Dialogue with Heraclides 1 part 2/2

"All my bones shall say:"

"O Lord, who is like you?" These bones speak, converse, declare, and perceive God; whereas those insensible bones are like the ones that physicians' assistants present, sawing through bones of one who feels nothing under the sawing.

"Therefore all my bones shall say:"

"O Lord, who is like you?" The inner man has all his bones.

The inner man has a heart:

"Listen to me, you who have lost your heart." Those people had this heart of the body;

for that bodily heart is not lost.

But whenever someone neglects the cultivation of his intellectual habit, and through much idleness casts away his power of understanding, he has lost his heart, and to such a one it is said:

"Listen to me, you who have lost your heart." "But even the hairs of your head are all numbered." What hairs? Those by which they were spiritually Nazirites.

Since you have all these things belonging to the perceptible body in relation to the inner man, no longer doubt concerning the blood as well, that—bearing the same name as the perceptible blood, just like the other members of the body—it exists in the inner man.

That blood—the blood of a sinful soul—is poured out;

for indeed, "The blood of your souls shall be required."

He did not say, "Your blood," but "The blood of your souls."

And, "The blood I will require from the hand of the watchman."

What blood does God require from the hand of the watchman, other than that blood of the sinner which is poured out? In this way the heart of the fool is lost, and it is said, "Listen to me, you who have lost your heart," inasmuch as the blood and the life-giving power of the soul is poured out.

If the soul has been rightly understood—understood according to the inner man, and understood that in it lies the "according to the image"—then it is clear that Paul speaks well when he says:

"For it is far better to depart and be with Christ." Before the resurrection the righteous person is with Christ, and in the soul itself he lives with Christ.

For this reason, "It is far better to depart and be with Christ."

But according to you who say that the soul lies in the tomb together with the body, that it has not gone out from the body, that it does not rest, that it has not come to be in the paradise of God, that it does not rest in the bosom of Abraham—

according to you who say such things, it is not "far better to depart and be with Christ";

for one is not with Christ at the moment of departing, if the soul is blood.

If the soul lies in the tombs, how can it be with Christ? But according to me and to the word of God: the soul that has departed from its toils, that has departed from its sweat, that has been released from the body, that is able to say, "Now you release your servant, Master, in peace," goes forth in peace and rests with Christ.

Thus the soul of Abraham heard:

"But you shall go to your fathers in peace, nourished in a good old age." He departs to the fathers.

What fathers? Those concerning whom Paul speaks:

"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father, from whom every fatherhood is named." In this way, according to us, Aaron also was released:

For indeed it is written in Ecclesiastes concerning the righteous man who has striven nobly, who has departed from the bond of the body: 'Out of the house of prisoners he shall come forth to reign.'

Thus am I persuaded to die for the truth; thus do I despise the death so called; thus—bring on the wild beasts, bring on the crosses, bring on the fire, bring on the tortures!

I know that as soon as I am set free I go out of the body, and I rest with Christ.

For this reason let us strive, for this reason let us wrestle and groan while we are in the body—not as those who shall yet again be in the tombs in the body, but as those who shall be set loose, and who shall change the body into one more spiritual;

we who shall be released and be with Christ—how then do we groan, we who are in the body? When Philip the bishop had come in, Demetrius, another bishop, said:

Our brother Origen teaches that the soul is immortal. Origen said:

The remark of Pope Demetrius has given us the starting point for another question.

He said that we had asserted the soul to be immortal.

To this assertion I will reply that the soul is both immortal and not immortal.

I shall try to set forth all that this means—not in the manner of the Greeks, but all that it means according to the divine Scripture.

Perhaps someone wiser than I will set forth still other meanings as well;

I, however, for the present know of three deaths.

Which are these three deaths? A man lives to God and has died to sin, according to the apostle.

This death is a blessed one.

A man dies to sin;

this is the death which my Lord died.

For in that he died, he died to sin. I know also another death, by which a man dies to God, concerning which it is said:

'The soul that sins, it shall die.' I know also a third death, by which we commonly reckon those who have departed from the body to have died;

for Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

Since, then, there are three deaths, let us consider whether the human soul is immortal with respect to all three deaths, or not with respect to all three, but immortal with respect to certain of them.

According to the middle death we all men die;

this is the one we reckon to be the dissolution.

<This> death no human soul dies;

for if it did die, it would not be punished after death.

'Men shall seek death,' it says, 'and shall not find it.' For the souls that are punished shall seek death; they will rather wish not to exist at all than to exist and be punished;

for this reason men shall seek death and shall by no means find it.

According to this sense every human soul is immortal.

But according to the remaining senses: according to the one, the soul is mortal—and blessed if it dies to sin.

Concerning this death Balaam, prophesying as he prayed in the divine Spirit, said:

'Let my soul die among the souls of the righteous.' Concerning this death Balaam prophesied in a marvelous way, and in a word from God he prayed for himself the most excellent things;

for he prayed to die to sin, that he might live to God:

'Let my soul die among the souls of the righteous, and let my seed be as the seed of these.' But there is yet another death, with respect to which we are not indeed immortal, yet are able, by keeping watch, not to die.

And perhaps that which is mortal in the soul is not always mortal;

for in so far as it is open to committing such a sin that 'the soul that sins, it shall die,' the soul is mortal with the real death;

but if it comes to be confirmed in blessedness, so as to be no longer susceptible to death, then the soul which has eternal life is no longer mortal, but has become, in this sense too, immortal.

How is it said by the apostle, 'He who alone has immortality,' with reference to God? I seek, that I may find, that Christ Jesus died for all apart from God.

You have here how God alone has immortality.

Let us therefore take up eternal life;

let us take it up out of that which lies within our own power.

God does not give it to us outright, but sets it before us;

'Behold, I have set life before your face.' It lies within our power to stretch out the hand, to do good deeds, to take hold of life, and to lay it up in the soul.

This life is Christ, who said:

'I am the life.' This is the life which now is present to the righteous in a shadow, but then face to face;

for a Spirit before our face is Christ [the Lord], of whom let us say:

'In his shadow we shall live among the nations.'

If your shadow of life affords so many good things—such as Moses had when he prophesied, such as Isaiah had when he beheld the Lord of Sabaoth seated upon a throne high and lifted up, such as Jeremiah had when he heard, 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you,' such as Ezekiel had when he saw the Cherubim, when he saw the wheels and the unspeakable mysteries—how shall we live when we no longer live under the shadow of life, but come to be in that very Life itself?

For now our life is hidden with Christ;

but when Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall we also be manifested with him in glory.

...in the tabernacle, in that we are at home in the body;

for so long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord.

Let us long to depart from the body and to dwell with the Lord, so that, dwelling with him, we may become one in relation to the God of all things; and let us behold his only-begotten Son, being saved in all things and made blessed, in Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the dominion unto the ages of the ages.