大要理書 第 1 章 第 3/6 段

If, then, from what you hear you grant both that he died and that he was born, from these same things you will surely grant also that both his birth and his death were beyond suffering.

But surely these things are greater than nature.

Therefore he too is by no means within nature, who is shown to have come into being in things that are above nature.

"What then," he says, "is the reason for the Deity's descending to this lowliness, so as to make the faith doubtful—whether God, that uncontainable, incomprehensible, and ineffable Being, who is beyond all glory and all majesty, is mingled with the defilement of human nature, so that even his sublime activities are debased by being commingled with what is lowly?"

We are not at a loss for an answer befitting God even to this objection.

You ask the reason for God's coming to be among men? If you take away from life the benefits that come from God, you would be unable to say from what you could recognize the Deity.

For it is from those things by which we are benefited that we recognize the benefactor;

for, looking at what comes to pass, through these we reason out the nature of the one who works them.

If, then, love for mankind is a distinctive mark of the divine nature, you have the explanation you sought, you have the reason for God's presence among men.

For our nature, having fallen sick, was in need of one to heal it; man, who had fallen, was in need of one to set him upright; he who had forfeited life was in need of one to give life; he who had slipped from participation in the good was in need of one to lead him back to the good; he who was shut up in darkness needed the presence of the light; the captive sought the redeemer, the prisoner his champion, he who was held under the yoke of slavery the liberator.

Are these things small and unworthy to move God to come down to the visitation of human nature, when humanity was so pitiably and wretchedly disposed? "But," he says, "it was possible both for man to be benefited and for God to remain in impassibility."

For he who by his will established the universe and gave subsistence to what did not exist by the mere impulse of his volition—why does he not also, by some sovereign and divine authority, snatch man away from the adverse power and bring him to his original state, if this were his pleasure?

But instead he goes about by long circuits, submitting to the nature of a body, entering into life through birth, passing in due course through every stage of age, then tasting death, and so accomplishing his purpose through the resurrection of his own body—as though it were not possible for him, while remaining on the height of divine glory, to save man by a mere command and to dispense with such circuits. It is necessary, therefore, that the truth on our part should withstand such objections also, so that the faith of those who inquire searchingly into the rational ground of the mystery may be hindered by nothing.

First, then, let us consider—as was already moderately examined in what preceded—what stands opposed to virtue as its contrary.

As darkness is opposed to light and death to life, so clearly it is vice that is opposed to virtue, and nothing else besides this.

For just as, among the many things observed in creation, nothing else stands in opposition to light or life—not stone, not wood, not water, not man, nor any other existing thing—except, in a proper sense, the things conceived as their contraries, namely darkness and death;

so also in the case of virtue, one could not say that any created thing is conceived as contrary to it, except the notion that pertains to vice.

Therefore, if our doctrine maintained that the Deity had come to be in vice, the opponent would have occasion to assail our faith, on the ground that we were teaching things unfitting and absurd concerning the divine nature;

for it would by no means be permissible to say that Wisdom itself and Goodness and

Incorruptibility—and whatever sublime concept and name there is—had fallen away into its contrary.

If, then, God is true virtue, and no nature is opposed to virtue but vice, and God comes to be not in vice but in the nature of man, while only the passion that pertains to vice is unfitting and shameful—a thing in which God neither came to be nor by his nature can come to be—why are they ashamed at the confession that God took hold of human nature, when no contrariety to the principle of virtue is observed in the constitution of man? For neither the rational, nor the intellectual, nor the capacity for knowledge, nor any other such thing that is proper to human essence, is opposed to the principle of virtue.

"But this very thing," he says, "the change to which our body is subject, is a passion;

and he who has come to be in this comes to be in passion."

"Therefore," they say, "the supposition concerning God is alien to him, if indeed they define that he who by nature is impassible came to a fellowship with passion."

But to these objections too we shall use the same argument, namely that "passion" is spoken of in one sense properly, and in another by a loose use of the term.

Now that which touches the free choice and turns one from virtue to vice is truly a passion; but whatever is observed in nature as it proceeds in its own course of development would more properly be called a work rather than a passion—such as birth, growth, the maintenance of the subject by the inflow and outflow of nourishment, the concourse of the elements about the body, and again the dissolution of what was composed and its return to its kindred elements.

Of which, then, does he say that our mystery affirms the Deity took hold? Of passion properly so called, which is vice, or of the motion that is according to nature? For if the doctrine insisted that the Deity had come to be in the forbidden things, one would have to flee the absurdity of the dogma, as setting forth nothing sound concerning the divine nature;

but if it says that he took hold of our nature, whose first origin and subsistence also had its beginning from him, where does the proclamation fall short of the conception befitting God, since no passible disposition enters in with the faith into our suppositions about God? For neither do we say that the physician comes to be in passion when he heals the one who is in passion;

but even if he touches the disease, the healer remains outside the passion.

If birth in itself is not a passion, neither would anyone call life a passion; rather, the passion that pertains to pleasure presides over human birth, and the impulse of the living toward vice—this is the disease of our nature;

but the mystery declares that he was pure from both of these.

If, then, his birth was estranged from pleasure, and his life from vice, what passion is left, of which the mystery of godliness says that God partook? But if one should call the disjoining of body and soul a passion, with far more justice would one so name the concurrence of the two.

For if the separation of things joined is a passion, then the joining of things separated would also be a passion;

for there is a certain motion both in the combining of things separated and in the dividing of things interwoven or united.

What, then, the final motion is named, by the same name the preceding one too ought to be called.

But if the first motion, which we name birth, is not a passion, neither, consequently, could the second motion, which we name death, be called a passion—that motion in which the concurrence of body and soul is divided.

But we say that God came to be in each of these motions of our nature, by which the soul concurs with the body and the body is separated from the soul;

and having been commingled with each of these—I mean both with the sensible and with the intelligible part of the human compound—through that ineffable and inexpressible co-mingling he so ordered it that, of those once united, namely soul and body, the union should remain forever.

For when our nature, by its own proper sequence, was moved even in him to the separation of body and soul, he again joined together the things that had been separated, as with a kind of glue—

by the divine power, I mean—fitting together what had been torn apart into an unbreakable union.

And this is the resurrection: the return of the things that had been joined, after their dissolution, into an indissoluble union, growing together with one another, so that the original grace concerning humanity might be recalled, and we might return again to the eternal life—the vice that had been mingled with our nature having flowed out through our dissolution, just as happens with a liquid when the vessel containing it is broken all around, and it is scattered and vanishes, there being nothing to contain it.

And just as the beginning of death, having occurred in one man, passed through to the whole of human nature, in the same way also the beginning of the resurrection extends, through one man, to the whole of humanity.

For he who again united to its own body the soul that had been taken up by himself, by his own power which had been mingled with each of these at their first constitution, thus by a more general principle commingled the intelligible essence with the sensible, the beginning being prospered, in due sequence, on to the end.

For in the man taken up by him, the soul having again returned to the body after the dissolution, as from a kind of beginning the union of what had been separated passes over, by the power, equally into all human nature.

And this is the mystery of God's dispensation concerning death and the resurrection from the dead: not to hinder the soul from being separated from the body by death according to the necessary sequence of nature, but to lead them back again to one another through the resurrection, so that he himself might become the boundary of both, of death and of life—having established in himself the nature that was being divided by death, and having himself become the beginning of the union of what had been divided.

But someone will say that the objection brought against us has not yet been resolved; rather, that what is alleged against us by the unbelievers is even strengthened by what has been said.

For if there is in him such great power as the argument has shown—so that the abolition of death and the entrance of life are upon him—why does he not by his will alone accomplish what is according to his purpose, but instead works out our salvation by a roundabout course, being born and nourished and saving man by the experience of death, when it was possible neither to come to be in these things and yet to preserve us? To such an argument it was sufficient, with respect to the fair-minded, to say only this: that the sick do not prescribe to their physicians the manner of treatment, nor dispute with their benefactors about the kind of therapy—why the healer touched the suffering part and devised this particular remedy for the loosing of the evil rather than something else—but, looking to the end of the benefit, they received the kind deed with thanksgiving.

But since, as the prophecy says, the abundance of the goodness of God holds its benefit hidden, and it is not yet clearly seen through the present life;

for indeed every contradiction of the unbelievers would have been removed, if the thing hoped for were before our eyes;

but as it is, it awaits the ages that are to come, so that in them there may be revealed the things now seen through faith alone;

it would be necessary, by certain reasonings, so far as is possible, to find also the solution of the questions raised, in a way consistent with what has gone before.

And yet it is perhaps superfluous for those who have believed that God sojourned in this life to slander his coming, as though it had not taken place in some wisdom and reason befitting the Supreme.

For to those who do not too vehemently fight against the truth, no small proof of the divine sojourn is that which was manifested in the present life even before the life to come—I mean the testimony given through the very facts themselves.

For who does not know how the deception of the demons had been filled up in every part of the inhabited world, prevailing over the life of men through the madness of idolatry;

how it was the custom for all the nations throughout the world to worship the demons by means of idols, in animal sacrifices and in the defilements at the altars? But from the time when, as the apostle says, the saving grace of God appeared to all men, having sojourned through human nature, all these

departed, like smoke, into nonexistence, so that the frenzies of oracles and divinations ceased, the annual processions and the pollutions by blood in the hecatombs were abolished, and among many of the nations altars and porticoes and sacred precincts and shrines and all the other things devised by the servants of the demons for the deception of themselves and of those who consulted them were utterly done away—so that in many places there is not even any memory, if ever such things existed; while throughout the whole inhabited world there were raised up, in the name of Christ, temples and altars and the holy and bloodless priesthood and the sublime philosophy accomplished by deed rather than word, and the contempt of bodily life and the despising of death, which those who were compelled by tyrants to depart from the faith openly displayed, accepting as nothing the tortures of the body and the sentence of death—which they surely would not have endured, had they not had the clear and indubitable proof of the divine sojourn.

And this same thing is a sufficient sign to declare also to the Jews the presence of the one disbelieved by them.

For until the theophany of Christ, the palace at Jerusalem was splendid among them, that twice-named temple, the sacrifices prescribed throughout the year, all the things that were ordained by the law through riddles for those who knew how to perceive them mystically—until that time these were unhindered, according to the religious worship of godliness that had been from the beginning ordained for them.

But when they saw the awaited one, of whom they had been forewarned through the prophets and the law, and preferred to faith in the one who had appeared that mistaken superstition which thenceforth remained—which, having wrongly understood it, they guarded the words of the law, being slaves rather to custom than to understanding—they neither received the grace that had appeared, and the venerable things of their religious worship are left behind in bare narratives; the temple is no longer known even from its traces, and that splendid city has been left in ruins, while nothing of what was anciently ordained remains to the Jews, but even the very place venerable to them in Jerusalem has been made inaccessible by the decree of those in power.

But nevertheless, since neither to those who follow Greek ways nor to those who preside over the Jewish dogmas do these things seem to be proofs of the divine presence, it would be well to take up the discussion separately concerning the objections raised against us—for what reason the divine nature is interwoven with ours, saving humanity by means of itself, and not accomplishing its purpose by a mere command.

What, then, would be for us a fitting starting-point, leading the argument consistently toward the proposed aim? What other than to set forth, in summary, the pious conceptions concerning God? It is, then, confessed by all that one must believe the Deity to be not only powerful, but also just and good and wise, and everything that leads the mind toward the better.

It is consistent, therefore, that in the present dispensation it should not be the case that one of the attributes befitting God is manifested in what has come to pass, while another is absent;

for in general none of these sublime names, when separated from the others, is by itself a virtue;

neither is the good truly good, unless it be ordered together with the just and the wise and the powerful;

for what is unjust or unwise or powerless is not good;

neither is power, separated from the just and the wise, contemplated as virtue;

for such a kind of power is brutish and tyrannical.

And likewise also the rest: if the wise were borne along apart from the just, or the just were not contemplated together with the powerful and the good, one would more properly name such things vice;

for how could one number among good things that which is deficient in the better? But if all these ought to concur in our conceptions concerning God, let us consider whether the dispensation according to man falls short of any of them.

We certainly seek in God the signs of goodness.

And what clearer testimony of the good could there be than that he should transform the one who had deserted to the contrary, and not allow his nature, fixed and unchangeable in the good, to be disposed together with the easily-changeable character of human free choice? For he would not have come to save us, as David says, had not goodness produced such a purpose.

But the good of the purpose would have profited nothing, had not wisdom made love for mankind effective.

For indeed, in the case of those who are sick, many perhaps are those who wish the one lying ill not to be in distress, but only those bring the good purpose on behalf of the sick to fulfillment in whom some skilled power is at work for the healing of the sufferer.

Therefore wisdom must by all means be conjoined with goodness.

How, then, in the things that have come to pass, is the wise contemplated together with the good? Because the good according to purpose cannot be seen bare.

For how could the purpose appear, unless it were made manifest through the things that come to pass? And the things accomplished, proceeding in due sequence by a certain order and arrangement, display the wise and skillful character of God's dispensation.

And since, as has been said in what preceded, the wise conjoined with the just by all means becomes virtue—but if separated, it would not by itself alone be good—it would be well, also in the discussion of the dispensation according to man, to consider the two together with one another, I mean the wise and the just.

What, then, is justice? We surely remember what was distinguished in due sequence in the first parts of the discourse: that man was fashioned as an imitation of the divine nature, preserving the likeness to the Deity both in the other goods and in the self-determination of free choice, while being by necessity of a changeable nature;

for it was not possible that he who had received the beginning of his being from change should not by all means be changeable;

for the passage from nonbeing into being is a kind of change, nonexistence being transferred into substance by the divine power; and besides, change being necessarily contemplated in man, since man was an imitation of the divine nature;

for that which imitates, unless it should happen to be in some otherness, would by all means be the very same as that to which it is likened.

This otherness, then, of that which came to be according to the image, with respect to the archetype, consisting in this—that the one is unchangeable by nature, while the other is not so, but came to subsist through change, according to the explanation given, and being changed does not by all means remain in being;

and change is a kind of motion always proceeding toward something other than that in which it is.

And there are two forms of such motion;

the one ever coming to be toward the good, in which the advance has no halt, because no limit of what is traversed is reached;

the other toward the contrary, whose subsistence consists in not subsisting.

For the opposition to the good, as has been said before, has such a sense according to the contradistinction, just as we say that being is opposed to nonbeing, and existence to nonexistence.

Since, then, according to its changeable and alterable impulse and motion, the nature cannot remain motionless by itself, but free choice by all means presses toward something, the desire for the beautiful naturally drawing it into motion;

and the beautiful is, on the one hand, that which is truly so according to nature, and on the other, that which is not such, but is bedecked with a certain semblance of the beautiful;

and the criterion of these is the mind, established within us, in which lies the risk either of attaining the truly beautiful, or of being turned aside from it through some deception of the apparent and slipping away to the contrary—suffering something like what the external fable says the dog suffered, which, looking in the water at the shadow of what it carried in its mouth, let go the real food, and gaping at the image of the food, came to be in hunger.

Since, then, the mind, having been deceived in its desire for the truly good, was carried aside toward nonbeing, having been persuaded through deceit by the counselor and inventor of vice that what is contrary to the beautiful is beautiful—

for the deceit would not have worked, had not the semblance of the beautiful been moulded around the hook of vice, like a bait,

the semblance of the beautiful having been moulded around it;

man, then, having voluntarily come into this calamity, having yoked himself through pleasure to the enemy of life, seek out for me, in respect of the same point, all the things befitting the divine conceptions: the good, the wise, the just, the powerful, the incorruptible, and whatever else belongs to the signification of the Supreme.

Therefore, as good, he takes pity on the one who has fallen; as wise, he is not ignorant of the manner of his recall.

And the judgment of the just would also be of wisdom;

for no one would attach true justice to folly.

What, then, in these matters is the just? It is not to use any tyrannical authority against the one who holds us in his power, nor, by reason of superior strength, having snatched away the man from his master, to leave behind any pretext of just plea to the one who through pleasure had enslaved man.

For just as those who have sold away their own freedom for money become slaves of those who bought them, having themselves become their own sellers, and it is permitted neither to themselves nor to anyone else on their behalf to invoke freedom, even though those who deserted to this calamity should be some of noble birth;

but if someone, caring for the one who has been sold, should use force against the buyer, he will seem to be unjust, tyrannically taking away the one lawfully acquired;

but if again he should wish to buy back such a one, there is no law that forbids it;

in the same way, when we had voluntarily sold ourselves, it was fitting that the one who out of goodness was buying us back to freedom should devise not the tyrannical, but the just manner of recall.

And this is something like this: to grant to the one who holds the power to receive, in exchange for the one held, whatever ransom he might wish to take.

What, then, was it likely that the one in power would rather choose to take? It is possible, by a consistent inference, to make some conjecture as to his desire, if the evident proofs of the things sought become clear to us.

He, then, who according to the account given at the beginning of the treatise, through envy toward the one who prospered, closed his eyes to the good and engendered in himself the gloom of vice, having fallen sick with love of dominion as the beginning and ground and, as it were, the mother of the rest of vice—for what would he have taken in exchange for the one he held, unless it were clearly something higher and greater in exchange, so that he might rather nourish in himself the passion of pride, exchanging the greater for the lesser? But surely, among the things recorded from of old, in none had he recognized anything such as he beheld concerning the one then appearing: a conception without union, and a birth without corruption, and suckling from a virgin, and voices from above bearing witness to the supernatural worth from the unseen, and a correction of the diseases of nature effortless and bare, brought about by him in word alone and the mere impulse of his will, and the restoration of the dead to life, and the deliverance of the condemned, and the terror against the demons, and authority over the disturbances in the air, and walking through the sea—the deep not parting to either side and laying bare its bottom for those passing through, as in the miracle under Moses, but the surface of the water becoming firm land under his step, and by a kind of secure resistance supporting his footfall; and disregard of food for as long as he willed, and the lavish banquets in the wilderness for those feasted in many thousands, for whom neither did heaven rain down manna, nor did the earth, producing bread according to its own nature, supply the need, but from the ineffable storehouses of the divine power his bounty came forth, bread ready-made cultivated in the hands of those who served, and becoming more by the satiety of those who ate; and the eating of fish, the sea not contributing them for the need, but he who had sown the kind of fishes even in the sea.

And how could anyone recount each one of the gospel miracles? Beholding, then, this power, the enemy saw in him something more than what was held in the exchange.

more than what was held, he saw what was proposed in the exchange.

For this reason he chooses him as a ransom for those shut up in the prison of death.

But surely it was impossible for him to look upon the bare appearance of God, unless he beheld in him some portion of flesh, which through sin he had already subdued.

On this account the Deity is veiled with flesh, so that, looking upon what was familiar and kindred to him, he might not be terrified at the approach of the surpassing power;

and, perceiving the power that gently shone forth ever more greatly through the miracles, he might deem what appeared to be an object of desire rather than of fear.

Do you see how the good is conjoined with the just, and the wise is not separated from these?

For that the divine power should be devised to become containable through the enveloping of the body, so that the dispensation on our behalf might not be impeded by fear at the divine manifestation—this has, all at once, the proof of all: of the good, the wise, and the just.

For the choosing to save is a testimony of goodness;

the making of the redemption of the one held captive a matter of exchange shows the just;

and the making of the uncontainable containable to the enemy by device has the proof of the highest wisdom.

But it is likely that one attending to the sequence of what has been said will inquire where the power of the Deity, where the incorruptibility of the divine power, is seen in what has been said.

In order, then, that these too may become evident, let us examine the things that follow in the mystery, in which especially the power is shown to be commingled with love for mankind.

First, then, that the all-powerful nature was strong enough even to descend to the lowliness of humanity furnishes a greater proof of power than do the great and supernatural miracles.

For that something great and lofty should be wrought by the divine power is in a way according to nature and consequent.

And it would bring no strangeness to the hearing to say that all the creation in the world, and everything that is apprehended beyond the things that appear, subsists in the power of God, his very will being given substance according to his pleasure.

But the descent to lowliness is a certain superabundance of power, which is in no way hindered even in the things that are contrary to nature.

For just as it is proper to the substance of fire to move upward, and no one would regard as worthy of wonder, in the case of flame, what is done naturally;