Cure of the Greek Maladies 1 part 3/16

for long ago, and very long ago indeed, Timon brought this same accusation against your philosophers.

It is one thing to know, and another to think one knows while knowing nothing.

Truth and the guess at truth, my friend, differ from one another;

for the guess contains many errors as well, whereas truth tolerates nothing contrary to instruct it.

Accordingly, one speaks in one way when conjecturing about truth, and truth interprets itself in quite another way;

Indeed Anaxagoras the son of Hegesibulus, the Clazomenian—whereas the philosophers before him had conceived of nothing beyond what is visible—was the first to declare that a Mind presides over the universe, and that it brought the elements out of disorder into order.

And Pythagoras the son of Mnesarchus declared that the Monad is the first principle of all things.

Anaxagoras and Pythagoras lived at about the same time.

But the school of Pythagoras was carried on by his wife Theano and by Telauges and Mnesarchus, his sons; and of Telauges, Empedocles of Acragas became a disciple, while of Anaxagoras the disciple was Archelaus, and of Archelaus, Socrates the Athenian.

Moreover both Anaxagoras and Pythagoras, having journeyed to Egypt, associated there with the sages of the Egyptians and Hebrews, and from them gathered up their knowledge concerning Being.

Later in time Plato too undertook this same journey abroad.

This is stated by Plutarch in his Parallel Lives, and Xenophon the son of Gryllus says it too, in what he wrote to Aeschines the Socratic.

For they fell in love with Egypt and with the marvellous wisdom of Pythagoras.

He also said that Plato had become enamoured of the wisdom of the Egyptians.

Therefore Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Plato gathered certain riddling intimations concerning Being from the Egyptians and the Hebrews.

Why then do you trust these men, who did not learn divine things accurately, yet refuse to learn from those from whom these men themselves learned them? For that the poets and philosophers who came before these supposed there to be nothing beyond the visible, Plato has made clear in the Cratylus, saying:

"It appears to me," he says, "that the earliest men in Greece held to be gods only those whom many of the barbarians now do—sun and moon and earth and stars and heaven;

and so, seeing them all going their course and running (theonta), from this nature, namely that of running (thein), they named them gods (theous)." Homer too and Hesiod were altogether ignorant of the Maker of the universe.

Homer calls Oceanus the origin of the gods and Tethys their mother; and the one whom he names father of gods and men he calls "son of Cronus," as having been begotten of Cronus.

These men too, then, have been in great bondage to error.

Yet Plato, knowing this very well, somewhere enjoins us not to believe such men when they tell their myths and speak without probable and true demonstrations.

And elsewhere Plato says:

"A poet is a light and sacred thing, and unable to compose until he becomes inspired and out of his senses." And Orpheus the Odrysian, having himself also gone to Egypt, learned the truths concerning Being somewhat in this manner, and proclaims:

"One there is, self-complete, and by him are all things brought to completion;

and in their midst he himself moves about, and no mortal beholds him, yet he himself beholds all.

For round about he is fixed in cloud;

for in all mortals the pupils within their eyes are mortal, small, since flesh and bones grew over them.

But he himself again is fixed upon the great heaven on a golden throne, and beneath his feet the earth stands;

and he stretches out his right hand to the limits of Oceanus;

and the base of the mountains trembles within at his wrath;

nor can they bear his mighty strength.

Upon earth all things come to their end, since he himself holds the beginning, the middle, and the end."

Plato too has done this very same thing;

for what he has written concerning Being in the Timaeus is truly worthy of admiration.

For who would not be filled with admiration when he hears him saying: "What is that which always is and has no becoming? And what is that which is always coming to be but never is? The former, grasped by intellection together with reason, is ever the same in respect of being; the latter, opined by irrational sense-perception, is coming to be and passing away, but is never really being." And he adds the following to what has been said:

"For all these—the 'was' and the 'will be'—are parts of time, which we unwittingly and wrongly transfer to the eternal substance.

For we say that it 'was' and 'is' and 'will be'; but to it, according to the true account, only 'is' is fitting, whereas 'was' and 'will be' are properly said of becoming as it occurs in time;

but to that which is ever and unchangeably the same it is not fitting to become either older or younger." Who then is so fond of fault-finding and so querulous as to take offence at what has been said and not bear witness to all its truth? For Being, which always is, is superior to all becoming, while that which becomes, admitting countless alterations, he rightly said never is;

for the embryo, once it has become an infant, is no longer an embryo but an infant; and again the infant, once it has become a child, is no longer called an infant;

so too the child, having attained the age of a youth, is called that which it has become; and when again he reaches manhood, he is no longer named youth but man; and having become an old man, he is again called that which he has indeed become.

Rightly, therefore, did he call those things that become and alter "non-beings."

And conversing with Crito, Socrates speaks of one overseer of all things:

"And indeed concerning the just and the unjust, the base and the noble, the evil and the good—about which our present deliberation is—ought we to follow the opinion of the many and fear it, or that of the one, if there be any who has understanding, whom we ought to revere and fear more than all the rest? If we do not follow him, we shall corrupt and maim that which became better by the just but was destroyed by the unjust." And again a little later:

"Then, my excellent friend, we ought not to care so very much about what the many will say of us, but about what he who understands the just and the unjust will say—the one, even Truth herself." Behold, men, how in these words Plato and Socrates drove out the swarm of gods that are not, and exhorted men to reverence and fear only the President of all things, teaching that, if ever he made mention of more gods, he was compelled to do so on account of the deluded throng of the Athenians.

For besides many other things, he has added these as well:

"Now concerning the token regarding the letters—which of my letters I send in earnest and which not—I think you remember it; but nevertheless take note and apply your mind:

for there are many who bid me write, whom it is not easy to refuse openly.

Now of the earnest letter God is the beginning, but of the less earnest, gods." How could anyone more clearly display his own intent? For he laid bare the distinction he held concerning these very names, all but saying:

"For the sake of the opinion of the many I set the plural name concerning God, eyeing warily the deluded preconceptions of the citizens;

but when I write in earnest, and trust both the one who carries and the one who receives the document, I name God in the singular and make him the beginning of my discourse."

And elsewhere he has written the following concerning Being:

"To find the Father and Maker of this universe is a task, and having found him, to declare him to all is impossible;

for it is in no way utterable as are other branches of learning." Yet he who in these passages theologized so accurately, in others—either dreading the many or being truly ignorant—made mention of many gods and works much harm upon his readers.

Why then, my friends, do we draw the turbid and earthy stream, and not rather seek that clear and transparent spring from which this man, taking the starting-points of his theology, mixed in with them what was muddy and earthy? Or are you ignorant that Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews, is the most ancient of all your poets and writers and philosophers? And if even now you still hesitate and suppose that we are inventing this account, let Porphyry at least be for you a credible witness—he who, becoming the champion of impiety, set his unbridled tongue in motion against the God of all.

Hear him, then, saying these things in what he wrote against us:

"The truest account of the affairs of the Jews—truest both as to their places and to their names—is recorded by Sanchuniathon of Berytus, who took his memoranda from Hierombalus the priest of the god Iao; and he, having dedicated his history to Abelbalus the king of the Berytians, was accepted by him and by the examiners of truth in his day."

Now their times fall even before the Trojan period and approach nearly to those of Moses, as the successions of the kings of Phoenicia indicate.

And Sanchuniathon, the lover of truth according to the language of the Phoenicians, having gathered and composed the whole ancient history from the records of the several cities and from the writings in the temples, lived in the time of Semiramis the queen of the Assyrians. From this it is possible clearly to learn by how many years Moses is older than the Trojan period.

For if Sanchuniathon, who wrote the Jewish history, lived in the time of Semiramis the queen of the Assyrians—and Sanchuniathon evidently recorded events far more ancient—and Moses became the lawgiver of the Jews, then Moses is older than Sanchuniathon by many years.

And that Semiramis is older than the Trojan period by more than a thousand years, those who have compiled the chronologies make plainly clear.

But to convict Porphyry of being ignorant of the dates is not for the present occasion;

it suffices me to show by how many years Moses is older than the Trojan period.

Homer and Hesiod lived a long time after the Trojan period;

and Orpheus, the first of the poets, was older than the Trojan period by one generation;

for Euneus is the son of Jason, the one who sent the wine to Troy for the Achaeans; and Tlepolemus the son of Heracles, whom Sarpedon shot down in the Trojan War; and Ajax the son of Telamon; and Achilles the son of Peleus.

I have gone through these matters not out of idle chatter, but because I wished to show clearly that Orpheus was born one generation earlier than the Trojan War.

Linus and Musaeus lived around the time of the Trojan War, and Thamyris came after them, and Philammon likewise.

If, then, according to Porphyry, Moses was more than a thousand years older than these men, and these were the most ancient of the poets—for Homer and Hesiod came after them, and these in turn were many years more ancient than Thales and the other philosophers, and Thales and his circle were older than those who philosophized after them—why on earth do we not leave all these aside and turn instead to Moses, the ocean of theology, from whom, to speak poetically, flow all rivers and the entire sea? For Anaxagoras and Pythagoras and Plato later drew from there a few small sparks of the truth;

having associated with them, he learned from those men what he taught concerning Being.

But the most divine Moses composed his theology not by following human reasonings as these men did, but by hearing distinctly the very voice of Him who Is;

for the Maker of all, beginning his lawgiving, enjoined that the one God be worshiped:

"I am," he said, "the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." And having reminded them of the kindness recently shown them, he commanded them to remain in his service and not to divide their reverence, but to render it to Him who Is alone.

"You shall have," he said, "no other gods besides me."

Then he teaches clearly that nothing of visible things resembles Him, and he utterly forbids the fashioning of any image in imitation of any visible thing, or the supposing that this could be a likeness or representation of the invisible God.

"You shall not make for yourself," he said, "an idol, nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth;

you shall not make them for yourselves, nor shall you bow down to them;

for I am the Lord your God." "You heard a voice," he says, "but you saw no form;

therefore fashion no figure whose archetype you do not know."

And elsewhere, refuting the falsely-named gods and banishing the error of the Egyptians, he said to them:

"Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God is one Lord." This is the teaching contained in the writings of the great Moses;

and this theology he wove together with the histories, the laws, and indeed also with the prophecies;

and having composed five books, he forbids honor to the many beings that are reckoned and called gods but are not gods, and commands that reverence be offered to the Creator of all alone.

These same things Joshua too, the successor of his leadership of the people and of his command, and indeed the whole chorus of the prophets, continued both to exhort and to enjoin by law.

But perhaps you might say that not even you have kept this law inviolate;

for you revere a Trinity, not a Monad.

And the Jews, nurtured on the words of Moses and the prophets, honor the One, but accuse your Trinity.

But I, O friends, have judged that you are worthy of pardon, since you do not know the divine Scripture;

but I lament the extreme ignorance of the Jews, in that, though—according to the prophet—they are taken up from the womb and instructed in divine things from childhood to old age, they are ignorant of the truth of theology.

For since they had spent a very long time in Egypt and had learned the polytheistic worship of the Egyptians, the all-wise Lord did not teach them the doctrines concerning the Trinity too plainly, lest they should take occasion for polytheism by slipping back into the error of the Egyptians;

yet he did not altogether hide the doctrines concerning the Trinity from those who were to come later, but sowed beforehand the seeds of the more perfect theology.

For the words "Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God is one Lord" both teach the Monad and reveal the Trinity;

for having once said "God" and twice added "Lord," he intimated the number of the Trinity, while by adding "is one" he both offered the teaching suited to the Jews and indicated the identity of the divine essence.

For one is the essence, and the power, and indeed also the will of the Holy Trinity;

and for this very reason the choirs of the invisible powers also, in offering their hymn to God, say "Holy" three times but "Lord" once, by the one indicating the number of the distinct properties, and by the other declaring the commonness of the lordship.

But while in these passages the things of the divine Trinity have been shown through riddles, in others these inspired men teach them more clearly.

For the most divine Moses, when writing of the creation of the world and then expounding the formation of man, said that the Creator of all spoke thus:

And he named as "God" both the One who made man and the One in whose likeness he shaped the one he formed;

not because the form of the one and that of the other are different;

for the nature of the Trinity is indeed one;

for this very reason he said that God had spoken thus:

"Let us make man according to our image and after our likeness." And he added, "He made him according to the image of God," in order to show the distinction of the persons.

And indeed, when giving Noah a law concerning the eating of flesh and forbidding the eating of blood, he said that the God of all spoke thus:

"You shall eat all things, as the green herbs;

only flesh with the blood of its life you shall not eat;

for indeed I will require your blood;

from every beast I will require it, and from the hand of a man's brother.

Whoever sheds the blood of a man, in return for his blood shall his own be shed, because in the image of God I made man." And he did not say "in my own image," but "in the image of God," again showing the distinction of the persons.

And when those who raged against their Maker gathered together in one place and were building that enormous tower, named after the confusion of tongues, the lawgiver said that God spoke thus:

for he did not say "come down" or "let him come down," which befits subordinates and those under command, but "let us go down and confound," which clearly indicates equality;

and the word "come" signifies the Son and the Spirit, the partners in the work of creation.

For since, when forming man as well, he said "Let us make man according to our image and after our likeness," it was fitting that here too, in apportioning the one utterance into many, he takes as fellow-workers the Son and the all-holy Spirit.

And later, when he willed to destroy Sodom and the neighboring cities, partners in impiety and lawlessness, with fiery storms and thunderbolts, he revealed to us a dyad of Lords, and Moses, who wrote these things, says:

"By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the breath of his mouth all their host." And again:

"The Lord said to my Lord:

Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." And shortly after, the Father of the Lord says to that same Lord:

"From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you." And in another psalm:

"Your throne, O God, is forever and ever;

the scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness;

you have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;"

but I think it superfluous to demonstrate these things to you, who have not yet made the confession of the faith.

I shall therefore turn to another method of instruction, and show that Plato and those after him pilfered something of their theology from these divine men, and inserted it into their own writings.

For indeed Plato, in what he wrote to Coriscus, added these words as well:

"swearing with an earnestness that is not without grace and with that play which is the sister of earnestness, and swearing by the Leader of all the gods, of things that are and things that shall be, and by the Father and Lord of that Leader and Cause—whom, if you rightly practice philosophy, you shall know." These, O friends, are the doctrines of Plato.

But of these, some are praiseworthy and in keeping with the apostolic and prophetic teaching, while others are offspring of Greek mythology.

For by saying that the Leader and Cause of the universe is one, and the Father of that Cause is another, he plainly showed the truth, from which he drew to adorn his own discourses;

When he calls [God] the ruler both of the things that are and of the things to come, he hints at one of two things: either that the philosopher fell into the malady of ignorance, or that, playing the part of those sick with it, he mixed falsehood with the truth.

Besides this, he shows that those called gods are not gods by nature.

For who, unless utterly out of his mind, would call a god one who is not always a god? Yet he has said that these came to be in time.

"Of the gods that are and of those that shall be." But how could anyone be a god who has not yet come into being? How could one who has not yet received existence partake of that most august name? But the divine oracles call none of the things that have come to be a god by nature.

For Scripture has imparted a mere name to those entrusted with judging, and indeed also to those who have kept the divine image, as far as possible, unsullied.

But by nature it is accustomed to name God only the One who always is and remains the same in the same way.

But let us reserve this discussion for later.

For now it will suffice to show that the philosopher knows the ruler and cause of the universe, and also the Father of that cause.

It is possible also to hear him say in the Epinomis:

"And let us render honours, not assigning to one a year, to another a month, and to another some portion of a month—nor any period of time in which it traverses its own orbit, helping to complete the cosmos which Reason, the most divine of all things, has ordained;

which the blessed man first marvelled at, and then conceived a love to understand thoroughly all that lay within the power of [his] nature." And in these words he said that Reason ordered all things, not the Father of Reason.

"It must be told to you through riddles, so that, if the tablet should suffer anything in the folds of the sea or of the land, the one who reads it may not understand.

Around the King of all are all things, and for his sake are all things, and he is the cause of all good things;

second around the second things, and third around the third." See how, in dread and fear, they offered the doctrines of truth and proclaimed the truth in riddles, not plainly, wary of the error of the many. This same fear he disclosed also in the Timaeus:

"Now then, let our part stand thus:

concerning the first principle, or principles, of all things, or however one thinks fit regarding these matters, this is not the time to speak;

for no other reason than that it is difficult, in the present discourse, to set forth one's views in the course of the exposition." And Numenius the Pythagorean, in the work he wrote on the Good, taught these things more clearly:

"The first god need not be a craftsman, and one must consider the first god to be the father of the craftsman-god." And Plotinus too, who emulated the philosophy of Plato, composed a book on the three primal hypostases, in which he also said the following:

"What then must one say concerning the most perfect [Being]? Nothing from it except the greatest things that come after it;

and the greatest after it is Mind, and that secondly, for Mind beholds that One." And again:

"Everything that has begotten longs for that which it begot and loves it, especially when the begetter and the begotten are alone together;

and when the begotten is also the best, it is of necessity together with it, so as to be separated only by otherness."

"We say that Mind is an image of that One;

for one must speak more clearly." And very many other things have been said both by him and by Plutarch and Numenius and the others who were of their company.

For these men, having lived after the appearing of our Saviour, mixed much of Christian theology into their own discourses.

Thus, in unfolding the thought of Plato, both Plotinus and Numenius say that he spoke of three supra-temporal and eternal realities: the Good, Mind, and the Soul of the universe—the one whom we call the Father he names the Good; Mind, whom we call Son and Word, he names Mind; and the power that ensouls and gives life to all things he calls Soul, whom the divine oracles call the Holy Spirit.

And these things too, as I have said, have been plundered from the philosophy and theology of the Hebrews.

"By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the breath of his mouth all their host." And indeed Plutarch and Plotinus also listened to the divine Gospels.

For he is exceedingly delighted with the prologue of John's theology, which speaks thus:

and he agreed that the Word both was in the beginning, was God, and was with God, and made all things, and is the cause and supplier of life to all, and that—for the sake of the salvation of the whole—he concealed in flesh the majesty of his Godhead, yet nonetheless revealed even in that small and dense cloud the Father's nobility.

For the inspired Evangelist, having said "And the Word became flesh," and having shown the unchangeableness of the divine nature, added "and tabernacled among us," and taught that, even while clothed in flesh, he sent forth the ineffable and incorruptible radiance of his Godhead;

for he said, "We beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." For the covering of the flesh did not dim the rays of his Godhead, but even while wrapped in it he was manifest as to who he was and from whom he had shone forth.

But if even the adversaries of truth so utterly admire the truth that they adorn their own writings with the few fragments plundered from it, and these, though mingled with much falsehood, do not blunt their own beauty, but—even when lying in rubbish—the pearls flash, and, according to the gospel teaching, the light shines in the darkness and is not hidden by the darkness, it is easy to perceive how worthy of love and admiration are the divine teachings when set apart from falsehood.

For there is surely a great difference between a pearl lying in mire and one shining in a diadem;

and indeed the little bones of the fingers, when detached from one another and scattered, do not have the same comeliness, grace, and usefulness as they are seen to have and to accomplish when grown together and fitted to one another.

We must therefore contemplate the beauty of truth pure and unmixed.

For if it shines even when mingled with contrary colours, it is clear that it will appear more brilliant when set apart from the things that mar it.

One could learn this more vividly by setting Greek mythology side by side with apostolic and prophetic teaching, and observing the difference by comparison.

Now Sanchuniathon of Berytus composed the theology of the Phoenicians;

and Philo—not the Hebrew, but the Byblian—rendered it into the Greek tongue; and Porphyry exceedingly admired Sanchuniathon.

Manetho wove the myths concerning Isis and Osiris and Apis and Serapis and the other gods of the Egyptians;

and even mere youths know the Theogony of the poet of Ascra [Hesiod];

and Orpheus the Odrysian instructed the Greeks in the rites of the Egyptians;

and Cornutus the philosopher put together the Greek theology;

and Plutarch and Aetius set forth the doctrines of the philosophers;

and Porphyry too took up the same labour, appending to the doctrines the life of each.

but as far as so-called Tartarus is from heaven.

But I beg to be excused from setting forth the myths themselves, lest someone call me a babbler and a chatterer;

yet I shall mention a few, very few, of them in the discourse that, God willing, will be written after this present one, so that, concerning the myths told about the so-called gods, I may display not only their implausibility but also their senselessness and impiety.

And if it pleases anyone to examine the comparison itself, he will find it in the writings of Eusebius of Palestine, a labour which that man named the Evangelical Preparation;

but I shall say it briefly: that the Egyptians and Phoenicians and the poets and philosophers of the Greeks either supposed the visible elements to be gods, or proclaimed as gods those men who had done some good or distinguished themselves in certain advantages, and built temples to the dead;

but we deify none of the visible things, and we honour those men who have distinguished themselves in virtue as excellent men, while we worship only the God of all, and his Word, and the all-holy Spirit.

And the same [Word] we name Son, only begotten, and Word, and Life, and Light, and Truth, and, employing very many other names besides, we hymn the divine nature.

And we name it not only from the things that belong to it, but also designate it from the things that do not belong to it;

for we call it without beginning, incorruptible, immortal, infinite, imperishable, invisible, formless, shapeless, uncircumscribed, incomprehensible, and unattainable, deriving the appellations from the things that do not belong to it.