of the Word himself and the wisdom that is in him.

What is this reason, according to which the removal from the painful life does not come at once to what is longed for, but this heavy and corporeal life is prolonged to certain appointed times, awaiting the end of the completion of the whole, in order that then the human life, freed as it were from a bridle, might again, unconfined and free, run back to the blessed and passionless life?

But whether the account approaches the truth of the things sought, the Truth herself would clearly know. What at any rate has come to our mind is this—taking up again the first account, I mean:

'Let us make,' says God, 'man according to our image and likeness.'

'And God made man;

according to the image of God he made him.' The image of God, therefore, which is contemplated in the whole human nature, had its completion.

For the earthen formation is called, by a certain etymological naming, 'Adam,' as those versed in the Hebrew tongue say.

Man, then, came to be according to the image—the universal nature, the godlike thing.