駁毀像派 第 1 章 第 1/21 段

Refutation and overthrow of the unlawful, unbounded, and truly falsely-named decree set forth by those who apostatized from the catholic and apostolic church and adhered to an alien mindset, for the destruction of the saving dispensation of the Word of God: To yield obediently to the decrees of piety and to follow them unswervingly, and indeed to be guarded and walled about by the ordinances well established from of old, is lawful and salutary;

And this would indeed already be, of the things desirable, the most eagerly sought and most honored, at least for those who truly possess a sound mind and a perfect intellect;

For indeed from this peace accrues to life, and an upright life, and rightness in doctrines is strengthened, and the things that come from divine favor are rendered propitious.

To those, then, who attempt to move the eternal boundaries which have been well and lawfully set by the fathers, and to injure matters well established, it will befall — inasmuch as they run beyond the boundaries — to possess a perverted mind, and throughout their whole life to be sick with love of turmoil and instability;

for toward both themselves and their neighbors they beget much seditiousness, and, sharing what is agitated and overturned both in their household and in their whole life, they turn it also upon those near and those far off.

They dare, then, straightaway to rise up against divine glory, and to exalt themselves against those who have chosen to live rightly, and to behave arrogantly toward the more reasonable — and those especially who are among those established in positions of authority and in the greater offices and dignities — and they do against their own head things discordant and unholy;

of which the charge of the undertaking is great and grave, but greater and more grievous still will be, in the time of divine visitation, the recompense for the things wickedly done, if indeed they shall undergo justice not only for their own sins but also for those whom, by doing them violence, they attempt to wrong — since these were compelled to go, even unwillingly, toward impiety.

Such a thing, then, we know to have occurred even in our own times.

For there was formerly a time in which the definitions of our most upright faith were piously guarded;

when a deep peace held the church of Christ, and it flourished in peace and freedom from faction, possessing utter tranquility and calm;

when, boasting of its own adornment, it was distinguished, and was being perfected and walking by the light of the Lord;

when the evangelical and apostolic preaching, flourishing, was proclaimed boldly, and the symbols of the saving dispensation of Christ shone forth through the sacred images, by which His sufferings and miracles and the power of the Savior were displayed beforehand;

when grace and truth were honored above all, and the things of grace were clearly manifested and proclaimed;

when the divine temples, and the sacred and precious things within the temples, were most fittingly adorned;

when divine fear was established in the souls of the pious, and reverence and awe concerning divine things;

when the gift of love, spreading everywhere, was proclaimed abroad;

when the rights of the priesthood, flourishing, were jointly preserved, and the priests of the Lord had put on righteousness, wrapping themselves in piety as in a holy robe, and clothing themselves with judgment as with a double cloak, and the blessing of the Lord became all, if one must utter something of the words of Job;

when even emperors took great pride in piety rather than in the diadem and in gold and in Indian gems flashing brilliantly, and were adorned by uprightness of doctrines rather than by the purple color and by however many trophies they might set up—

for this very reason those who followed behaved shamelessly against divine fear and lifted up their head against the saints and went in opposition to our sacred confession

the great altar shall cry out;

which altar, being wickedly torn down while he still lived, he profaned, and, being justly slain, he defiled and polluted it the more with the gore of accursed blood — the accursed one having received truly fitting wages for his insolence against Christ, there where the tent of the false prophets, and the mockery, and the delusion are paraded in triumph.

How then did this man contrive to fulfill the designs of his own impiety? First he made trial of those belonging to the church, to see whether it were possible that the things according to his mind should proceed quietly and calmly;

But when his attempts had proved fruitless and unsuccessful, he turned to another course and came to it, and, so that nothing of the wickedness and villainy of impiety of those who had gone before might be lacking, he here too emulates that Christ-fighter, who long ago, by God's permission, ruled the Roman people badly — I mean Constantine the most impious.

who indeed, having inherited this lawlessness as though descending from a paternal inheritance, strengthened it considerably;

He, then, like that one, gathers together all who exercise the priesthood, and, plotting against them with attempts of every kind, he contrived to persuade them to be won over to his own will.

But as many as among them were preeminent and select, possessing a mind firmly fixed and steadfast concerning the sound and right doctrine, were seen setting themselves in opposition to his god-hated will;

Wherefore, having first assailed them with tortures and grievous imprisonments, and pressing them with the wastings of the longest famines and privations of food, and having led them about through every dishonor, thereafter he condemned them to long and bitter exiles;

But as many as he brought over who were more rustic and simple, or indeed more simple-minded — some he corrupted with money, others he enticed with promises, others he stole away by promising them free access to the palace, and there are some whom he also terrified with threats, and, proceeding with certain other devices, he netted them into his own will.

Taking these, then, who had been torn away from the common body of the church, like members fallen off and corrupted, and who had attempted to gather separately on their own, he assembled from them what seemed to be a synod;

and he becomes now a member and president, or rather a forerunner, of the sway of the expected evil one, preparing the way for his residence, and in a certain manner apportioning in advance the contest that was to be waged against the saints;

And taking away in advance the greater part of the labors, he was shown to be so well-disposed toward him, that, at the time when the lawless one is about to be revealed, he the lawless one would have his battle against him alone who overthrows his power, and, the images set up as monuments in memory of Christ's life in the flesh having been removed out of the way, he the lawless one would not toil, being occupied any longer about them, but would have the contest against the pious more easily at that time;

And again the abomination is seen in the temple of the Lord, and a mouth is opened speaking great things against the glory of the Lord, and boasting great words and vaunting itself against the divine dispensation.

What then must this be called — or should it not simply be called a synod? Rather, one might justly call it a barbarian-synod, on account of the barbarous and degenerate mind of him who assembled it, or an evil council, rival to that Caiaphas-council of old, since these men too lawlessly plotted vain things against Christ, and, like the Jewish assembly, raged against Christ's incarnation, and, having babbled very many empty words, they labored in vain.

For that it could not be called a priestly synod is manifest;

For first, how could they, who indeed have set at naught, through violation of their covenants, the agreements which they gave before the divine altar in the presence of God and angels and the whole fullness of the church, constitute a synod, and have trampled underfoot the written documents in which they set forth the signs of the cross and their own names? From which it is not permitted them to assemble in sacred gatherings;

and next, because it has been assembled contrary to every ordinance and ecclesiastical canon;

for just as the unlawful system gathered unreasonably and unholily by the impious Constantine was falsely called a synod, so too have they falsely and disorderly called this one a synod

they have been deprived of the others, to whom the presidencies among the priests have been allotted;

without whom, when an ecclesiastical doctrine is at issue, it is not lawful, according at least to the divine pattern handed down to the church from of old, for a priestly synod to be constituted;

wherefore it shows itself unstable and unfounded in itself, and one who understands this might very sensibly pronounce here what was said by one of the wise men of old concerning a certain army camp, luxuriant indeed in the great multitude of its host, but lacking a commander wise and skilled in tactics and warfare to marshal and well arrange it —

What a great beast has no head — since these men too, though abounding in a great multitude of men and forming a body not at all easy to number, have been utterly deprived of the leading and most scientific spirit of our sacred discourse, and altogether of the canon and of the reason that guides.

And what else have they done but set at naught Christ himself, the head of the church? And they attempt, insofar as they are able, to overturn the mystery of his whole dispensation.

Wherefore, having been brought to this state of disorder and disarray, and having stripped off gentleness and mildness, in the manner of wild beasts and savage wolves (for by the outward and visible fleece they conceal the inner and hidden beast), having violently fallen upon the church of Christ and raged like mad dogs against our sacred doctrines, they hasten with their whole mouth to devour the rational sheep, the people of the Lord, according to what was spoken through the voice of the holy prophet;

Hence the heresy, old in time yet ever renewing its wickedness, as though peering forth from the innermost recesses of unbelief and creeping out of the lairs of error, just as it darkened the true confession of those who have now departed from piety and have wretchedly transferred themselves to it, so also has walled them off from communion with those who have laid hold of the helms of the priesthood, having debarred their concord and agreement;

for it is not possible for them to be joined together with falsehood, since where the passionate mind, enslaved to the flesh, holds sway, the bond of freedom and peace, which is constituted from the Spirit, is by nature altogether unable to be made to prevail; for he who wickedly assembled them, being mastered by great arrogance and unholy conduct, trampling upon every canonical and lawful tradition — or rather not even understanding that there had ever been an ordinance of canons — thought fit to establish his own rash presumption apart from those who had been allotted preeminence in the priesthood; nevertheless, having been gathered together unlawfully and without ordinance, they, babbling much foolish talk against the Lord and against his Christ, that is, against the evangelical proclamation, contrived it, and, rekindling and renewing an evil doctrine, well condemned and silenced long ago by the judgment of the divine men who went before, they dare, as they supposed, to set forth a definition that is in every way unbounded;

for they define absolutely nothing, but for the destruction of the well and rightly established definitions and true doctrines and the pious mind of the catholic and apostolic church, they array themselves all too vainly and godlessly.

For they utter, not from the mouth of the Lord, but from their own belly, and they speak perverse things, having in no way followed the ecclesiastical canon and pattern, but having despised the fear of the Lord and disregarded the commandment which hangs no small danger even over one who scandalizes a single one of the least — how much more, then, have they endangered themselves concerning a multitude beyond number and greater than count, and a whole polity, and an entire people, sacred and holy, which they tore apart and ravaged — a people acquired and constituted by the blameless and undefiled blood of Christ, through the sweat and many labors of the celebrated men after Christ and of those who succeeded to their labors.

In this so-called definition, then, straightaway even from its opening they do not openly declare their impiety, but they feign the outward form of piety and somehow color over their own words, since this is dear and customary to heretics;

for thus also we have known this to happen among the Arians and Eunomians and other heretics;

sharing in their false doctrine, they too adorn themselves with goods that are not their own;

for, not having the natural beauty of truth, they cunningly make use of certain foreign and alien forms, contriving to conceal from outward view the shame of their own formlessness, fastening the bait onto the bronze hook, or smearing honey over the poison, so that, when they are about to belch forth the foul-smelling and abominable words of their own bitterness, they may through these deceive the more simple and lead them into the same impiety.

For after these things, like those who have recovered from drunken debauch, they return to themselves and turn back to their own vomit;

and, stripping off the mask, they lay bare the offspring of their true mind.

But let us, having set aside the great mass of idle talk, now indeed turn our discourse to the more crucial points of the blasphemy, the ones requiring some refutation.

And indeed it were fitting, since they are rotten and stale, not even to set about such nonsense at all from the outset, but straightway to dismiss and repel it;

but since among certain persons who do not hold a firm and steadfast conviction regarding piety, they were thought to carry something worthy of consideration, for this reason indeed we have deemed it well — if it should prove to be of some benefit to them — to take up the refutations against those points.

They bring forward, then, into their midst that Leo, the apostate, who once ruled over the Christians by God's forbearance, Leo who came from the ill-named Isaurians and was no less bestial in his mind than in his appellation, and moreover also that man's son Constantine, more savage and more bestial still in character;

who indeed, having inherited his father's impiety and malice as a kind of inheritance descending from above, and having shown himself an heir not so much of the dignity as of the impiety, both increased it and strengthened it to the utmost;

For him, then, drawn up in battle array together with his most delightful and beloved cavalry, the war against the glory of Christ was equipped, and, raging madly, he perpetrated very many most wicked and most evil deeds against Christians.

Concerning these men, then, telling idle tales, they write such things as this: These men, having regarded the piety of the orthodox faith as the security of their life, sought the honor of him through whom they received their reign;

and having assembled a numerous synod of spiritual fathers and God-beloved bishops...

They, having utterly fallen away from the truth, and having submitted mind and tongue to falsehood, begin to weave the account of the vanity set before them out of things that are already manifestly false, so that — of things whose beginning is disqualified, as the saying goes — the whole too may be rejected.

for against the things that lie even now still in the memory of the many, and that preserve agreement among all, and that are on everyone's lips, being repeated in houses and marketplaces, they set themselves in opposition, either out of ignorance or with shameless impudence;

for that unholy council was not even assembled while Leo was yet living out his life here;

for that man, having initiated this innovation and having laid down beforehand the foundations of apostasy and having fixed the footings of impiety, was the first to outrage the holy things, and cast down from the priestly throne, with much dishonor and insolence, the most sacred and most holy hierarch who had laid hands upon him and anointed him — he, the accursed one, neither fearing God nor showing reverence for the hand that had anointed him;

and he enthroned in his place another who followed his abominable will and doctrine, and, having lived on for some further time, he brutally severed his own life;

But he who, by God's forbearance, together with his unbelief, obtained the authority immediately after that man, raised up the God-warring structure still more impiously and more godlessly, building up the tower of wickedness and bringing along for this purpose the priests of shame as his collaborators;

for, indeed, attempting to establish the designs of his godless will, some time later he gathered together these bishops under his hand and assembled that evil and lawless workshop;

they spoke and contrived against the saving manifestation of Christ;

for they godlessly decreed that the church of God, redeemed from idols through it — that is, through Christ's dispensation — had rendered veneration to idols, and this was for them the prelude of their blasphemy;

which their newly-enrolled disciples gladly received with praises.

this indeed they have dared to call a synod.

But let them hear what sort of synod it ought to be called:

the maenad, the disorderly hussy, the self-willed, the all-daring, the innovator, the novelty-monger, the outrageous woman, the mother of blasphemy, the apostate battle-line, the mad mob, the Caiaphas-like council, the robber-band, the soul-destroying company, the trap for rational creatures, the Satanic ambush, the weapon of the evil one, the enemy of piety, the lawless council-chamber, the seat of the pestilent, the Pharisaic faction, the Judaic assembly, the charlatans' gathering, the mob-inciting throng, the disorder-making rabble, the swarm of evils and adversary of Christian piety, that which is crammed full of every transgression and the lodging-place of every wickedness.

What speech could attain to it? Who is capable of enumerating how many and what sort of outrages they perpetrated against our holy religion, and how great an innovation they devised against the Church, what things they dared against the saints, handing over the sacred treasures to fire, digging through the divine temples and the very altars themselves, and utterly and disorderly obliterating all the sacred adornment in them and the comeliness that adorned them therefrom? Why speak of the rest? The drunken outrage they wrought against the economy of Christ they have deemed to be their glory, just as they have deemed the honor and renown attaching to it to be dishonor.

And how many things they innovated against the sacred canons and institutions, and, in a word, they trampled underfoot and overturned altogether the tradition that from of old and long ago has prevailed divinely throughout the Church, and all the customs and laws according to which Christians have from the beginning conducted their common life.

Let us now see also what sort of things they bring forward in what follows.

They condemned the headless and untransmitted — or rather, to put it plainly, useless — making and veneration of icons, having preferred the worship in spirit and in truth.

Here it is possible for those who understand to perceive the hidden guile and the ignoble and strange character of their manner.

For having undertaken to make their argument against icons, they proceed simply and without any specification.

For as to what sort and whose icons they mean, and whom they depict, and whose memory they enjoin, they add nothing at all, but have left the matter hanging in mid-air — and they would not have kept silent, had they not wished to work mischief concerning the name, so that — since indeed it was against Christians that they directed their argument — they might not seem, right from the very first starting-post, to be too boldly unveiling their impiety, letting loose their wicked tongue in outrage against the saints, and might not appear to be fighting without restraint against the incarnation of Christ, and publicly proclaiming their hatred toward the archetype, and rendering themselves alien to the Christian religion.

For it was necessary for them, since 'image' belongs among the relative terms — which can never be understood in isolation, especially when spoken properly (for it carries with it, as co-conceived, that to which it bears reference) — to state clearly of whom the icon and the likeness might be, so that what is indicated by them might be readily recognizable, just as, indeed, through the image stamped upon the coin presented to Christ, Caesar was made known by the question that was asked.

But this is a device of their cunning and an invention of diabolical scheming, so that they might not from the outset alarm the hearer by revealing that their war is against Christ, but rather might draw him, from unseen beginnings, into the greater pit of impiety.

But not much later they will lay bare the guile that lurks hidden for souls, when they bring forward the term 'uncircumscribable'.

Whence they seek to establish that Christ is not to be depicted in an icon, clinging fervently to the phantoms of Docetism.

'Headless,' they say, 'and untransmitted.'

Having exchanged 'headless' for a non-existent lie, they have fittingly been deprived of a head and of the mind proper to it, having rejected Christ, the head of the Church and of all things, and no longer being called, according to what was apostolically said, the body of Christ and members in part.

Vainly puffed up by the mind of their flesh, they do not hold fast the head, from whom the whole body, being supplied and knit together through joints and ligaments, grows with the growth of God.

Nor have they died with Christ to the elemental principles of the world, but they lay down decrees as though still living in the world.

For indeed, if speaking in accord with Christians, they would immediately have acknowledged that, as head and archetype, this making of the sacred images has, if one must trust those who narrate the truth, Emmanuel himself.

And those marvelous, not-hand-made images bear witness to this, which display the awesome form of that depiction not wrought by human hand.

Some of which are preserved even to this day, unto the triumph over the unbelief of the impious, but as the glory and boast of the orthodox.

And very many and very great miracles wrought by them are celebrated in song.

Concerning one of these it is said that the Savior himself, taking a bright linen cloth, having impressed upon it his surpassingly radiant and surpassingly beautiful form, sent it to the ruler of the Edessenes, who had asked for it in faith.

From that time, then, even until today, by apostolic tradition and instruction, for the sake of the knowledge and remembrance of what Christ did and suffered for us — just as is also recorded in the sacred pages of the Gospels — these things too, being depicted, and thus being objects of veneration and reverence, having Christ as their head and archetype, are already called his icons and likenesses, just as also all the rest, of whom they are icons, are so called.

Yet they spin monstrous fables that the making of these is 'untransmitted.'

And it is no wonder at all if, having forgotten the loving and saving condescension of God the Word, and having failed to remember the greatest and most admirable benefaction that arose for us therefrom, and having turned to insult the benefactor, they shamelessly set themselves directly against a truth so radiant and so publicly attested.

For what is more far-shining or more evident than the things set before the eyes of all, possessing sense-perception as their common proof, which guarantees and presents certainty — than which nothing is more trustworthy or more certain? For together with the mere encounter it has furnished us knowledge of the object itself.

For they all but even utter a voice bearing additional witness to their antiquity, from which they derive their venerableness and honor.

How then is their making 'untransmitted'? For that which has not been transmitted could never even exist.

But that which did not exist, how has it been condemned? And how has that which is not held been condemned? And how has that not been transmitted which flourishes throughout every city and land and island and remotest region, and everywhere that the Gospel of Christ and his name are proclaimed? But neither the teaching evidence of sight, nor the vast length of time — by which all things are confirmed and made firm — nor the fervent zeal for piety of the faithful who re-erect the images has persuaded these fighters against Christ.

Furthermore, that they should act so arrogantly in all this — how is this not manifest madness and a token of the utmost derangement? For these men have shut their eyes and heard heavily with their ears, unwilling to hear or to know what we have heard and known, and what our fathers have recounted to us, declaring the mighty deeds of the Lord and the wonders which he wrought among us; and with the eyes of the mind we too have seen, and we have beheld, and we have believed.

Let these things be testified even by the ancient champions of this impiety and teachers of apostasy, on whom those who have now appeared as their disciples pride themselves greatly — I mean the leaders of the Arian madness and the Manichaean frenzy, and whoever else has had a share in that abominable band — and let them convince these men that the holy images existed and were venerated by Christians from of old.

And in this way, being the bitterest enemies of the economy of Christ, they strove in their writings toward the destruction of these images.

The testimonies of enemies confirm that the truth held among us admits of doubt in no way whatsoever.

Now against such rash and frigid opinions it was not even fitting to contend at all in the first place (for that would be worthy of the same derangement and folly as theirs), but rather one ought to turn away, considering them the inarticulate and meaningless cries of men raving mad and possessed with Bacchic frenzy.

Nevertheless, for the refutation of such shamelessness and absurdity, since these wretched men have even dared to confirm their impiety by a formal decree, we must not shrink back from our discourse.

Therefore it is reasonable to return to the matters set before us.

For how do they vote to condemn the sacred images as useless, and in what manner? For if images made by Greeks or barbarians were understood to be made in honor and veneration of the gods named and worshiped among them, their argument would somehow have had a fair passage.

But who will bear the absurdity — which it is dreadful even to conceive in the mind, let alone to declare, being the utmost of all blasphemies? For where shall we place the God-inspired, truth-telling Scriptures? For it is not possible for the truth to speak falsely, when Christ, the Savior of us all, says to the God and Father of all things:

'I have manifested your name to men,' and having promised to his holy disciples that the gates of Hades would not prevail against the Church — these gates being indeed the death-dealing babblings and unholy deeds of heretics and those who play the Greek (for she is preserved unshaken and unoverturned against the assaults of her adversaries) — while the divine Apostle writes that 'thus Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her, that he might cleanse her by the washing of water with the word, and might present the Church to himself in glory, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she might be holy and blameless.'

And of the blessed prophets, one foretelling the God-inscribed initiation of the Christians' divine wisdom, in the words where he says: 'I will give my laws into their understanding, and I will inscribe them upon their hearts;'

'and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people, and they shall no longer teach, each one his fellow-citizen and each one his neighbor, saying:'

'Know the Lord, for all of them shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, for I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more'; and another prophet foretelling that 'I will utterly destroy the names of the idols from the land, and there shall no longer be any remembrance of them,' and containing countless other things likewise expressly foretold;

Coming out against all these things, the enemies of our faith set themselves up as accusers of the oracles of the Spirit and as advocates of falsehood.