Letters & Lives of Saints 4 part 4/4

Otherwise, even before the resurrection, when they had led Him out of Nazareth to cast Him down from the brow of the hill, He passed through their midst, that is, slipped out of their hands. Can we say, according to Marcion, that therefore His nativity was in phantom, because, contrary to nature, He who was held escaped? What is permitted to Magicians, is this not permitted to the Lord? Apollonius of Tyana is recorded, when he stood before Domitian in the council-chamber, suddenly to have not appeared. Do not equate the power of the Lord with the tricks of Magicians, so that what was not should seem to have been, and He be thought to have eaten without teeth, walked without feet, broken bread without hands, spoken without a tongue, and shown His side without ribs. 35.

And how, you will say, did they not recognize Him on the road, if He had the very body He had before? Hear the Scripture saying: Their eyes were held, that they should not recognize Him. And again: Their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him. Was He one when He was not recognized, and another when He was recognized? Surely He was one and the same. To recognize, therefore, and not to recognize, belonged to the eyes, not to Him who was seen, although it also belonged to Him. For He held their eyes, that they should not recognize Him. Finally, that you may know the error that was in their midst was not of the Lord's body, but of eyes that were closed: Their eyes were opened, He says, and they recognized Him.

Hence also Mary Magdalene, as long as she did not recognize Jesus, and was seeking the living among the dead, supposed Him to be a gardener. She recognizes Him, and calls Him Lord. After the resurrection Jesus stood on the shore, the disciples were in the boat. The others not recognizing Him, the disciple whom Jesus loved says to Peter, It is the Lord. For prior virginity recognizes the virginal body. He was the same, and did not seem the same to all. And immediately it is added: And no one dared to ask Him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. No one dared, because they knew it was God. They ate with Him as He dined, because they saw a man and flesh, not that one was God and another man, but that one and the same Son of God was recognized as man, adored as God.

So now, I suppose, I must philosophize, that our senses are uncertain, and especially sight. Some Carneades must be raised from the dead to bring forth the truth: that an oar in water seems broken, that porticoes seem narrower in the distance, that the corners of towers seem rounded from afar, that the necks of doves change colour at every turn. When Rhoda announced Peter, and said to the Apostles that he had escaped on account of the greatness of the danger, they do not believe, they suspect a phantom. Furthermore, that He entered through closed doors was of the same power as to vanish from their eyes. Lynceus (as the fables relate) saw through a wall: shall the Lord, through closed doors, unless He were a phantom, be unable to enter? Eagles and vultures perceive carcasses across the sea.

Shall the Saviour not see His Apostles, unless He open the door? Tell me, most acute disputant, which is greater, to suspend so great a magnitude of earth upon nothing, and to balance it over the uncertainties of the waters: or for God to pass through a closed gate, and for the creature to yield to the Creator? What is greater, you grant: what is less, you slander. Peter walks upon the waters with a heavy and solid body. The soft wave does not yield: his faith doubts a little, and at once the body understands its own nature: that we may know it was not the body that walked upon the waters, but the faith. 36. I beseech you, who use such great arguments against the resurrection, to speak with me plainly.

Do you truly believe that the Lord rose again in the same body in which He died, in which He was buried, or do you not believe? If you believe, why do you put forward these things by which the resurrection is denied? If you do not believe, why do you so suckle the souls of the unlearned, and toss about resurrection as an empty name? Listen. Lately one from the school of Marcion said: 'Woe to him who shall rise again in this flesh and in these bones.' My soul rejoiced. But at once he added: For we were buried together, and have risen together with Christ through baptism. 'Do you speak of the resurrection of the soul, or of the flesh?' He answered: Not of the soul alone, but of the flesh, which is reborn together with the soul in the laver. 'And how shall that perish, which has been reborn in Christ?' Because it is written, he says:

Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God. Attend, I beseech you, to what is said: Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God. Shall they not rise? Far be it; but they shall not possess. Why shall they not possess? Because there follows, neither shall corruption possess incorruption. So long, therefore, shall they not possess the kingdom of God, as they remain only flesh and blood. But when the corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and the mortal shall have put on immortality, and the clay of the flesh shall have been baked into earthenware, that which before was pressed down to earth by a heavy weight, having received the wings of the spirit and of transformation—not of abolition—shall fly with new glory to heaven; and then shall be fulfilled that which is written: Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is thy strife? O death, where is thy sting? 37. In a reversed order we have answered concerning the state of souls and the resurrection of the flesh: and, having passed over the beginnings of the Epistle, our whole disputation has been against his excellent treatises. For we preferred to speak of the things of God, rather than of our own injuries. If a man sin against a man, they shall pray for him to the Lord. But if he sin against God, who shall pray for him? Now, on the contrary, we pursue our adversaries above all things with immortal hatred: to those who blaspheme God, we stretch out a merciful hand. He writes an apology to Bishop Theophilus, of which this is the opening:

You indeed, as a man of God, and adorned with apostolic grace, sustain the care of all the Churches, especially of that which is in Jerusalem, while you yourself are distracted by very many anxieties of the Church of God which is under you. He praises his countenance, draws toward the person of princes. You who seek the rules of the Church, and use the canons of the Council of Nicaea, and strive to usurp for yourself clerics belonging to others and dwelling with their own bishops—answer me, what has Palestine to do with the bishop of Alexandria? Unless I am mistaken, it is there decreed that the metropolis of Palestine is Caesarea, and that of the whole East is Antioch. Either, therefore, you ought to have referred the matter to the bishop of Caesarea, with whom—your communion being spurned—you knew that we communicate;

or if judgment had to be sought from afar, the letters should rather have been directed to Antioch. But I know why you were unwilling to send to Caesarea, why to Antioch. You knew what you were fleeing, what you were avoiding. You preferred to make trouble for ears already occupied, rather than to render to your Metropolitan the honour due to him. Nor do I say this because—apart from the friendships that engender suspicion—I find anything to reprehend in the legation; but because you ought rather to have cleared yourself before those who were asking and present. You sent the most religious man of God, the presbyter Isidore, a man powerful both by the very dignity of his gait and bearing, and by divine intelligence, to cure even those who are gravely sick in soul; if indeed they have any sense of their own languor. A man of God sends a man of God.

'There is no difference between a presbyter and a bishop; the same dignity of him who sends and of him who is sent': this is said with sufficient unskillfulness: shipwreck, as they say, in the harbour. This Isidore, who is exalted to heaven by your praises, is defamed at Alexandria for the very thing for which you are at Jerusalem; whence he seems to have come not as a legate, but as an ally. Moreover, letters too written by his hand, which had been directed to us three months before the legation, carrying error, were delivered to the presbyter Vincentius, which are held by him to this day, in which he exhorts the commander of his army to stand with firm step upon the rock of faith, and not to be terrified by our dirges.

He promises that, before any suspicion of a legation arose, he would come to Jerusalem, and at his coming the wedges of the adversaries would forthwith be crushed. And among other things he uses also these words: 'As smoke is dissolved in the air, and wax melts at the nearness of fire: so shall those be scattered who, always resisting the faith of the Church, now through simple men attempt to disturb that same faith.' 38. I ask you, reader, he who writes this before he comes, what does he seem to you? an adversary, or a legate? This is the man whom we can call most pious or most religious, and—to express word for word—a God-worshipper. This is the man of divine intelligence;

so powerful, and of such dignity of gait and bearing, that like a spiritual Hippocrates he could by his very presence mitigate the languor of our souls, if indeed we are willing to acquiesce in his medicine. Let him cure himself with such a medicament, who is accustomed to cure others also. To us that divine intelligence is, for Christ's sake, foolishness. Gladly do we languish in our rusticity, lest we learn by your eye-salve to see impiously. 'But for thy holiness, as if it had been carried through to the very end for its excellent good will, we beseech the Lord in the holy places night and day, that He may render it a perfect reward, and bestow upon it the crown of life.' Rightly do you give thanks;

for unless Isidore had come, you would not have found in all Palestine so faithful a comrade. Unless he had brought you the promised aid, you would have stuck fast in the throng of rustics, who could not understand your wisdom. This very apology, of which we now speak, was dictated in the presence and with the great collaboration of Isidore, so that he was both the dictator and the bearer of the letters. 39. 'When therefore he had come hither, and had approached us three times, and had applied words having medicine both of your so divine wisdom and of his own intelligence, he profited no one, nor did anyone profit him.'

This man who is said to have approached us three times, that in his coming he might preserve a mystic number, who was conveying to us the mandate of Bishop Theophilus, was unwilling to deliver the letters sent to us by him. And when we said: If you are a legate, deliver the letters of legation: if you have no letters, how will you prove yourself a legate? He answered that he did indeed have letters for us: but that he had been adjured by the bishop of Jerusalem not to deliver them to us. Behold the constancy of the legate, who, that he might make peace, and exclude suspicion of favour toward one party, dealt equally to both! And because he had come without a plaster, and had not the instruments of physicians, therefore his medicine profited nothing.

'Jerome and those who are with him, both in secret and before all, very frequently and under the attestation of an oath, gave him sufficient assurance that they had never had any ambiguity of faith concerning us, saying: As at the time when we communicated with him, so now likewise we have the same disposition concerning the principle of faith.' See what concord of dogmas does. Isidore, that he might signify these things, was his ally, a man of God and a presbyter, and a powerful man, and of sacred and venerable gait, and of divine intelligence, and is called the Hippocrates of Christians. I, poor wretch, while I lie hidden in solitude, suddenly cut off by so great a pontiff, lost the name of presbyter.

And yet this Jerome, with his ragged crowd and squalid flocks, what did he dare to answer to that thunderous [or: lightning-like] Isidore? But lest perchance he should not yield, and should overwhelm them by his presence and by the mass of his body, not once, not three times, but very frequently they swore that they knew the man about whom the question arose to be orthodox, and had never held him in suspicion of heresy. O open and shameless lie! O testimony in one's own favour, not credited even to Cato! For in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall stand. Was it ever said anywhere, or anywhere enjoined upon you, that we would enter into your communion without satisfaction of faith?

When, through the most eloquent and most Christian Count Archelaus, who was the arbiter of peace, a place of covenant was agreed upon, was not this demanded first of all, that the faith of the future concord should lay the foundations? You promised that you would come. The day of Easter was at hand: a numerous crowd of monks had assembled: you were awaited at the place: you did not know what to do. Suddenly you sent word that I-know-not-what woman was sick: that on that day you could not come. Does a buffoon speak these things, or a bishop? Grant that what you say is true—on account of the delights of one little woman, lest in your absence her head ache, she suffer queasiness, her stomach grow chilled, do you neglect the cause of the Church? do you scorn the presence of so many men, both Christians and monks?

We were unwilling to give occasion: for we saw the trick of your delay, we overcame the injury by patience. Archelaus writes back: he urges you to wait a second and a third day, if you wished to come. But you, occupied: For the little woman did not cease to vomit: while she escaped her nausea, she utterly forgot about us. After two months, therefore, Isidore, long awaited, at last came, who—not, as you pretend, to give testimony for you—but heard the cause of the satisfaction demanded. For when he objected to us, Why did you communicate with him, if he was a heretic? he heard from all: We communicated, suspecting nothing of heresy. But after, summoned by the blessed Pope Epiphanius, he scorned to answer both by word and by letters:

letters came from the same Epiphanius to all the monks, that without satisfaction of faith no one should rashly communicate with him. The letters are at hand, nor can there be any doubt about this matter. These are the things which the crowd of brethren answered, not, as you argue, that you are not a heretic because at some time you were not so called. For by this reasoning, he who was healthy before his sickness ought not to fall sick. 41. But when it began to be discussed concerning the ordination of Paulinianus, and of the others who are with him, seeing themselves reprehended—although for the sake of charity and concord everything was being conceded to them; and this alone was sought, that although they had been ordained by others against the rules, yet they should be subject to the Church of God;

that they should not rend it, and make a private principality for themselves: in this not acquiescing, they began to bring forward the matter of faith, and to make known to all, that unless those who were with Jerome the presbyter were censured, they would find no fault in us. But if they were censured for error and fault, since they are utterly unable to dispute about questions of this kind, not finding satisfaction for their own error, they would flee to these things: not because they hoped that we could be convicted, but that they might strive to injure our reputation. That this is involved discourse, let no one think a fault of the translation. For such is the Greek too. Meanwhile I rejoice, that I who thought myself beheaded, suddenly see the head of my presbyterate restored to me.

He says that we cannot at all be convicted, and shudders at coming to the battle. If the cause of discord is not from dissension of faith, but, as you say, descends from the ordination of Paulinianus, what so great folly is it, to those wishing to give occasion, to be unwilling to answer? Confess the faith; but nevertheless answer what is asked, that it may be clear to all that the contest is not about faith, but about ordination. For as long as, questioned about faith, you are silent, your adversary can say to you: It is not a cause of ordination, but of faith. If it is a cause of ordination, you act foolishly in being silent when questioned about faith. If of faith, you foolishly put forward ordination as a pretext.

Furthermore, as for what you say, that you asked that they be subject to the Church of God, and not rend it, nor make a private principality for themselves, of whom you are speaking I do not sufficiently understand. If of me and of the presbyter Vincentius, you have slept a very long time, who after thirteen years, now awakened, speak these things. For it was on this account that both I left Antioch, and he Constantinople, most celebrated cities, not that we might praise you preaching among the peoples: but that, weeping in the fields and in the solitude for the sins of our youth, we might bend the mercy of Christ toward us. But if your speech is about Paulinianus: you see him to be subject to his own Bishop, to dwell in Cyprus, to come at times to visit us: not as yours, but as another's;

namely his, by whom he was ordained. But if he should wish to be here too, and in our exile to live quietly in solitude, what does he owe you, except the honour which we owe to all bishops? Suppose him ordained by you: you will hear from him the same that the bishop Paulinus of holy memory heard from me, poor wretch. 'Did I ask you to ordain me? If you bestow the presbyterate in such a way that you do not take from us the monk, you must look to your own judgment. But if under the name of presbyter you take from me that for which I forsook the world: I have what I always had: you have suffered no loss in the ordination.' 42. That they should not rend it, he says, nor make a private principality for themselves. Who rends the Church?

Is it we, whose whole house of Bethlehem communicates in the Church? or you who either believe rightly, and proudly are silent about the faith: or believe wrongly, and truly rend the Church? Do we rend the Church—we who, a few months ago, about the days of Pentecost, when the sun was darkened and the whole world dreaded the Judge now at any moment to come, offered to your presbyters forty persons of different ages and sex to be baptized? And surely there were five presbyters in the monastery, who by their own right could baptize; but they were unwilling to do anything against your stomach, lest this too should be given you as an occasion of keeping silent about the faith. Or do not you rather rend the Church, you who commanded your presbyters at Bethlehem:

...lest they should administer baptism at Easter to our candidates, whom we sent to Diospolis to the confessor and bishop Dionysius to be baptized? Are we said to rend the Church—we who, outside our own little cells, possess no place that is the Church's? Or is it not you who rend the Church, who command your clergy that, if anyone should call Paulinianus a presbyter consecrated by bishop Epiphanius, he be forbidden to enter the Church? From that time down to the present day we behold only the Lord's grotto from afar; and while heretics go in, we, set at a distance, sigh. 43. Is it we who rend the Church, or rather he who denies a dwelling to the living and a grave to the dead, who demands the exile of his brethren?

Who was it that specially stirred up against our necks that most powerful beast which threatens the necks of the whole world? Who suffers the bones of the Saints and their guiltless ashes to be lashed even now by the rains? With such blandishments does the good Shepherd invite us to peace, and accuse us of setting up our own domain—us who are joined in communion and charity to all bishops who hold only the right faith. Or are you alone the Church, and is whoever offends you shut out from Christ? If we are defending a domain of our own, show that we have a bishop in your parish. That we have not held communion with you is a matter of faith: answer, and it will become a matter of ordination. 44. They also invent a pretext concerning other letters, which they say Epiphanius wrote to them.

Yet he will render an account for all that has been done before the tribunal of Christ, where great and small alike shall be judged without any respect of persons. Nevertheless, how can they rely upon his letter—that letter which he wrote, after being convicted by us, concerning the unlawful ordination of Paulinianus and of those who are with him, as his very letter itself signifies in its opening? I ask, what blindness is so great, wrapped, as they say, in Cimmerian darkness? He says that we are inventing a pretext, and that we do not possess Epiphanius's letters against him, and immediately he adds: «How can they rely upon his letter—that letter which he wrote, after being convicted by us, concerning the unlawful ordination of Paulinianus and of those who are with him:

as his very letter itself signifies in its opening?» We do not possess the letter. And what is that letter which in its opening speaks of Paulinianus? There is something after the opening which you are afraid to mention. You were convicted of the age which Paulinianus had. You ordain him presbyter and send him as your legate and companion; and you have such confidence that, where you lied that Paulinianus was a boy, thither you send the boy as a presbyter. Likewise you make Theoseba, a deacon of the Church of Thiria, a presbyter, and you arm him against us, and abuse his eloquence against us. To you alone is it permitted to trample on the rights of the Church: whatever you do is the rule of doctrine; and you do not blush to summon Epiphanius along with yourself to be judged before the tribunal of Christ.

What follows after this chapter is this: He imputes to Epiphanius the fellowship of his table and house, and writes that Epiphanius never spoke with him about the doctrines of Origen, and confirms it under the testimony of an oath, saying: He did not show, as God is witness, that he held even a suspicion of perverse faith concerning us. I do not wish to reply and rebuke sharply, lest I should seem to convict a bishop of perjury. At hand are many letters of Epiphanius: one to the man himself, others to the bishops of Palestine, and recently to the pontiff of the city of Rome; in which he says that he, while rebuking the man before many on the score of doctrines, deserved no answer; and our whole monastery is witness of our littleness.

(Scripture references) Ps. 17:46; Prov. 10:9; 1 Pet. 3:15; Matt. 6:23; Ps. 118:67; Ps. 114:7; Ps. 141:8; Gal. 1:8; Ps. 138:21; Matt. 10:37; Ps. 8:4; 1 Cor. 12:9; Rom. 2:33; Col. 1:26; Isa. 53:8; Acts 23:5; Exod. 22; Ps. 32:6; Ps. 103:4; Jude 6; Eph. 1:21; 1 Cor. 1:25; John 5:17; Ps. 32:15; Heb. 11; Gen. 18; Judg. 13; Luke 1; Col. 18; 1 Cor. 15:42; Luke 20:35,36; Matt. 24; 1 Cor. 1:15; 1 Cor. 15:36,37; 1 Cor. 12:34; Phil. 3:21; 1 Cor. 15:53; Ps. 44:14; Cant. 1:3; Col. 1:21,22; Col. 2:11; 1 Cor. 15:44; Matt. 22:30; and Luke 20:35; Luke 24:39; John 20:27; Gen. 6:3; Gal. 1:16; Rom. 8:9; 1 Cor. 15; Matt. 17 and Mark 9; Matt. 9:2; Gen. 5:4; Kings 3; Ps. 15:9; Acts 2:31; Isa. 40:5; Ezek.

(Scripture references) 37; Job 19:23ff.; Matt. 22:30; Luke 1:35; Matt. 12:13; Matt. 22; Luke 12:7; John 5:25; Isa. 26:20 (acc. to LXX); Dan. 12:2; Isa. 66:24; Rom. 6:19; 2 Cor. 4:14; Acts 7; Exod. 4; Jer. 18; Luke 10; Matt. 27; Isa. 63:1 (acc. to LXX); Gen. 49; Isa. 63; John 16; Ps. 44; Cant. 8:5; 5:10; Rev. 3; John 6:39; Luke 15; John 19:6; Luke 23:28; Acts 1:11; Rom. 1; Isa. 65:4; Deut. 9; 1 Kings 19; John 12; Mark 5; John 11; Luke 24:16; ibid. 31; John 20; John 21:12; Acts 12; John 20; Rom. 6:4; 2 Cor. 15; 1 Cor. 15:53; Hos. 13:14 and 1 Cor. 15:55; 1 Sam. 2:25; Deut. 27:6 and Matt. 18:16 and 2 Cor. 16:1.