屬靈講道集 第 1 章 第 26/36 段

But when darkness is no longer in it, but it is unceasingly illumined wholly and entirely by the true light, just as the earth in the clear air is illumined by the sun, then, all darkness having withdrawn, and the soul abiding eternally in the light, it is perfected in the light, the soul itself also becoming light.

...none better than another, but they are all of one nature, and from the same disk of the sun; so too the saints who have been born of the divine Spirit, and who are children of God, and who have the light of the Godhead within themselves, are of the same Spirit.

And just as the rays of the sun are distinct from one another, so too the saints are distinct, both in body and in soul.

For Peter is Peter, and Paul is Paul, and likewise all the saints.

Each has his own body and has his own soul, but the same God dwells in all, and they all dwell in God, each having his own virtue and beauty of soul and body, on account of the manifold wisdom of God and the diverse grace of the Spirit, which works in them as he wills.

All the saints partake of the same body of the Godhead, of the same hypostasis, of the same essence, and they are bound together, like rays of the sun, by the righteousness of God.

For when the sun itself goes down toward the west, it draws all its rays back into itself, and leaves not a single ray behind in the darkness; so too Christ, at the consummation of the world, when the judgment comes and Gehenna is made manifest, gathers to himself all the rays—that is, the saints, in whom he has worked and to whom he has imparted his Spirit—setting them each in his own place, leaving no one in the night and the darkness, but receiving them all into himself, into his eternal kingdom.

Just as if someone were held fast by a most violent fever, burning within, and if a physician should bring him food, he would be repelled and nauseated by it—and then the physician exhorts him, saying:

'Force yourself.' And when he partakes of the food, little by little the sweetness of the food begins to still and quench the bitter disease burning within.

But the whole fever is not purged away by a single course of treatment;

for he often partakes of food and is strengthened and grows healthy and walks about, and yet languor and feebleness and weakness still cling to him.

And it happens that some of his limbs, or his face, or his eyes, are handsome, but the rest of his members are still wasted away; he has a sound hand, but his foot is wasted—so it is also in the realm of the spirit:

there are many members of the spirit, and it happens that some members among them are healthy, yet because of this a man is not perfect.

Do you see how many degrees there are of the Spirit, and how the evil is purged and refined part by part, and not all at once?

For the whole providence and economy of the Lord (both the rising of the sun and all created things) came to be for the sake of the kingdom which the elect are to inherit, and for the establishment of the peaceful kingdom.

But Christians discriminate against neither a prostitute standing before them, nor sinners, nor the disorderly, but with the simplest disposition and a pure eye they regard all alike, as though it were for them a fixed and natural thing to despise no one, to judge no one, or to abhor anyone. Indeed, even while distinguishing them, he looks upon the one-eyed man, knowing him to be so, as though he were sound, and regards the man with the withered hand as though he were healthy.

For this is the purity of heart: to forgive sinners, to sympathize with them, and to be moved with compassion.

For it happens that the saints of God sit in the theater and watch the world caught up in the deceit of life, while they themselves, according to the inner man, are speaking with God.

The worldly, therefore, moved by the spirit of error to mind earthly things, have a different disposition.

And Christians have a different disposition, a different mind; they belong to a different age, a different city:

they trample the adversary underfoot.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

For the God-fearing are masters of all things; they despise fire and sword and waters, and they are masters over demons and passions.

But conversely, the slack and sinful are slaves to all things; fire burns them, and a stone or the sword kills them, and demons lord it over them.

Just as the body of the Lord, when he went up onto the mountain and was transfigured into the divine glory and into the infinite light, so too the bodies of the saints are glorified and flash with radiance.

For the glory that was within was then spread out over the body of Christ and shone forth; in the very same way, in the saints too, the power of Christ that is within will, on that day, overflow outwardly upon their bodies, since even from now they partake in mind of his very essence and nature.

Both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one; and:

The glory which you have given me, I have given to them.

Just as many lamps are kindled from one fire, so too, of necessity, their bodies also, being members of Christ, become the very thing that Christ is.

How then do Christians become superior to the first Adam? For their bodies die and decay, whereas he was, just as he was immortal in soul, so was his body also incorruptible.

The true death is hidden within, in the heart, and the man is dead within.

If, then, anyone has passed from death into life, in the hidden man, he truly lives forever and does not die.

But even if the bodies of such people are dissolved for a certain time, they are nevertheless sanctified and will be raised in glory.

Therefore we call the falling asleep of Christians 'sleep.'

Adam's body, then, was not incorruptible, but midway between incorruption and corruption.

But if, as you say, man was immortal in body, then the whole world, seeing the paradox of the thing—that the bodies of Christians do not decay—would come to the good by a certain necessity, thereafter, and not by a willing disposition.

But in order that free will, which the Lord gave to man from the beginning, might remain and be made manifest, for this reason things are administered according to divine economy, and the dissolution of the body occurs, so that it may be by man's own will that he turns to the good or to the evil.

For even one who is perfected in evil and deeply sunk in sin is not bound by any necessity; although he is a vessel of the devil, he is not entirely mastered, but he has the freedom to become a vessel of life.

Neither, likewise, is the one who is filled toward God, and deeply immersed and intoxicated with grace, held fast by any necessity; but although he is filled and bound by the Holy Spirit, he still has the free will to turn and to do as he wishes in this present age.

Is evil refined and eliminated part by part, and does a man progress in grace gradually, or is evil rooted out immediately, as soon as he receives divine visitation? Answer:

Just as an embryo in the womb does not immediately take solid shape into a man, but part by part becomes an image and is born, and even then is not yet a complete man, but grows over many years, and then becomes a full-grown man; or just as the seeds of barley or wheat, when cast into the ground, do not immediately take root, but winters and winds pass by, and in due season the ear of grain is formed; and the one who plants a vineyard does not immediately partake of its fruits—so much more in the realm of the spirit, where there is such great wisdom and subtlety, a man grows little by little and becomes a perfect man, unto the measure of full stature, and not as some say:

'Put it on, take it off'—as if it were done in an instant. Rather, it is just as one who wishes to learn letters goes and learns the characters, and when he becomes first there, he then goes on to the school of Roman studies, and there he is the last of all.

And again, when he becomes first there, he goes on to the grammarian, and there he is the last of all, a mere beginner.

And again, when he becomes first there, then he becomes a governor; and when he becomes a ruler, he takes for himself a co-assessor as his assistant.

If, then, visible things have so many stages of advancement, how much more do the heavenly mysteries have advancements and many degrees, and grow; and then, through much exercise and many trials, a person is drawn forth and becomes perfect.

For Christians who have truly tasted of grace, and who have the sign of the cross in their mind and heart, count as refuse all things from the king down to the lowest, and they are able to know that the entire earthly course, and the king's treasures, and wealth, and glory, and eloquence exist in a certain fantasy, having no solid foundation, but passing away; and whatever is beneath heaven is, to them, easily despised.

Why? Because that which is above heaven is a strange and wondrous thing, which exists neither among the king's treasures, nor in the wisdom of words, nor in worldly glory or dignities or wealth. That they have acquired, having the Lord himself, the Creator of all things, within their innermost man—a possession that does not pass away, but remains forever.

All intelligible beings—I mean of angels, and souls, and demons—were created whole and simple by the Creator.

But that some of them turned to evil came upon them from their own free will; for by their own will they turned aside from right reasoning.

But if we say that he was created thus by the Creator, we are calling God an unjust judge for sending Satan into Gehenna.

For there are certain heretics who say that matter is without beginning, that matter is a root, and that a root is a power... and an equality of power.

Against this, then, you can reasonably raise the objection: which power is victorious? And it must be said that it is God's power. Answer, then!

Therefore, the one who is defeated is no longer equal in age or equal in power—O you who say that evil exists as a substance.

For God, there is no evil subsisting in Him, in accordance with His impassibility and His divine nature.

But for us there is evil subsisting within, working through every faculty and every sense, and suggesting every impure desire. Yet it is not blended together in the way some describe the mixing of wine and water; rather, in a single field the wheat is by itself and the tares are by themselves, and in a single house the robber is on his own and the master of the house is on his own.

There is a spring flowing with pure water, and underneath it lies mire.

When someone stirs up the mire, the whole spring becomes muddied.

So too the soul, when it is disturbed and muddied, is commingled and becomes one thing with Satan (since both are spirits)—as, for instance, at the moment of fornication or murder.

For this reason he who cleaves to a harlot becomes one body with her.

Yet at another hour the soul's own substance exists by itself, when it repents of what it has done; and it weeps and prays over its transgressions and remembers God.

For if it were forever submerged in evil, how could it do these things, since Satan never wishes men to come to repentance? For he is utterly without compassion.

And the wife, when she unites with her husband, becomes one with him; yet at another hour they are separate, since it often happens that one of them dies while the other lives on.

Something of this kind also holds true concerning fellowship with the Holy Spirit.

Christians become one spirit with the Lord; yet at another hour they are not one, but the two substances remain distinct.

But they become one at that time when the man is wholly swallowed up in that very grace.

There are some who have a taste of God, yet are still worked upon by the adversary, and being without experience, they are bewildered.

But those who are practiced in the mysteries of the Christian life, and have grown old in them, are not bewildered at all.

Just as experienced farmers, through long practice, when there are bountiful harvests, are not entirely free of care but also anticipate famine and hardship; nor again, when famine or hardship overtakes them, do they despair for long, since they know how things change—so it is also in spiritual matters.

When the soul falls into various trials, it is neither bewildered nor does it despair, since it knows that the soul is given over by permission to be tested and disciplined by grace; nor again, when it is in great abundance and at rest, does it become careless, but rather awaits the change to come.

And if this sun, which is a body and a creature, shining upon foul-smelling places where there are dead things and mire, suffers no harm or defilement whatsoever, how much more does the pure and holy Spirit, when present with the soul that is being worked upon by the filthiness of the evil one, share in none of it.

For indeed the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

And so, even when a man is deep in grace and rich in grace, a remnant of evil still remains there, though he has the Helper aiding him.

Therefore, when someone is in affliction, he ought not to lose heart, since sin thereby grows thicker and gains further entrance.

But when someone always maintains hope in God, evil is, as it were, thinned out and diluted like water.

As for the fact that some people are paralyzed and disabled, feverish and ill and suffering pains—this came about as a result of sin.

For sin is the root of all these things, and the passions of the soul—the desires and the other evil reasonings—likewise come from it.

Just as, when there is a flowing spring making the surrounding places moist and damp, if heat comes the spring itself and the nearest places dry up, so also with the servants of God: in whomever grace abounds, it dries up the desire of the evil one, and likewise also the natural and pure desire—since now the people of God become greater than the first Adam.

God is uncircumscribed and incomprehensible, manifesting Himself everywhere—both in the mountains and in the sea and beneath the abyss—and He does not appear by descending, as an angel does, who comes down from heaven and is then on the earth but is no longer in heaven.

But God is everywhere: He is above, partaken of by the holy powers, and He is here among us as well; and every work and every creature is held fast within His hand, while He Himself remains uncontainable.

How can God be in darkness, or in Satan, or in places where there is foul stench? I answer you in turn: being impassible, He contains all things.

For He is uncircumscribed, and Satan, being a creature, is held fast and bound by Him.

And the good is neither defiled nor darkened by this.

But if you refuse to say that He contains all things—including Gehenna and Satan—you thereby make Him circumscribed, so that we would then have to go looking for some other being higher than He.

It is necessary, then, that God be everywhere, and that the mysteries of the Godhead, along with the subtlety contained within Him, not be apprehended by the darkness.

For evil cannot partake of purity, even though it is present within it.

For God, then, there is no evil that has substance in Him, since He is wronged in nothing.

But for us there is evil, because it dwells in the heart and is at work there, suggesting impure thoughts and not permitting us to pray in purity, but instead taking the mind captive to this present age.

It has thus clothed itself in our souls, and has touched even the very bones and marrow.

Just as, then, Satan is present in the air, and God, being present there too, suffers no wrong, so also sin is present in the soul, and likewise the grace of God dwells there together with it, suffering no wrong at all.

We ought to entrust our thoughts to our Master Christ, the Knower of hearts, and lay them bare before Him, whether we are in affliction or at rest, and to place our hope and confidence in Him, saying that He is my wealth, He is my Father, He is my glory... You ought, therefore, always to keep in your conscience this concern and this fear.

But if someone does not yet have God's gift of grace planted and rooted firmly within him, so that night and day it is, as it were, naturally attached to the soul, guiding it hour by hour, directing it aright, and taking it captive to what is good, so that the concern, the labor, and the fear become as natural and unchangeable as instinct—then he ought always to keep firmly fixed within him the contrition of heart.

Just as a bee works the honeycomb secretly within its wicker hive, so also grace works its own love secretly within hearts, and transforms them from bitterness into sweetness, from harshness into goodness.

Or, just as a silversmith or engraver, engraving a plate section by section, keeps covered the various figures he is carving, and only when he has finished does he reveal it flashing with light—so too the Lord, the true Craftsman, recasts our hearts and renews them in a hidden mystery, until we depart from the body, and then the beauty of the soul itself is manifested.

For those who want to fashion vessels and work figures into them first shape a model in wax, and then cast the metal according to the likeness of that model, so that the finished work takes on that very form. So too sin, being a spirit, has an image, and it changes into many forms.

In the same way, the inner man is also a living being, having an image and a form.

For the inner man is the likeness of the outer man.

For this vessel is great and precious, since of all creatures it is there that the Lord was pleased to make His dwelling.

The good thoughts of the soul resemble precious stones and pearls, whereas the unclean thoughts are filled with bones and every kind of impurity.

For Christians belong to another age—sons of the heavenly Adam, a new offspring, children of the Holy Spirit, luminous brothers of Christ—among whom may we also be counted worthy, by the grace and loving-kindness of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, to whom belong glory, honor, and majesty unto the ages of ages.

Those who build their foundation upon the rock—which is Jesus Christ—and who have been trained and tested over a long period of time, these are able to help those who are undergoing temptation, and to sympathize with them and show them mercy.

But some, deceiving themselves, when the grace of God has come upon them and worked mightily within them, find their members so sanctified that they suppose it impossible for desire to exist at all in a Christian, and imagine that they have thereby acquired a sober and pure mind.

And the inner man is lifted up into the divine and heavenly mysteries, so that such a person supposes he has already attained to the perfect measures.

He counts kings, rulers, the wise, and dignitaries as the very least, in comparison with that mystery.

But after a time, and at other hours, circumstances change, so that he truly comes to consider himself more sinful than all men, and regards himself as mere clay; yet again, at another hour, such a one sees himself as the greatest of kings, an extraordinary ruler, or a friend of the king; and yet again he sees himself as poor and weak.

So then the mind falls into anguished perplexity, asking why things happen this way and that. But the Lord entrusts grace to you according to His providential ordering; He governs and administers it.

For since human nature, being weak, becomes puffed up and conceited if it finds a little rest and grace from the Lord, and starts judging others—for this reason grace withdraws for a time, so that man may always remain under blows and anxious concern.

For then he begins to mourn for himself and to lament, and the Lord rejoices over such a disposition.

For a broken and humbled heart God will not despise.

For just as, suppose a master has two servants: one of them, having gained a certain familiarity, begins to conduct himself presumptuously toward his master; while the other lives in fear of blows, and whatever the master says to him, he obeys at once, trembling, lest he be beaten if he should fail to listen.

The master, then, takes delight in such a servant—clearly, in the one who ministers eagerly and carries out what is commanded.

Those who go forth from their own households and stand at the door of the Lord stand in a good position indeed.

For in going forth from the world, they seek to acquire fruits foreign to common nature.

For all earthly things are alien to the things of heaven.

But your nature needs the Lord, so that the Lord may come and be blended together with body and soul, and become one body together with the Lord, and so that Christ may dwell in the inner man—that is, so that there may come to be one perfect man belonging to the life and kingdom of the ages.

The world of Christians is a different world, and their manner of life, mind, speech, and conduct are of a different kind, while the manner of life, mind, speech, and conduct of the people of this world are likewise of another kind.

Those are one thing, and these are another, and there is a great distance between the one and the other.

For the inhabitants of the earth and the children of this present age are like wheat cast into the sieve of this earth, being sifted by the unstable thoughts of the world, their souls tossed about in the surge of earthly desires and tangled material notions, while Satan the sifter agitates them by means of the earth's sieve—that is, by earthly affairs.

For the whole sinful race of mankind, ever since the fall of Adam—when he transgressed the commandment—came under the ruler of wickedness, who thereby gained authority over Adam; and from that time on, with unceasing thoughts of deceit and turmoil, he sifts and drives against the sieve of the earth all the sons of this present age.

For just as the wheat is one thing...

And another [image] is the one who sifts the wheat through the sieve; for behold, in the sieve the wheat is struck by the one who sifts it and, tossed about unsteadily, is turned within it. So too, through earthly affairs, the ruler of wickedness holds fast all men, and through them he shakes and agitates and convulses and makes them stumble by vain and shameful reasonings, and by desires, and by earthly and worldly bonds, unsteadily taking them captive and whirling them about and enticing them—

—all the sinful race of Adam, just as the Lord also foretold to the apostles the uprising of the evil one that was about to come against them, saying:

Satan has demanded to have you, that he might sift you as wheat;

but I have besought my Father, that your faith may not fail.

For the word and sentence spoken to Cain by the Creator applies plainly to all:

"Groaning and trembling and shaken shalt thou be upon the earth"—this is, in a hidden sense, the type and image of all sinners.

For thus the race of Adam, having fallen from the commandment and become sinful, possesses that image in a hidden manner—being shaken by unsteady reasonings of cowardice and fear and every disturbance, while the ruler of this world tosses every soul that has not been born of God with manifold and various desires and pleasures, and turns it about like wheat in a sieve, unsteadily agitating in manifold ways the reasonings of men, shaking and enticing all with worldly deceptions and fleshly pleasures and fears and disturbances.

For indeed the Lord, showing that those who follow after the deceits and the will of the evil one bear the image of Cain's wickedness, said in rebuke:

"You," he says, "desire to do the desires of your father, the murderer of men;"

"he was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth."

So then all the sinful race of the old Adam, groaning and trembling in the sieve of the earth under Satan the sifter, possesses that condemnation in a hidden manner.

For just as the whole race of mankind on earth spread out from the one Adam, so also one particular evil of the passions has settled upon the entire sinful race of mankind, and the ruler of wickedness suffices to sift all men with unstable, material, vain, and turbulent reasonings.

And just as a single wind suffices to shake and convulse all plants and seeds and the growths of the earth, or as a single darkness of night spreads over the whole inhabited world, so also the ruler of wickedness—being a darkness of evil and death, and a certain dreadful, hidden, and savage wind—tosses and drives about the whole race of men upon earth with unstable reasonings, enticing the hearts of men with the desires of the world, and fills with the darkness of ignorance and hardness and forgetfulness every soul that has not been born from above and has not passed over, in mind and understanding, into another world, as it is said:

"But our citizenship is in heaven."

For in this the truly genuine Christians differ from the whole race of men, and there is a great distinction between them and the men of the world, as we said before, in that their mind and understanding always abide in heavenly-mindedness and mirror the eternal goods through their participation and communion in the Holy Spirit; in that they have been born from above of God, and have been counted worthy to become children of God in power and in truth, and through many struggles and labors and toils and length of time have arrived at stability, steadfastness, freedom from disturbance, and rest, no longer being sifted and tossed by unstable and vain reasonings of wickedness.

In this, then, they are greater and better than the world, because their mind and the disposition of their soul abide in the peace of Christ and in the love of the Spirit, just as the Lord also said, discoursing concerning such persons:

"He has passed," he says, "from death into life."

Therefore the transformation of Christians does not consist in outward forms and figures, as many suppose the difference and distinction between the world and themselves to lie in forms and figures.

And behold, in mind and understanding they turn out to be like the world, having a shaking and disorder of their reasonings, and unbelief and confusion and disturbance and cowardice—

—being bound in the world and in earthly bonds, not possessing in their heart the heavenly rest and peace of the Spirit, since they sought nothing from God, nor believed that they would be counted worthy to obtain these things.

For it is in the renewal of the mind, and the peace of the reasonings, and the love of the Lord and heavenly desire, that the new creation of Christians differs from all the men of the world;

wherefore also the coming of the Lord took place, to count worthy of these spiritual goods those who truly believe in him.

For the glory and beauty and heavenly wealth of Christians is unspeakable, and it is procured through toils and sweats and trials and many struggles, yet the whole of it is obtained by grace.