Cure of the Greek Maladies 1 part 1/16

Often, when I have fallen in with certain men addicted to the mythology of the Greeks, they have ridiculed our faith, saying that we do nothing more than enjoin upon those whom we instruct in divine matters simply to believe; and they accused the apostles of being unlearned, calling them barbarians who lacked the polish of fine speech.

They also declared that honouring the martyrs was laughable, and that it was utterly senseless for the living to try to procure benefit from the dead.

And they added other things very like these, which this treatise will set forth.

To those men I gave the answers that were fitting, refuting their accusations.

But I judged it impious and ungodly to overlook those of simple character who were being deceived by such men, and not to write down and expose the vanity of these charges.

I have divided the work into twelve discourses, and have given the discussions a relaxed, flowing style;

for I judged this suited to instruction—especially since, making use of the testimonies of Plato and the other philosophers, it was necessary that my own words, not being wholly out of tune with theirs, should be fitted to them and bear some resemblance to them.

The first discourse offers a defence on behalf of faith and of the apostles' lack of formal learning, drawing its proofs from the Greek philosophers.

The second enumerates the opinions held about the first principle of all things by the most renowned sages among the Greeks and by those after them who were called philosophers;

and setting beside them the true theology of Moses, who was older than all of them, it refutes their false teaching and shows the dazzling truth of his doctrine.

The third teaches what has been told in myth among the Greeks concerning those they call the secondary gods, and what divine Scripture teaches us concerning incorporeal but created natures—so that again, by this comparison, the praiseworthiness of what we revere may be displayed, and the foulness and stench of those abominable myths exposed.

The fourth takes as its subject matter and the cosmos, and shows that our account of the world's origin is far more seemly than that of Plato and the others.

Concerning the nature of man, the fifth takes up the contest, displaying both the Greek and the Christian opinions and teaching how great is the difference between them—as of light and darkness.

The sixth place fell to the discourse on providence,

and by natural reasonings it demonstrates that this providence is to be observed in the creation and appears in each of the things brought about by God.

Since it was necessary also to show the superfluity of the sacrifices, the seventh discourse contains this argument, accusing the Greek sacrifices by philosophical arguments, and by prophetic ones exposing the childishness of the Jewish legislation.

Using the testimonies of philosophers and historians, and indeed of poets as well, it shows that the Greeks honoured the dead not only with libations but also with sacrifices, calling some of them gods, some demigods, and some heroes—most of whom had lived in licentiousness.

I judged it useful also to compare our own lawgivers with those who had become most renowned among the Greeks—I mean the fishermen, the leather-worker, and the tax-collectors—and again to show by comparison the difference: that those laws perished, along with their framers, in the gloom of oblivion, whereas the laws of the fishermen flourish not only among Greeks and Romans, but also among Scythians, Sarmatians, Persians, and the other barbarians.

This comparison the ninth discourse contains.

But indeed I also display the difference in practical virtue, since I see the Greek faction giving itself great airs over the philosophers of old and undertaking to extol their lives in their speeches.

The twelfth discourse will therefore show that the life of those men was unworthy not only of philosophers but even of praiseworthy slaves, whereas the life of the apostles and of those who followed them was superior to human nature and like that of beings freed from bodies and ranging about heaven.

The name of the book is The Cure of the Greek Maladies, or The Recognition of Evangelical Truth from Greek Philosophy.

I, then, both for the sake of healing the sick and providing for the benefit of the healthy, have undertaken this labour;

and I exhort those who come upon the labours of others: if everything written is well, to praise the Giver of these things and to render prayers in return to those who have toiled;

but if some things are deficient, not to condemn the whole on account of these, but to gain the profit from what has been well said.

Medical healing exists, I suppose, both for the body, and also indeed for the soul;

for to each of these—to the one and to the other—many afflictions come; but to the body they come involuntarily, while to the soul, for the most part, they are self-chosen.

Knowing this well, God—being all-wise, the Creator of souls and bodies and of all things—assigned to each nature its fitting remedies, and moreover appointed physicians, training some in this science and some in that, and bade them generalship and to fight valiantly against the diseases.

But those whose bodies are not in good condition, both chafing at the disease and longing for health, yield to the physicians, who apply not only gentle remedies but also—even if they cut, even if they cauterize, even if they bid them go hungry, even if they offer cups full of bitter and unpleasant things;

and reaping health through such grievous care, they offer payment to those who heal them thus, and in receiving the treatment they do not pry into the preparation of the remedies;

for they long for salvation, they do not investigate its manner.

But those who have admitted the ruin of unbelief not only are ignorant of their grievous disease, but even suppose themselves to be enjoying the highest good fortune;

and whenever anyone wishes to apply a remedy to their malady, they at once leap away—just like those gripped by frenzy, who shake off the treatment offered them and flee from healing as from a sickness.

Those who pursue this science must, however, both endure them when they grow angry and put up with their abuse—even if they strike with the fist, even if they kick; for such are the offences committed by those who are out of their senses;

and the physicians are not vexed when these things happen, but even apply bonds and forcibly douse their heads and devise every contrivance, so as to drive out the malady and restore to the whole the former harmony of the parts.

This, then, we too must do, and must care for those so disposed as far as we are able.

For even if those enslaved to the malady are very few, and resemble some thick sediment that does not pass through the pores of the strainer because of its thickness, yet they must not be neglected, nor must we overlook them as they perish under the malady; rather, every passage must be sought out, so as to scatter the mist that lies upon them and to display the radiance of the intellectual light.

For no diligent farmer cuts out the many thorns yet leaves the few; rather, even if he finds two, even if one, he tears it up by the root and renders his cornfield clean.

Much more, then, must we do this;

for the law of our husbandry bids us not to cut out, but to transform the thorns.

Come then, let us bring the husbandman's hoe to the thorns, and with the mattock of reasoning open up the furrows of their hearing, so that none of the obstacles lying in the way may check the stream of irrigation;

and indeed let us, as upon the sick, pour out the douche and apply the saving and healing remedies.

First of all, let us heal the malady of conceit.

For indeed some of them, having had a share in poetic and rhetorical learning, and some having tasted of Plato's eloquence, despise the divine oracles as composed in a style not at all finely embellished, and do not deign to learn the truth of Being from fishermen.

And while they pluck the fruits of every craft, they do not meddle with the tongues of the craftsmen;

for they do not require their leather-workers or smiths or carpenters or painters or shipwrights or pilots to be Athenians, but even if they are Scythians, Sarmatians, Iberians, or Egyptians, they enjoy their crafts with pleasure, demanding only the accuracy of these, and not at all minding the difference of their nations.

And when they listen to a lyre-player, they require only the harmony of his playing, and do not at all seek to learn whether he is Greek or barbarian;

yet the learning of the truth alone they are unwilling to receive without fuss, but reckon it a disgrace if a barbarian should teach them this tongue;

and this vanity is held by men who have not even reached the heights of Greek philosophy, but who, as the saying goes, have tasted of only a few things with the tips of their lips, and have gleaned a few scraps from here and there.

But the most illustrious of the Greek philosophers, whose memory is on the lips of the learned and much spoken of even to this day—Pherecydes the Syrian, Pythagoras the Samian, Thales the Milesian, Solon the Athenian, and indeed that Plato, son of Ariston and disciple of Socrates, who surpassed them all in eloquence—did not shrink, for the sake of finding the truth, from journeying about Egypt and Egyptian Thebes and Sicily and Italy; and this, when not a single kingdom then governed those nations, but there were different forms of government in the cities and different laws;

for some embraced democracy, some oligarchy, and some were under tyranny, while others were ruled lawfully by kings.

Yet none of these obstacles held them back from hastening to barbarian peoples and learning from them what they supposed those men knew better than themselves;

namely, to be taught by the Hebrews the things concerning the existent God.

And these things Plutarch the Boeotian teaches, and Porphyry too teaches them—he who raged against the truth—and moreover Numenius the Pythagorean and very many others.

They say that Pythagoras also submitted to circumcision, having learned this from the Egyptians;

and the Egyptians received this law from the Hebrews.

For when Abraham the patriarch received from the God of all the commandment of circumcision, his race kept this;

and they dwelt in Egypt for a very long time, and the Egyptians emulated the Hebrews.

That circumcising infants was not an ancient law among the Egyptians, Pharaoh's daughter is a trustworthy witness;

for when she found Moses cast upon the riverbank, she at once saw the circumcision, recognized his race, and named the infant an offspring of the Hebrews.

Those, then, who had passed through all education had so great a love of learning that they despised even great wars and seas, frequented barbarian men, and gathered from everywhere whatever they judged necessary;

and Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, the best of the philosophers, did not think it beneath philosophy to learn something useful even from women.

But most of these men do not even know the 'Wrath' of Achilles, with which the young are accustomed to begin their studies of the renowned subjects;

while others, having gleaned a little from the poets and a little from the orators, and not having learned even the very names of the philosophers—except for two or three of the notable ones—call the divine Scripture barbarous, and reckon it shameful to learn the truth from it.

And from their ignorance there arises in them the malady of arrogance.

For if they had read the Greek histories, they would surely have known that the Greeks were taught the illustrious sciences and most of the crafts by the barbarians.

For they say the Egyptians were the first to discover geometry and astronomy;

astrology and the casting of nativities are said to be a Chaldean invention;

the Arabs and Phrygians were the first to devise augury;

the rhombus is the work of the Tyrrhenians, and the pipes are the Phrygians'—as the tragedies teach, and the histories teach along with them.

And the Greeks recount that the Phoenicians discovered letters, and that Cadmus first brought these into Greece;

and they say that Apis the Egyptian began the art of medicine, and that Asclepius afterwards augmented the craft;

and they say that the first boat was built in Libya.

And as for the rites of Rhea, or Cybele, or Brimo (or whatever you wish to name her—

for great is the abundance of names among you, though there are no realities underlying them)—nevertheless, that the Greeks transferred from Phrygia into Greece both these festivals and the rites performed in them, the witnesses already summoned plainly teach.

But if the Greeks were taught the crafts and the sciences and the rites of the demons and the first elements by the barbarians, and pride themselves on their teachers, why on earth do you—who cannot even understand what those men wrote—refuse to learn the truth from men who received a God-given wisdom? But if it is because they did not spring from Greece that you are unwilling to lend them your ears, then it is time for you no longer to call Thales wise, nor Pythagoras a philosopher, nor Pherecydes, that man's teacher.

[For Pythagoras was not] an Athenian, nor a Spartan, nor a Corinthian;

Aristoxenus, Aristarchus, and Theopompus say that Pythagoras was a Tyrrhenian, while Neanthes calls him a Tyrian;

and Thales some call a Milesian, but Leandros and Herodotus called him a Phoenician;

and Empedocles was of Acragas, and this is a Sicilian city.

But if indeed you say this—that these men were born and reared outside Greece, yet were trained in the Greek tongue—then first you admit that wise men have arisen also among other nations;

for indeed you marvel at Zamolxis the Thracian and Anacharsis the Scythian for their wisdom, and the fame of the Brahmans is great among you;

and these are Indians, not Greeks.

Next, you are refuted from another quarter too, for setting eloquence above truth not rightly; for you yourselves, I suppose, admit that Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, was the best of the Greek philosophers;

yet this man was born of a stone-cutter father, and for a very long time followed his father's craft.

And many others have said this, and Porphyry too recorded it in the third book of his Philosophical History;

[he says:] Let us tell concerning Socrates the things deemed worthy of memory by others also, sifting briefly the things variously fabricated by learned men, both to his praise and to his blame, but leaving uninvestigated whether he himself practised the stone-cutting craft together with his father, or his father alone.

For this, practised for a short time, in no way hindered him as regards wisdom.

And if indeed he was a sculptor of statues, all the more so;

for the craft is clean and brings no reproach. And what follows holds the same sense;

for he introduces certain men saying that Socrates plied the stone-working craft.

But perhaps he spent his earliest years as a stone-worker, and later, falling in love with poetic and rhetorical discourses, partook of education.

But neither can this be said;

for Porphyry said the very opposite;

[he says] that he was without aptitude for nothing, yet uneducated about everything, to put it simply;

for he scarcely knew his letters at all, but was ridiculous whenever he had to write or read anything, stammering like little children. And Plato too has set down him in the Apology saying such things as these:

'And so now too I make this request of you, which is just, as it seems to me—to disregard the manner of my speech (for perhaps it may be worse, perhaps better), and to consider this very thing and apply your mind to it, whether I speak justly.' Yet though he had an unlearned and uneducated tongue, he was worthier of reverence not only than all the rest, but even than Plato, who surpassed all the Greeks in eloquence.

And this not even the son of Ariston himself would deny.

For how could he, seeing that he attributed and adapted to that man all the discourses he laboured to bring forth, and contrived that they be reckoned the offspring of that man's mind? And that this man too—who eclipsed not only all other men, not only the rest of the Greeks, but even the Athenians themselves in eloquence and beauty of words—enjoined attention not to the elegance of the words, but to the harmony of the thoughts, hear him saying plainly in the Statesman:

'And if you guard against being eager about words, you will appear richer in wisdom as you advance in age.' Hear too in the fifth book of the Republic what he says:

'Shall we then set down all these, and the others who are learners of suchlike things, and the philosophers of the petty crafts, [as philosophers]?' 'By no means,' I said, 'but as like philosophers.'

'And the true ones,' he said, 'whom do you mean?' 'Those,' said I, 'who love the contemplation of truth.'

[Wisdom lies not] in philosophy that has hypotheses, nor in music, which is conjectural, nor in astronomy, which is crammed with natural, flowing, and probable accounts, but in the Good itself, through knowledge and truth. Hear, O men, the philosopher: calling those skilled in music and geometry and the other suchlike things not philosophers but like philosophers, while naming the teachers of truth the truly real philosophers;

and in the third book of the Laws he says this:

'Let this, then, be laid down as resolved and declared: that to those citizens who are ignorant of these things, no office whatever is to be entrusted, and as ignorant they are to be reproached, even if they be ever so skilled in reasoning and have laboured at every refinement and at everything that naturally tends to the soul's growth;

but those who are in the opposite condition, these are to be called wise, even if, as the saying goes, they know neither letters nor swimming, and to them the offices are to be entrusted as to men of understanding.' How could anyone more truly and clearly refute the ignorance and conceit that now prevail? For the crowning point of the philosophers defines wisdom not in the learning of letters, but in the knowledge of truth;

and those who know this truth, even if they do not know even the first elements, he names wise;

but those who have passed through all education, yet do not possess the knowledge of truth and justice, he rejects and drives out and does not permit to rule.

And moreover in the Theaetetus, mocking the babblers about lofty matters, he speaks thus:

'Just as it is said of Thales, O Theodorus, that while doing astronomy and looking upward he fell into a well, and a clever and graceful Thracian serving-maid jeered at him, saying that he was eager to know the things in heaven, while what was behind him and at his very feet escaped his notice.' And again in the same dialogue:

'And such a man [the true philosopher], because of his lack of leisure for it, must inevitably become no less ignorant of such things than a herdsman who throws a wall round his fold in the mountains.'

'And whenever he hears that someone owns ten thousand acres of land or more, as though possessing marvellous wealth, it all seems small to him, accustomed as he is to gazing upon the whole earth.' And besides these things he adds this also:

'For the knowledge and virtue of this man are true, while his ignorance and vice are plain;

but the other cleverness and seeming wisdoms, when they arise in political affairs and in positions of power, are vulgar, and in the crafts, mechanical.' So accurately, then, did even those who had learned every form of discourse know how much more precious truth is than phrases and words, and how ignorance of such refinement in no way harms it.

Why, then, O dear sirs, are you unwilling to learn the meaning of the apostolic teaching, but reproach only its barbarous speech—and that when you hear your own philosophers say that the Greeks strayed from the truth, while the barbarians rather discovered it? For that Porphyry too—who eagerly took up the war against us—in his work On the Philosophy Derived from Oracles spoke thus:

'For brazen-bound is the road to the gods, both steep and rough;

many of its paths the barbarians discovered, but the Greeks went astray;

and those who already held them even corrupted them.'

And if he yoked also the Egyptians and Chaldeans and Phoenicians with these, one must know that the Phoenicians too, being neighbours and borderers of these, learned the truth from them—if indeed they learned it;

[for the Hebrews dwelt in] Egypt for a time;

and the Chaldeans likewise reaped the greatest benefit from these, for having enslaved them they settled them in Babylon;

then, from the wonders that came to pass there concerning the furnace and the lions, they reckoned them worthy teachers of the truth.

And having subdued the Lydians and taken these too under his hand, he surely imparted to his subjects the things he had learned from them.

That the Pythian also bore witness to the Hebrews' truth, and that Porphyry recorded the oracle, it suffices to make plain even these things;

and that this same man again charges the Greek philosophers with the greatest ignorance, hear what he says in the work he wrote To Boethus, On the Soul:

for he says, among many other things, this also:

'For what doctrine in philosophy is not disputable?' And to Anebo the Egyptian he wrote such things as these:

'I will begin my friendship with you from the gods and good demons and the philosophical doctrines akin to these;

concerning which very many things have indeed been said even among the Greek philosophers, yet for the most part they have been said from conjecture, having their first principles from belief.' And again, a little later:

'For among us there is much wrangling of words, since the good is guessed at from human reasonings;

but those for whom union with the higher has been contrived always pass over this part as regards examination.' If, then, the doctrines of the philosophers are disputable—for they are inventions of human reasonings—and there is much strife among them and an implacable wrangling of words, while to certain others Porphyry has borne witness of union and converse with God, then for what reason, O friend, do you cling to human and doubtful arguments, but do not admit the teachings of God-loving men? For if you reject them as barbarians, you would be acting contrary to yourselves;

for you trust even Pythagoras—who according to some was a Tyrrhenian, according to others a Tyrian—and you employ the Stagirite as your teacher, and you marvel at the man of Sinope and the others, who had homelands not Greek but barbarian;

[and so it does not befit you to reject the truth merely because it came from barbarians.]

And we hear too the Egyptian priest saying to Solon—and these things also are written by Plato in the Timaeus:

'O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children, and there is no Greek who is an old man;

for you possess no learning grey with time.' But if the learning of the Greeks is newer, while that of the Hebrews is the most ancient and oldest, and has the truth blossoming with age, then plainly it is to be preferred and chosen above the new and doubtful—or rather the false and unconvincingly fabricated.

But neither is the unlearnedness of speech a sufficient excuse for you;

for we have shown that Socrates, the chief of the philosophers, was uninitiated in Greek learning, and that Plato preferred truth above all knowledge and eloquence.

And if you accuse the very name of 'faith'—for I have heard you saying this too, that we offer no proof whatever of our doctrines, but only enjoin those we instruct merely to believe—above all you outright slander our teaching;

for it is the testimony of the facts themselves that we fit to our words;

whereas you, in turn, have been pelted with your own—as the proverb has it—with your own feathers.

For indeed that much-talked-of Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus and disciple of Pherecydes, who led the Italic school, had laid down a law for his disciples to keep silence for a period of five years and only lend their ears to the discourse, so that they might receive what was said without dispute and without contention, believing it to be so and not meddling as though in doubt.

But if both speakers and hearers reckoned it sufficient ground for belief that the doctrines and teachings were Pythagoras's, who then would be so foolish—or rather so utterly thunderstruck—as to doubt and not believe what is said when the God of all teaches, and not to render to the God of all even as much reverence as those who shared in Pythagoras's teaching rendered to Pythagoras? And how is it not monstrous, O dear sirs, that Plato should enjoin believing even the poets without doubt, while you are angry with us because we exhort men to believe God when He teaches? Or are these not Plato's very words:

'But concerning the other demons, to tell and to know their generation is too great a task for us;

we must believe those who have spoken before, being—as they said—the offspring of gods, and clearly knowing somehow their own ancestors.

It is therefore impossible to disbelieve the children of gods, even though they speak without probable and necessary proofs; but since they profess to report things that are their own, we must, following the law, believe them.' These things Plato said in the Timaeus concerning the poets, and he charged men to believe Homer and Hesiod and the other poets who tell their myths, and was not ashamed to say that they speak without probable and necessary proofs—and that when he elsewhere ridicules the things said by them, as we shall plainly show in another place.

But if Plato bids men believe those who tell those drivelling tales and fashion the most shameful myths, and to demand of them no proof at all, then it is far more holy and just to believe the inspired apostles and prophets, who say nothing shameful, mythical, or implausible, but teach things wholly befitting God, all-holy and saving.

And that even those who followed the opinions of the philosophers, using faith as their guide—some embracing these men's views, some those—anyone may very easily learn by examining the differences of their doctrines.

For some said the soul was immortal, others mortal, and others defined it as a kind of mixture, saying that one part of it is mortal and another immortal;

and as for visible things, some said they were ungenerated, others generated; and some that they were composed from earth, others from matter, others from atoms;

and some that the universe is ensouled, others that it is soulless.

Yet even though they spoke differently, both these and those had some who believed what was said by them;

and neither would the one party have supposed these things, nor the other those, to be sound, had not some faith persuaded them to accept what was said.