Letters & Lives of Saints 4 part 2/4

If the present lesson provoked you to speak about all the dogmas in a single hour, what need was there to repeat the doctrine of forty days? But if you were reporting those things which you had spoken throughout all of Lent, how did a single lesson provoke you, on a certain day, to speak about all the dogmas? But here too he speaks ambiguously: for it can be that the things which he was accustomed for forty days to hand down in the Church to those to be baptized, these he touched upon under the occasion of a single lesson. For it belongs to the same eloquence both to be able to say few things in many words, and many things in few. This too is given to be understood, that, after a single lesson provoked him, inflamed with the ardor of speaking, for forty days he never kept silent.

But even the idle old man, hanging on his lips, while he desired to learn unheard-of things, almost fell asleep. However that may be, these things are to be tolerated: perhaps these too he spoke simply, after his manner. 14. Let us set down the rest, in which, after the labyrinths of his rambling disputation, he puts not at all a doubtful, but an open opinion, and concludes his marvelous treatises with this ending: 'When we had spoken these things in his presence, and he himself, after us, because of the honor which we showed him beyond all measure, was provoked to speak: he praised our preaching, and marveled at it, and declared it to all to be the catholic faith.' How much honor beyond all measure you showed him, the contumelies displayed beyond measure declare:

when you ordered him through the archdeacon to be silent; and when he lingered among the people, you thundered at him as one greedy for praise. Present things teach about past ones. He, throughout the whole three years thereafter, swallows his own injuries, and, scorning private grudge, asks only for the correction of the faith. You, who abound in resources, and for whom the religion of the whole world is your gain, send those most weighty legates of yours hither and thither, and rouse the sleeping old man to reply. And indeed, to one to whom you had shown so much honor, it was just that he should praise especially your extemporaneous sayings. But because men are sometimes accustomed to praise what they do not approve, and to nourish another's folly with empty acclamations, he not only praised your sayings, but praised and marveled at them:

and, that the marvel too might be no small thing, he declared to all the people that it was of the catholic faith. How truly he said these things, we too are witnesses who heard him, to whom he came breathless, perturbed by your shouts, saying that he had communicated rashly: And being asked by the whole Monastery to return to you from Bethlehem, not bearing the entreaties of so many, he so returned in the evening that in the middle of the night he fled away — and the letters to Pope Siricius prove it: which, if you read them, you will perceive how he marveled at your sayings, and declared them catholic. But we are wearing away trifles, and refuting old-womanish and superfluous ditties with long discourse. 15.

Let us pass on to the second question, in which, as though nothing had been set before him, secure and belching, he pretends to fall asleep, so that he may make his readers drowsy. 'But concerning the rest which pertain to the faith, our discourse was — namely, that of all things visible and invisible, of the heavenly hosts and of earthly creatures, there is one and the same Creator, God, that is, the holy Trinity, according to the blessed David who says: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the spirit of his mouth all their power: which the creation of man also simply shows. For it is he who, having taken slime from the earth, formed man, and by the grace of his own inbreathing gave him a rational soul [Al.

a rational soul], and of free will — not some part of his own nature, according to certain men who impiously preach this, but a proper creation. And concerning the holy angels they likewise believe, according to divine Scripture which says of God: Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire: concerning whom Scripture does not concede to us to believe that they are of an immutable nature, saying: The angels too who did not keep their principality, but forsook their own dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains, in darkness, unto the judgment of the great day: because they were changed, and from their own dignity and glory we have come to know that they passed rather into the order of demons.'

'But that the souls of men come into being from the ruin of the angels, or from their conversion: we have neither ever believed nor taught (for far be it!), and we confess this to be alien to ecclesiastical preaching.' 16. We inquire whether souls, before man came to be in paradise and Adam was formed from the earth, existed among rational creatures; whether they had a proper state, lived, abode, and subsisted; and whether the doctrine of Origen is true, who said that all rational creatures, incorporeal and invisible, if they should become more negligent, gradually slip down to lower things, and, according to the qualities of the places to which they sink, take to themselves bodies. For example, first ethereal, then aerial.

And when they have arrived in the vicinity of the earth, they are surrounded with grosser bodies, and last of all are bound to human flesh; and the demons themselves, who by their own choice withdrew with their prince the devil from the ministry of God, if they should begin a little to come to their senses, are clothed with human flesh, so that, penance being thereafter done, after the resurrection they may return by the same cycle by which they came into flesh, back to the vicinity of God, freed even from their aerial and ethereal bodies; and then all knees bend to God, of those in heaven, on earth, and in the underworld, and God is all in all. Since therefore these things are being inquired about, why do you, leaving aside those things about which the fight is, departing from the arena and the place of the contest, linger in foreign and far-alien disputations? 17.

You believe that one God made all visible and invisible creatures: this even Arius would confess, who says that all things were created through the Son. If you were being charged with the heresy of Marcion — which, introducing one good God and another just God, asserts the former to be the Creator of invisible things, the latter of visible — you would rightly have satisfied me on a question of this kind. You believe that the Trinity is the Creator of the universe. This the Arians and Semi-Arians deny, blasphemously calling the Holy Spirit not Creator, but created. But who at this time accuses you of being an Arian? You say that the souls of men are not a part of God's nature; as though you were now being called a Manichaean by Epiphanius.

You detest those who assert that souls come into being from angels, and who say that their ruin is our substance. Do not dissemble what you know, nor by simplicity feign what you do not have: Neither did Origen ever say that souls come into being from angels, since he teaches that 'angel' is the name of an office, not of a nature. For in his books he says that both the angels, and the thrones, and the dominations, powers, and rulers of the world and of darkness, and every name that is named, not only in the present age but in the age to come, are the souls of those bodies which they have received either by desire or by ministry. He says that the sun itself too, and the moon, and the whole chorus of all the stars, are the souls of rational and once-incorporeal creatures:

which now, made subject to vanity — namely, in fiery bodies, which we, ignorant and untaught, call the luminaries of the world — shall be freed from the slavery of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. Whence also every creature groans together and is in travail. And the Apostle laments, saying: 'Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' It is not for this present time to write against the dogma of the pagans, and the partly Platonic doctrine. Nearly ten years ago, in my Commentaries on Ecclesiastes, and in my exposition of the Epistle to the Ephesians, I think the meaning of my mind was explained to the prudent. 18.

This now I ask — you who speak such great things, who from a single discourse set forth the truth concerning all matters — that you answer those who inquire with a brief and absolute opinion. When God formed man from slime, and by the grace of his own inbreathing bestowed on him a soul: whether that soul existed before and subsisted, and where it had its being — the soul which was afterward given by God's inbreathing; or whether on the sixth day, when the body was formed from slime, it received both being and life by the power of God. About this you are silent, and, dissembling that you know what is being asked, you busy yourself with superfluous questions. You leave Origen untouched, and rage like a bacchant against Marcion, Apollinaris, Eunomius, Mani, Arius, and the inanities of the other heretics.

You are asked for your hand, and you stretch out your foot; and yet the dogma which you hold, you secretly insinuate. Thus you appease us rustics, so that you may not at all displease your own. 19. You say that demons rather than souls come into being from angels, as though the demons themselves too, according to Origen, were not the souls of an aerial body, and as though human souls were not to come hereafter from the demons, if they should come to their senses. You write that angels are mutable, and under what is pious you introduce what is impious; so that, through many sentences, souls come into being not from angels, but from these appellations into which the angels were first changed. I want what I say to be made clearer:

imagine someone of tribunician rank, by his own fault demoted, through each office of the equestrian service, brought down to the rank of a recruit: does he straightway become a recruit from a tribune? No; but first a primicerius, then a senator, a ducenarius, a centenarius, a biarchus, a circitor, an eques, and then a recruit; and although a tribune was once a common soldier, yet from a tribune he is made not a recruit, but a primicerius. Origen teaches that, by Jacob's ladder, rational creatures descend gradually to the lowest step, that is, to flesh and blood: nor can it happen that anyone is suddenly hurled from the number of a hundred to the number one, unless, through each number, as through the steps of a ladder, he reaches all the way to the last;

and that they change as many bodies as they have changed dwelling-places from heaven to earth. These are your tricks and sleights of hand, by which you call us Pelusiotes both beasts of burden and animal men, because we do not receive those things which are spiritual. You Jerusalemites deride even the angels. Your mysteries are dragged into the open, and a dogma woven together from the fables of the pagans is published to Christian ears. That which you marvel at, we long ago despised in Plato. And we despised it, because we have received the foolishness of Christ. We have received the foolishness of Christ, because the foolish thing of God is wiser than men.

It is not unbecoming that Christians and priests of God, as though the matter were one of jest, cling to doubtful words, and weigh out ambiguous opinions, by which the speaker rather than the hearer is deceived? 20. One of your chorus, when he was being held fast by me, that he might say what he thought about the soul — whether it existed before the flesh, or did not exist — answered that the body and soul existed together. I knew the man to be a heretic, seeking snares in his speech. At length I caught him out: from the moment he gave the body its soul, from that time, he said, it was called 'soul' — that which before was called either a demon, or an angel of Satan, or a spirit of fornication, or, on the opposing side, a domination, a power, an administering spirit, or a messenger.

If the soul existed before Adam was formed in paradise, in whatever state and order, and lived, and did something [Al. was] (for we cannot conceive of an incorporeal and eternal thing as motionless and torpid after the manner of dormice), it is necessary that some cause preceded, why that which before was without a body was afterward surrounded by a body. And if it is natural for the soul to be without a body, then it is against nature to be in a body. If it is against nature to be in a body, then the resurrection of the body will be against nature. But the resurrection will not happen against nature; therefore, according to your opinion, the body which rises against nature will not have a soul. 21. You say that the soul is not of the substance of God. Beautifully.

For you condemn the most impious Manichaeus, whom even to name is a pollution. You say that souls do not come into being from angels. I acquiesce for a little, although I know in what sense you said it. Since, therefore, we have learned what you deny, we wish to know what you believe. 'Having taken,' you say, 'slime from the earth, God formed man, and by the grace of his own inbreathing bestowed on him a rational soul; and of free will — not some part of his own nature, according to certain men who impiously preach this, but a proper creation.' See with what a circuit you utter what we are not asking. We know that God formed man from the earth, we know that he breathed into his face, and he became a living soul:

we are not ignorant that the soul is rational, and of its own will, and we know that it is a creation of God. No one doubts that the Manichaean errs, who says that it is the substance of God. This now I ask: This soul — a creation of God, of free will, rational, and not of the substance of the Creator — when was it made? Whether at that time when man was made from slime, and the breath of life was breathed into his face: or whether, having existed before [Al. having been made before], and being and living among rational and incorporeal creatures, it was afterward bestowed by the inbreathing of God? Here you are silent, here you feign yourself simple and rustic; and under the words of Scripture you hide those things which Scripture does not mean.

In that passage where you say that no one inquires whether it is not some part of its own [Al. of the divine] nature—according to certain men who impiously preach this—you ought rather to have said what we all inquire: not the soul that existed beforehand, not the one He had created previously, the one that for a long while had already moved among rational, incorporeal, and invisible creatures. You say none of these things; you parade Manichaeus before us and hide Origen; and just as nurses, when little children beg for food, offer them certain toys in order to distract their minds, so you distract us simple folk toward other matters, so that while we are held by the novelty of another character, we may not seek what we wish to find. 22.

Granted, suppose you do not say this, and that your simplicity contains nothing which you cunningly keep silent. Why then, when you had once begun to speak of the soul, and to trace so great a matter back to the very beginning of the human condition—why, while the discussion still hangs in suspense, do you suddenly leap over to the Angels and to the dispensation of the Lord's body, and, leaving so great a rough patch in the middle, allow us to stick fast, in doubt, in the mire? If God's in-breathing—which you do not wish, and which you now leave ambiguous—is the constitution of the human soul, then whence did Eve obtain a soul, into whose face God did not breathe? I say nothing of Eve, who, built from the man's rib as a type of the Church, ought not after so many ages to endure the slanders of her descendants.

Cain and Abel, the first sprung from the first human beings—whence did they obtain souls? And all the human race thereafter, from what origins of souls is it reckoned? Is it by traduction, as with the brute beasts, so that as the body is generated from a body, the soul too is generated from a soul? Or are rational creatures, sinking little by little to the earth through desire for bodies, at the last bound also to human bodies? Or is it rather (which is the teaching of the Church, according to the words of the Savior) that 'My Father works until now, and I work'? And that saying of Isaiah: 'He who forms the spirit of man within him.' And in the Psalms: 'He who fashions the hearts of each one of them'—daily God manufactures souls; for Him to will is to have done it, and He does not cease to be Creator.

I know what you are accustomed to say against these things, and to set adulteries and incests before us—which is a longer struggle and does not suffer the constraints of this present occasion. The same controversy can be turned back upon you also: and whatever seems unworthy of the Creator of the present time is also, by His granting it, not unworthy. To be born of adultery is not the fault of the one who is born, but of the one who begets. Just as in seeds the earth that nurtures does not sin, nor the seed cast into the furrows, nor the moisture and heat by which the grains, duly tempered, sprout into a shoot, but rather (so to speak) the thief and robber who by fraud and force snatches the seeds, so in the generation of men [Al. of the human race] the earth—that is, the womb—receives what is its own;

and it cherishes what it has received, gives a body to what it has cherished, and articulates into limbs what it has embodied. And amid those secret narrow places of the belly, God's hand always works; and one and the same is the Creator of the body and of the soul. Do not despise the kindness of your Potter, who shaped you and made you as He willed. He is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, who built Himself a house in the womb of the Virgin. Jephthah, numbered among holy men by the Apostle's voice, is the son of a harlot. But hear: from Rebekah and Isaac was Esau begotten, hairy in mind as well as in body, who like good wheat degenerated into tares and wild oats; for the cause of vices and virtues lies not in the seed, but in the will of the one being born.

If it is an offense to be born in human bodies, how is it that Isaac, Samson, and John the Baptist are born of promise? Do you understand what it is to profess one's faith boldly and freely? Suppose I am in error—I openly say what I think. You therefore likewise: either freely profess our view, or steadfastly speak your own. Do not station yourself in my battle line, so that, with feigned rusticity, you may keep yourself safe and, whenever you wish, stab the combatant in the back. This is not the time to write against Origen's doctrines; we will, if Christ grants life, dedicate that to another work. Now the question is whether the one who is accused has answered the questions put to him, and whether his answer is simple and open. 23.

Let us pass on from here to the most famous question concerning the resurrection of the flesh and of the body, in which once again, reader, I wish you to be admonished, that you may know I speak with fear and with the judgment of God, and that you ought so to hear me. For I am not so foolish that, if in his exposition the faith is pure and there is no suspicion of perfidy, I would seek an occasion for accusing, and, while wishing to brand another with fault, would myself be branded with calumny. Read, therefore, what is set down concerning the resurrection of the flesh; and when you have read it, and it has pleased you (for I know it will please the ignorant), suspend your judgment, wait a little, restrain your verdict until the end of our reply; and if afterward it still pleases you, then you may mark us down for calumny.

「His Passion also upon the cross, and His death and burial—all of which He observed in their entirety—and His resurrection in truth, and not in mere semblance, we confess: who, being the firstborn from the dead, the firstfruits of the mass of our bodies—which, laid in the tomb, He raised—carried them up to heaven, granting us the hope of resurrection in the resurrection of His own body: whence we all hope so to rise from the dead, even as He rose. Not in certain other foreign and alien bodies, which are assumed in phantasm, but just as He Himself rose in that body which, among us, was buried in the holy sepulchre:」

「so we too, in these very bodies with which we are now surrounded, and in which we are now buried, by the same principle and condition hope to rise. For the things which, according to the Apostle, are sown in corruption shall rise in incorruption; the things sown in dishonor shall rise in glory. It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body: concerning which the Savior also spoke in His teaching: 'For those who shall be counted worthy of that age and of the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage; for neither can they die any more, but they are like the Angels of God, since they are sons of the resurrection.'」 24.

Again in another part of the Epistle—that is, at the end of his treatises—in order to delude the ears of the unknowing, he weighed out the clamor and pomp of resurrection with this ambiguity of words: 「But neither did we pass over the second, glorious coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is to come in His glory to judge the living and the dead: for He Himself shall raise up all the dead and cause them to stand before His tribunal; and He shall repay each one according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil—namely, either to be crowned in the body, in that it acted chastely and justly, or to be condemned, in that it served alike pleasures and iniquities.」 This is what we read in the Gospel:

'In the consummation of the world, if it were possible, even the elect would be led astray'—which we prove in this very chapter. The untaught crowd hears 'the dead and the buried'; it hears 'the resurrection of the dead, in truth and not in mere semblance'; it hears that 'the firstfruits of the mass of our bodies have, in the Lord's body, reached the heavens'; it hears that 'we shall rise, not in foreign and alien bodies which are assumed in phantasm, but just as the Lord rose in the body which, among us, lay buried in the holy sepulchre: so we too, in these very bodies in which we are now surrounded and buried, shall rise on the day of judgment.' And lest anyone should think this too little, he adds at the end of the chapter:

「And He shall repay each one according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil—namely, either to be crowned in the body, in that it acted chastely and justly, or to be condemned, in that it served pleasures and iniquities.」 Hearing these things, the untaught crowd, amid so loud a sound of the dead, of the buried body, of resurrection, suspects no trick, no ambush. It believes that to be the case which is said. For the ears of the people are holier than the heart of the priest. 25. Again and again, reader, I admonish you to hold fast to patience, and to learn what I too have learned through patience;

and yet, before I unroll the face of the dragon and briefly set forth Origen's dogma concerning the resurrection (for you cannot know the power of the antidote unless you have examined the poisons), observe this carefully and, re-reading cautiously, count it up: that, naming the resurrection of the body nine times, he did not so much as once insert 'of the flesh'; and let it be suspect to you that he deliberately omitted it. Origen says, then, in several places—and especially in his fourth book On the Resurrection, and in his Exposition of the first Psalm, and in the Stromata—that a twofold error is current in the Church, that of our own people and that of the heretics:

「That we, the simple and the flesh-lovers, say that the very same bones and blood and flesh—that is, the countenance and the limbs and the whole framework of the body—shall rise on the last day: namely, that we shall walk with feet, work with hands, see with eyes, hear with ears, and carry around an insatiable belly and a stomach digesting food. And it is a consequence, he says, that we who believe these things should say that we must also eat and drink, must void excrement, must discharge fluid, must take wives, must beget children. For to what purpose the genital members, if there are to be no marriages? To what purpose the teeth, if foods are not to be ground? To what purpose the belly and foods, if, according to the Apostle, both this and these shall be destroyed?—he again crying out:」

'Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God, neither shall corruption possess incorruption.'」 These things he asserts that we innocent and rustic folk say. 「But the heretics—on whose side are Marcion, Apelles, Valentinus, and Manes (a name of madness)—utterly deny the resurrection both of the flesh and of the body, and grant salvation to the soul alone; and they say we vainly assert that we shall rise after the example of the Lord, since the Lord Himself rose only in phantasm, and not only His resurrection but His very nativity—that is, He was seen in semblance rather than truly existed. But to him both opinions are displeasing; he flees both the flesh of Our people and the phantasms of the Heretics, because each party is excessive toward the contrary extreme;」

「some wishing that they shall be the same as they were [Al. shall not be]; others denying the resurrection of bodies altogether. There are, he says, four elements—known also to the philosophers and the physicians—of which all things and human bodies are compacted: earth, water, air, and fire. Earth is to be understood in the flesh, air in the breath, water in the moisture, fire in the heat. When, therefore, the soul, at God's command, has let go this perishable and cold little body, all things little by little return to their parent substances: the flesh slips back into earth, the breath is mingled into air, the moisture returns to the depths, the heat flies up to the upper air. And just as, if you should pour a pint of milk and of wine into the sea and wish again to separate what has been mixed:」

「the wine indeed and the milk which you had poured in do not perish, yet what has been poured out cannot be separated: so the substance of flesh and blood does not indeed perish in its original materials, yet it does not return into its former framework, nor can it be wholly the same as it was.」 But when these things are said, the solidity of the flesh, the fluid of the blood, the thickness of the sinews, the interweaving of the veins, and the hardness of the bones are denied. 26. By another reasoning we confess the resurrection of bodies—of those which have been laid in tombs and dissolved into ashes: of Paul, Paul's; of Peter, Peter's; and to each one his own; for it is not right that souls should have sinned in some bodies and be tormented in others;

nor is it right, before the just Judge, that some bodies should shed their blood for Christ and others be crowned. Who, hearing these things, would suppose that he denies the resurrection of the flesh? And, he says, in each seed there is implanted by God the Craftsman a certain ratio which holds the future materials in the first principles of the pith. And just as so great a magnitude of a tree—trunk, branches, fruits, leaves—is not seen in the seed, yet they are present in the ratio of the seed (which the Greeks call logos); and in a grain of wheat there is within either a pith or a little vein which, when it has been dissolved in the earth, draws to itself the neighboring materials and rises up into stalk, leaves, and ears; and one thing dies, and another rises. For in a grain of wheat the roots, the stem, the leaves, the ears, the chaff are not dissolved: