On the State of the Soul 1 part 2/11

For thus they assert their opinions openly, while none the less secretly muttering, with coaxing flatteries they diligently entreat those ignorant of the matters to acquiesce especially in their opinion and assent to themselves: that what they themselves teach is full of truth, is salvation-bearing—this they confirm even by swearing oaths. If you ask for authority, they suggest that the secrets of causes of this kind can in no way be approached except by the most subtle reason, that investigator of things. If you demand the same on the crucial point, they add that it is rather to authority that one ought to yield; and that they have at the very outset declared that they will not enter the sea of disputation on account of certain hidden reefs of arguments.

Thus they elude reason by authority, and authority by the objection of reason, and use each of these for this end—that they may use neither. But if disputation, drawn a little tighter, should hem them in, they say that there are certain of the saints to whom it is most easy to resolve questions of this kind; that they themselves rather depend on another's authority; that they will above all follow what someone else has sanctioned. Who would bear this, or judge it possible to be borne in any manner—that any man should both deny knowledge and claim learning, should assert his own thoughts if a debater is absent, but cover them if he is present? But, you say, whither does the discourse proceed? I, in truth, a good way off.

I have prefaced as much as I wished, since present matters grieve and weary me; for lately I chanced upon certain men who were reading over and over, with great eagerness, a certain little pamphlet; and because it is the custom of the mortal race, enticed by the discovery of a new work, they had bent their diligent mind to grasping it. This same thing, as if necessary for me to know, they of their own accord pressed upon me to inspect, and I plainly did not refuse. II. WHERE HE RECALLS THAT HE CAME UPON A BOOK WITHOUT AN AUTHOR. The first face of the little work, scarcely straying about the doors of a most sublime question concerning the begotten and unbegotten God, presented a not very catholic opinion, though with a far unequal disputation; so that with me the gravity of the case counterbalanced the gentleness of reasoning.

When, as my reading advanced, I came to the rest of the lection, I observed the author of that little work striving the more intensely by certain circumlocutions, that the Godhead might be believed to be passible. I inquire about the name: it is betrayed neither by answer nor by writing. I began, I confess, to hold the style of such a page exceedingly suspect; and as we are wont in those places which either yield, sinking under the constant undermining of moisture, or are slippery on a gentle slope, or hang over a hollow, or are rough with stakes—with suspended footstep to attempt the unknown path rather than to run—until I enter, as it stands there, the third part of the question.

From this point the opinion appeared no longer to be explored but to be hissed off the stage, and by no means of weighed discourse; it sought diligently enough to bring about, if by any means it could, that the soul should seem to be a body. By no force of argument, therefore, by no commanding law, by no persuading reason, in this vain undertaking is the third discourse, as it were, brought to an end. And first it is in my heart to ask what reason there was that one about to enter upon such great causes and to speak of things so sublime should have shunned to be known. If you dispute with a good conscience, why do you hide your name? If you fear to be recognized, why do you publish the work—not to say, why do you write these things? Or do you perchance follow the examples of the elders on this matter?

But I see that the prophets, the evangelists, the apostles, and afterward very many treatise-writers of authentic works, have inscribed their own names before their proper volumes; and that others have even begun the openings of their works with their own names, as is that: 'Peter, an apostle of Christ,' and 'Paul,' and likewise other and yet other founders and instructors of the Church: namely, they knew that the vain or harmful things of the apocrypha were to be guarded against beforehand. But not even thus could the inventions of deceitful, rash men be avoided. Hence it is that the soundness of our catholic faith does not receive very many writings inscribed with the names of Paul and of many saints, because it weighs the merit of a work not by the allurement of a name, but the author conceals himself from it by the truth of the style.

But indeed that very thing—that this page is published while its author is concealed—gives an evident sign, namely that the very work was condemned by him by whom it was composed. For no one is eager to be concealed, except one who dreads to be recognized. I, however, cannot sufficiently marvel why in the same man there was not a zeal for avoiding harm, in whom there could be a sign of suppressing his name. III. THAT THE IMPASSIBLE GODHEAD IS SUBJECT TO NO AFFECTION WHATEVER. But returning to our purpose, let us look at the very words of the aforesaid work: namely, to that man to whom he addresses such things, whom—just as himself—he was zealous to keep hidden, as he says:

'You ask of me how, concerning the substance of God, it was said in a certain letter'—and here he chose to indicate neither what letter, nor whose, nor to whom, nor concerning whom it was. And he continues concerning God: 'He felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but felt with the affection of one suffering-together.' He adds that not even the philosophers were ignorant of this: 'because,' he says, 'in man the diverse affections, that is, justice, mercy, holiness, are accidental things, and are therefore called affections. But God is not affected by these passibly.' O 'not passibly'! O 'affected'! How is He affected, if He does not suffer? Why is your memory so swift to the forgetting even of those very things which you have brought forth? You said that justice and mercy, because in man they are accidents, are affections.

Therefore, if in man, because they are accidents, they are affections, then in God, because they are not accidents, they are not affections. He did not therefore feel with the affection of one suffering-together, in which, because there was no accident, there could be no affection. But you add: 'Therefore what in man is affection and grace, in God is virtue and nature.' But that which is virtue in God—when it has been given to man, is it not virtue? For God is beyond doubt a virtue, who, if He is immutable, then even when He has given Himself to man, the virtue is in man. Therefore what is virtue in God is virtue also in man, differing only in this: that there it is substantially, here by access. Whence the Lord to the apostles: 'Sit,' He says, 'in the city, until you be clothed with virtue from on high'; and the prophet:

'I will love Thee, O Lord, my virtue.' But you say that God is in Himself a virtue, and in man is not. Yet the reason of such an opinion is clearer than light: it follows, namely, that the one whom you say to be affected, you assert to be changed. And first the property of this name must especially be examined by me. 'Affection' is indeed so called from this—that something should affect; but whatever is affected, suffers. To suffer, however, belongs only to a passible and created substance, which, since for it to exist it was called out of nothing by the supreme Essence, which is God, is midway between that out of which it was made and that by which it was made: thus the substance can be affected either to its profit, or, as in lower things, to its defect. For I speak of the human soul.

Therefore neither can nothingness be affected in any way, because it has no substance; nor God, because He neither feels any loss nor receives any increase. But middle things are affected, as was said above, either by gain or by loss. For indeed, whatever is affected suffers, and whatever suffers is not God—no man of sound mind will deny it; because the two reciprocate mutually, so that nothing can be mutable unless passible, nor passible unless mutable.

But as for the fact that, on the testimony of the philosophers, he says that mercy and justice and good things of this sort are affections of a passible creature, and these same things to be in God essentially, not by access—he does not attend in mind that he brings forth things adverse to himself, because an affection is an accession; but nothing accrues to God: therefore He is not subject to affection. For whatever is affected is liable, equally to contraries and to congruities, and is subjected to a twofold passion. Wherefore, if the supreme Godhead felt with the affection of one suffering-together, He is also subject to the goad of an evil passion. 'He felt,' you say: assuredly, to feel is the accident of one who before did not feel.

But to eternity, because it knew the passion of Christ everlastingly—inasmuch as it itself disposed it—nothing new which it might know, not to say which it might feel, accrued at the time of the passion. But why should I now discourse about affection and prove by argument that it is impassible, when this very man with whom we contend has, without doubt, confessed that God suffered-together with the crucified man? What, I pray, is this: 'He felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but felt with the affection of one suffering-together'? What is 'He felt,' or what 'He did not feel'? Or in what way did He suffer, if He did not feel? If anyone should say: 'That man walks, and that man walks-with him,' or 'That man speaks, and that man speaks-with him,' does it not signify that the one speaking-with also speaks, and the one walking-with also walks? Or if anyone should say:

'That man is dead, and that man has died-with him,' does it not confirm that both have died? For he who dies-with another assuredly dies. Therefore he too who suffers-with another assuredly suffers. The Godhead therefore has suffered, if it suffered-together; therefore perhaps it has even died; or, if even this is impious to think: then God did not suffer—therefore neither was He affected. Where now is the affection of one suffering-together? Afterward he subjoins what, by the prophetic spirit, all the saints of old, in order to terrify and restrain those who are wise carnally and in human fashion, prophesied figuratively, saying it is written: 'O Lord, rebuke me not in Thy wrath,' and: 'The Lord hath sworn, and He will not repent.'

From this point upward, through the philosophers, he does not impute accidents to God; and here, through the prophets, he even imposes the necessities of vices, because the things which are to be received figuratively, unless they are skillfully inspected within, lead not to the life-giving spirit, but one remains in the killing letter. Namely, so that we might believe the essence of the most exalted Godhead, which cannot be defiled, to be passible, if we ponder the oracles of the prophets, animated by allegorical mysteries, only in the body of the letter. For when by the prophetic oracles He is recorded either to be angry or to repent, the effects of these passions, forsooth, are to be considered, not the affections.

Further, that recent writer who declares that his little meditations ought to be weighed according to the example of prophetic speech, professes himself not a treatise-writer but a seer—although it was the Virgin's childbearing that sealed the mouths of the seers, that He might unseal the prophecies. It is therefore otherwise than reason demands, to weave oratorical periods in the mystical style of the prophets; whence it comes about that he who promises he will expound the things of others cannot himself be expounded. Therefore either use not the words of the seers, or prophesy. Assuredly it in no way befits either a prophecy to suit the present time, or prophetic speech to suit a treatise-writer.

Wherefore whatever you have borrowed from prophetic speech in defense of yourself is adverse to you rather than helpful, because either the defense you sought confesses your weakness, or the unfitting patronage does not purge your error. The inviolable Godhead, therefore, is by no means rightly said to be affected, because the effect is from the maker, the affection in the work. For when God temporally punishes anyone, by His eternal counsel it is assuredly the one who is punished that suffers. God too would suffer something, if He either temporally took notice of anyone's sins, or were moved by anger to the same to exercise justice.

For all that is temporal, movable and mutable, the immutable and abiding everlastingness includes, affecting some things salutarily, suffering some things to be affected judicially, itself quite alien from all affection or motion of time and of place, endowed with that motion alone which is called stable; from which, and through which, and in which is everything that is moved by time alone and by it alone, and everything that is moved by it both through time and place, and not by time alone. But of this elsewhere. Now, however, letting go of these things—which are indeed of such merit or force that it is just for them to be disproved, but not necessary to be attacked—let us come to those testimonies which he has borrowed from the apostle in patronage of himself. For he says, why can it not be said:

'He felt with the affection of one suffering-together,' when the apostle thought it should be said: 'They would never have crucified the Lord of glory'—since, just as light can feel no blow of a wound, so too the Author of light felt no penalty of suffering? It can therefore be said: 'But He felt with the affection of one suffering-together.' It can indeed, because all things are lawful, but it ought not, because not all things edify. Yet in this kind of your comparisons and pronouncements I can scarcely keep from laughing. A little before, you had asserted that God ceases to be a virtue and is therefore changed; now likewise, with your opinion flagging, you declaim that, just as light can feel no blow of a wound, so too the Author of light felt no penalty of suffering. Therefore light alone feels a blow.

Does earth, or water, or air feel the blow of any wound? Or is light perchance animated? Or can any inanimate body feel? Or is there any body which, even if it does not feel a wound, cannot be wounded? Light therefore can be wounded, even if it cannot feel, because just as night is broken by the inrush of light, so light is wounded by darkness. Whence in his most delightful Asclepiadeans the most famous poet played, saying: 'And the rival light drives out the absent day, which, conquered, night flees with torn mantle.' What do you mean—that just as light does not feel a blow, so the Godhead did not feel a wound in the passion? If it is so, then it could be wounded, even if it could not feel; and one thing was of insensibility, another of corruptibility.

For it did not, on account of incorruptibility, fail to grieve, if it could be wounded, because light is alike both insensible and woundable. See whether perchance this be that which you think is to be approved by us—the deep slip of error. You say that corporeal light is common to man and beast alike, to such a degree that God does not feel a wound inflicted; and you do not liken any beautiful body, however beautiful, to the supreme Incorporeal, but make it equal to Him; and in an opinion so blameworthy you claim for yourself not only the privilege of innocence but of praise, and you pronounce that we shall be outside the faith because we say the likeness of God—that His likeness may be such as He is—to be incorporeal. But of this hereafter; for the present let us discourse concerning affection.

If then Christ was so crucified that the inviolable incorruptibility of the supreme Godhead is believed to have been crucified for the whole world, tell me, I pray—unless it be injurious—whom is it lawful to believe to have been exalted by the supreme God, that is, by the very Trinity, after the lowliness of death; to whom the name which is above every name is said to have been conferred? To Him assuredly, I judge, who, being made obedient even unto death, on account of the obedience of His ineffable humility, was ineffably raised up into the glory of God the Father. Dare, if you will, not to confess Him to be the same Lord of glory whom you confess to be the Son of man. But you, by that saying:

'They would never have crucified the Lord of glory,' use it as you wish, so that it may without doubt be believed that the Godhead itself can be affected, if it could be crucified. Therefore by an open declaration you have made your opinion manifest. For when you suppose that you have said God to be affected without reproach, on the ground that the apostle calls the Lord of glory crucified—and the truth persuades that the Lord of glory is to be understood as crucified in such a way that the Godhead be not believed to be crucified—you, however, arguing obstinately that the Godhead is affected, in your zeal for defending your error do not observe that you are saying that that penal thing, which the wickedness of the persecutors wrought upon the man Christ, was inflicted upon the inviolable Godhead itself.

But if this is so, then God could suffer for men even without a man having been assumed, since if He is passible in man, He could be passible even apart from man. But perhaps you will contend that He was changed by contact with the human substance, and that for this reason He became passible after assuming man. Then God is not incorruptible, since whatever can be made worse can assuredly also be corrupted; but the divinity cannot be corrupted nor changed, and therefore cannot suffer. Now it further remains that, since Christ is true man and true God, one Person out of a twofold substance, both God-man and man-God, He, the same Lord of glory, both was not crucified with respect to His inviolable divinity, and yet was crucified in His manhood by reason of the unity of the Person.

And so in a wondrous and inconceivable manner God [as man] suffered, and yet the divinity did not suffer. See now therefore that you have claimed the testimony of the Apostle for this point alone, not so that your opinion might draw strength from it, but so that the perversity of your distorted opinion might not lie hidden. You, forsooth, as though Truth itself were guaranteeing it to you through the Apostle, say that the divinity is affected; but the Apostle compels us to understand that the Lord of glory was crucified in that part of Himself in which He could be crucified.

To you therefore, to you alone, is this opinion left: that the inviolable and inestimable divinity was scourged with whips, pierced through with nails, run through with a lance, afflicted with pains, and consumed by death—because you refuse to believe that in one and the same Christ one thing was subject to death and another to suffering. But under the pressure of truth you change your words, saying that the things by which a created substance is affected are in God substantially, not accessibly. Go on speaking thus, lest presumptuous ignorance scatter a lie into the sincerity of truth. To err, indeed, is human; to repent of one's fault is human. No one sins more dangerously than he who defends his sins.

For the essence of the supreme divinity is impassible and subject to no affection, as you yourself declare, and in this you do not refuse to agree with the philosophers. Therefore drive this civil war from your soul. Let it be certain to you that truth can no more be mingled with the false than essence with nothingness. Yet you say that He is affected whom you deny to suffer. For if He is not free from affection, then the profession of His impassibility regarding the same is false—the one thing immoderately contradicts the other: he who says, He felt by the affection of compassion, does not say that in the passion He felt nothing. Furthermore you say that God is not affected passibly; therefore He is affected non-passibly. Which is just as if someone were to say: that man stands while running, that one sleeps while waking—which the discrepancy of contraries by no means permits.

What then is the use of your adding 'passibly,' when it can be said most truly and most fully that God is not affected? This double-tongued utterance of yours is not free from the blemish of suspicion. You do not say that God suffers, yet you say He is affected. Affection and passion signify one and the same thing: either remove both, or preserve both in the one or the other. Therefore it must not be said, 'God is not affected passibly,' but, 'God is not affected.' If He is not affected, He did not feel by the affection of compassion. If He felt by the affection of compassion, then consequently He is affected. I say: the divine substance is affected by nothing; you say: God is not affected. Let us be reconciled. Let him be utterly cast out from our midst who bespatters you—perhaps ignorant, but certainly careless—with infamy in a matter that is plainly evident.

But you add further, and declare that the Apostle said of Christ, now placed in heaven: We have such a high priest who can suffer together with our infirmities; and, as though there were here nothing to be examined and discussed, you boast that you have satisfied your purpose, about to pass on to the third question.

Therefore, that I may give my answer as briefly as possible: that High Priest, I believe, is He who principally offers the sacrifices of mankind before the divinity of the supreme Trinity, expiates sins, and commends our vows. He therefore is the true Priest; for if the Son of God, according to that whereby He is equal to the Father, does not so much pour out prayers as hear those who pray, then He is rather to be understood here as man, whom the Apostle, calling Him High Priest and declaring that He suffers together with our infirmities, likewise speaks of in the same way: Christ Jesus, who died, yea rather, who is also risen again, who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. That High Priest therefore suffers together with us, who also intercedes for us. But He indeed—

He who assents to the one interceding—the Trinity itself would surely have no one whom it would need to intercede with itself, if it could in any way suffer or be affected. Do you not now understand that a testimony for the truth is rather being taken up as a patronage for falsehood? For since, if anything of this sort, as we said above, is found in the divine volumes, it is to be referred to the unity of the Person—because, just as soul and body of diverse substance are one man, so God and man of diverse substance are one Christ. And through this, since He is one out of diverse substance, He in a certain manner asks of Himself, and in a certain manner hears Himself on our behalf. Innumerable are the things that might most readily be said upon this, but since those things need not be laboriously developed which collapse of their own accord—

for the present let what has been said about these things suffice. IV. HENCEFORTH HE DISPUTES CONCERNING THE STATE OF THE SOUL. The state of the human soul, that is, of the divine image, is now called into question. This indeed is that third question, in which this dear friend of mine, having entered upon the task of distinguishing the natures, declares that the spirit of life is a body—asserting that on this point he is bringing forward the determinations of the previously-cited authority of the Fathers; whom, however, he records not so much to have defined anything known to them by mental apprehension, as to have held certain things as mere opinions.

And because he himself, in what he says, yielded not so much to proven reason or to inviolable authority as rather to human opinion, he strives with strenuous effort that—divine authority being spurned and clear reason likewise set aside—we should, with closed eyes as they say, assent to his own assertions. Whoever think of God truly and piously consequently understand that nothing which ought to have been created was left uncreated by Him. For the cause of creating things is the goodness of the Creator, who, being able to create all things whatsoever He wills, would have exercised no goodness if He had created nothing, and likewise would have used a half-full benignity if He had founded something only half-complete.

But it seems strange that something should be lacking to the complement of things if the little flower of the rose did not exist, and yet that nothing would be lacking if the incorporeal substance had not been created. Lest therefore not merely some small thing, but rather the most important thing, should be lacking to the fullness of creation, the incorporeal substance too ought to have been created. But perhaps it may be referred to the injury of the Creator, if He be said to have founded something incorporeal and like to Himself, since nothing like God is found among bodies. Yet the human soul is called by God Himself the likeness of God; and in a body there can be no divine likeness. Therefore that which is like to God will be incorporeal; but the human mind has been made unto the likeness of God; therefore the human mind is incorporeal.

THAT THE INCORPOREAL IS PREFERRED IN DIGNITY TO THE CORPOREAL, AND THE NON-LOCAL TO THE LOCAL. Now everything incorporeal is preferred in the dignity of nature to the corporeal, and the non-local to the local, and the indivisible to the divisible, and the living to the non-living. For if the most omnipotent and likewise most benign Creator did not create a substance more excellent than every body and like to Himself—a substance which it has already been established ought to have been created—then either He was unwilling or certainly He was unable. If He was unwilling and unable, He lacked omnipotence. If He was able and unwilling—which is even wicked to think—He was envious. But omnipotence cannot be unable, nor can goodness be envious. Therefore He both was able and willed to create the incorporeal; therefore He also created it.

Unless perhaps you say that what He was able to will ought not to have been done—He who could not will anything except what He ought to do. Why now would you contend that what you do not doubt ought to have been created was not created? That it certainly ought to have been created: since the incorporeal Creator is the greatest good, and the created incorporeal is a great good, and the created body—which is nothing except as created—is some good, so by the supreme God, who is the greatest good, just as some good, namely body, was created, so likewise the great good, namely the incorporeal, ought to have been created; for it would not befit the omnipotent Good, who made all things very good, to make the perfection of the fullness of things mutilated even in the least matters—not to speak of failing to create the most important.

But perhaps it will be asserted either that an incorporeal creature is not a good, or that a good ought not to have been created, or that what ought to have been done could not be done. But the incorporeal Creator is the supreme good, the incorporeal creature a great good: therefore a great good ought to come into being from the supreme good, and the Omnipotent was able to make what the Good ought to will. Therefore He created the incorporeal substance—He who could not but make what ought to come into being—unless perchance it be said that something ought to have come into being which He did not make; the consequence then will be that He made something which He ought not to have made. But you will say to me: if some incorporeal thing has been created, then it equals the Creator. We are inquiring about true man, that is, about the soul of man. This is not equal to God, but like Him:

like, namely, in so far as the incorporeal is like the incorporeal; inferior, in so far as the created is to the creator; like, in so far as intellectual light is to intelligible light; and unlike, in so far as the mutable creature is to the immutable creator. For truth is one thing, and the image of truth another. But just as there can be no image of a corporeal thing except a body, so in no way is the image of the incorporeal found in a body. For there where Moses speaks of the creation of man, he says thus: And God said, Let us make man unto our image and likeness. And He made man unto His image and likeness. Unto the image of God He created him, male and female. This is of divine—

authority's oracle, which can neither be evaded by eloquence, nor deceived by argument, nor overcome by force, nor corrupted by art. If the human soul is the image of God, then plainly it is the image of the incorporeal; if it is the image of the incorporeal, then it is itself certainly incorporeal. But if it is not incorporeal, then it is by no means the image of the incorporeal. But it is the image of the incorporeal; therefore it is incorporeal: for since it is created, it is not God; since it is the image of God, it is not a body. VI. THAT WHILE EVERY INCORPOREAL THING IS INVISIBLE, NOT EVERY CORPOREAL THING IS VISIBLE. But you allege that you have been taught by certain persons—whose very names, however, you withhold from our knowledge—that some things are said to be incorporeal, others invisible. Treaters of awesome expertise, forsooth, who have penetrated unto this secret: