I think these things are said as [spoken] against some who come of themselves and have not been sent by the Father. Concerning such men, then, who promise teaching or prophecy, we are also instructed from Jeremiah, where it is written: 'I did not send the prophets, yet they ran.'
But if also certain powers, not sent by the Father, come to men, you will consider also whether among them there are some that have gone forth from God and have erred in this very respect, that they were not sent by him.
This matter should also not be left uninvestigated with respect to the discourse concerning the soul; for perhaps the soul of Jesus, being in its own perfection, was in God and in the Pleroma, and having gone forth from there, by being sent from the Father, took up the body from Mary. But other [souls] did not go forth from God in this way, that is, they were not sent nor dispatched by the divine will. 'Why do you not know my speech? Because you cannot hear my word.'
'The cause,' he says, 'of my speech not being known to you is your inability to hear my word.' First, then, one must acquire the power of hearing the divine word, so that after this we may become capable also of knowing the whole speech of Jesus.
For it is possible that one who is at first unable to hear the word of Jesus should later arrive at being able to hear it, since, so long as one has not yet been healed in his hearing by the word that says to the deaf man, 'Be opened,' he is not able to hear.
But when the bond that is the cause of the deafness is loosed, then one will be capable of hearing Jesus, at which time he is also able to know his speech. Or let those who suppose that the doctrine of [fixed] nature is established even by these things tell us whether those whom he later healed were able to hear while they were still deaf, or were not able.
Since it is clear the answer is 'they were not able,' it is evident that it is possible for them [to move] from not being able to hear the words of Jesus to hearing them, and that it is not on account of an incurably fixed nature that one is unable to hear; and these considerations must especially be brought to bear against those of heterodox opinion, who delight in allegories and refer the narrative of the healings to the therapies of the soul, [as though] every disease and every infirmity were released by Jesus [only in that sense].
I think that 'to hear,' here, is applied to understanding the things said, while 'to know' is applied to assenting, having grasped [them], illumined by the light of the knowledge concerning the things said.
Heracleon, however, supposes that the cause is given for their being unable to hear the word of Jesus and to know his speech in the saying: 'You are of the father, the devil.' In these very words he says: 'Why can you not hear my word? Is it not because you are of the father, the devil? — meaning, of the substance of the devil — thereby henceforth making their nature manifest to them, and further convicting them that they are neither children of Abraham (for they would not have hated him), nor of God, for which reason they did not love him.'
Now if he understood 'You are of the father, the devil' in the way we have expounded above, and said: 'Because you are still of the devil, you cannot hear my word,' we would even have accepted his interpretation.
But as it is, he is clearly saying that some men are of the same substance as the devil, while others — as those of his school suppose — belong to a different substance, whom they call 'psychics' or 'pneumatics.' 'You are of the father, the devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father.'
The expression is ambiguous; for it indicates, on the one hand, that the devil has a father, from which father — so far as the wording goes — these to whom the discourse is addressed would appear to be; and on the other hand — which is better — that you are of this father, of whom 'devil' is predicated.
The statement, then, would be ambiguous even if the preceding article 'the' were removed, though the intended meaning of the saying would appear rather clearer. Nevertheless, the one who argues that the devil has a father — of whom he will suppose those to whom the discourse is addressed to be called sons — will make use of what follows, which runs thus: 'When he speaks the lie, he speaks from his own [resources], because he is a liar and so is his father'; and he will say that the devil is a lie, and that another, besides this one, is the father of the lie.
But this will not be soundly stated; for rather, 'the lie' will apply to the opposite of the one who said, 'I am the truth' — I mean, to the antichrist, whose father is a liar, that is, the father who is the devil.
But it is likely that someone will take offense at the idea of the antichrist seeming to be 'the lie,' as though he would no longer be blameworthy, if in his hypostasis he were nothing other than a lie. Against such a one, citing 'You have become destruction, and you shall not exist forever,' said in Ezekiel concerning someone who, on account of wickedness, had been changed so as to become destruction, one will offer comfort by analogy also concerning [the idea] that someone is 'the lie,' not in hypostasis by [original] constitution, but having become such by alteration and by his own choice, and thus, to coin a new term, 'puffed up with pride.'
Someone, then, avoiding as absurd the assertion that the antichrist is 'the lie,' will say that 'When he speaks the lie, he speaks from his own [resources]' applies to all who lie; for in the case of each liar, whenever the lie is spoken, it is spoken from the lie's own [resources]. But he will also apply [the words] 'his father is a liar' [—the text is uncertain here—] to each one who brings forth a lie from his own mouth, [meaning] that there is a father of the lie which he speaks; and such an interpretation will not be lacking in plausibility. Let these things, then, be said as lying alongside the ambiguity of the saying set before us.
Now since, in expounding 'You do the works of your father,' we have already spoken beforehand also concerning this, having gathered from many places the things that appeared to us useful for the exposition, it would not be reasonable now to linger further over this passage. Nevertheless, if anyone has been begotten of the devil by doing sin, and has not, of himself, abolished that begetting from him, this person wishes to do not one but many desires of such a father; and since the desires in every son of the devil are begotten from the desires in the devil, it is clear that his desires are the disposition of matter and of corruption, which one might properly say to be enmity toward God.
To say, then, that murders and injustices and acts of greed are his desires, begetting in his sons desires similar to these, is not incongruous; and moreover, to say generically that his desires are impurities, being by nature opposed to purity, from which desires for impure things arise in the children of the devil, is not difficult to accept.
But to say that fornication is his desire, or adultery, or the corruption of children, or effeminacy, one would not readily accept, even though one might be at a loss as to how these desires in men come about from the desires in him — so far as the wording goes, as though some universal statement were being made concerning the desires in men, namely that men wish to do the desires of their father, so that all the things they desire unlawfully were previously the desires of their father.
For such is the meaning of 'And you wish to do the desires of your father.' It must be said, in reply to this, that the devil desires, let us say for example, that this child be corrupted, and that this woman be committed adultery with, and that these men fornicate; and desiring these things, he produces in those able to serve him a desire to do the things which he wishes to effect, so that, in this respect, one might say that the one effecting the fornication or the adultery does so prior to the man's own fornicating and committing adultery.
You will say the same also concerning every sin: for instance, the devil does not desire money itself, but he desires to make people lovers of money and attached to material things; and this desire of his is done by those who love money for no other reason than by their own willing.
Therefore it is necessary for us to pay attention to all the things we wish to do, and to examine whether what we are doing is [derived] from the desires of the devil — so that, from having observed those things that come from the devil's desires, we may cease to wish to do them, knowing that everyone who wishes to do the desires of the devil is by no means from God as father, but has become a child of the devil, and, by willing to do the desires of the worse being, is being formed and coming to be after the image of the evil father, from whom the images of that earthly man come and are stamped.
For that one is the first earthly [being], since, being the first to fall away from the better things and to have desired a life other than the better life, he became worthy to be the beginning — not of a creature, nor of a made thing, but of a molded thing of the Lord, having been made to be mocked by his angels. And our own preeminent hypostasis, too, is in that which is according to the image of the Creator; but that which is from a [secondary] cause is in the molded thing taken from the dust of the earth.
And if, as though forgetting the better substance within us, we subject ourselves to the thing molded from dust, then the better part too will take on the image of the earthly man; but if, understanding both the thing made according to the image and the thing taken from the dust of the earth, we should incline wholly toward him according to whose image we have come to be, we shall also be according to the likeness of God, having abandoned all attachment to matter and to bodies, and every attachment toward whatever pertains merely to outward resemblance.
Since, according to the divine Scriptures, 'desire' belongs to the class of intermediate things — the Scriptures not knowing the Greek precision of the distinctions made by those who articulate such matters, according to which one would call the seemly desire 'wish,' which they define as a reasonable appetite, and the base desire 'epithymia,' which they say is an irrational appetite or a violent appetite — it must be said that every generated nature wishes to do the desires of its own father, just as every [nature] also does the works of its own father: the primarily holy Father being unbegotten (and this one is God), while the primarily evil father is a father who is from no one; for no father established wickedness as a subsistence within him, but the turning-away from God has begotten it.
Now the passage presently under examination, "And you want to do the desires of your father," is clearly referring to the devil, since it was said beforehand, "You are of your father the devil," and it is followed by, "That one was a murderer from the beginning."
And indeed the statement "You want to do the desires of your father" could rightly be said not only of each of those who are of the devil, but also of those who are of God. For certain things are said to be desires of God as well, his acts of will being so named.
In the eighteenth psalm it is said: "The judgments of the Lord are true, justified altogether; desirable above gold and much precious stone" — and even if, as some of the manuscripts have it, it reads "the desirable things are above gold and much precious stone," you will say that the desirable things are worthy of someone's desiring them, just as the blessed things are worthy of being blessed, and the beloved things worthy of being loved.
Just then as the things worthy of blessing are blessed all the more by God, and the things worthy of love are loved all the more by God, so also the things worthy of desire would be desired all the more, and in a worthier sense, by God — we understanding the term "desire," as we have said before, in a more gracious sense. And the Savior himself says: "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer."
As for desire also being base, the very text at hand would suffice; nonetheless we should also cite: "Whoever looks at a woman so as to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." But he who desires does not always desire something absent, just as he who wills does not always will things that are absent.
Every son of someone, then, wants to do the desires of his own father, and every son of someone does the works of his father. For thus the Savior too wants to do the desires of his own Father, and does the works of his own Father.
And the man of sin, the son of perdition, also wants to do the desires of his own father, and does the works of his own father. And in our case too, as human beings, our works are altogether either of God or of the devil, and what we want to do is either the desire of our good Father in the heavens, or of the devil who is his enemy.
And if we do the works of God and want to do his desires, we are sons of God; but if we do the things of the devil, wanting to do what he desires, we are of the father the devil.
Let us then pay attention not only to what we do, but also to what we want. For it is sufficient, in order to be a son of the devil, even merely to want to do his desires. And perhaps for this reason, after "You do the works of your father," it is said, "You want to do the desires of your father," so that we may learn that even if we only want to do what the devil desires, we shall be reckoned sons of the devil.
Someone might most plausibly say against this that, on the same logic, it is sufficient for being a son of God merely to want to do his desires, even if the doing of the works of God is not added to this.
But it must be said that the one who wants to do the desires of God is under necessity also to do the works of God. For, as Paul says, not only the willing but also the working is from God, since the working, its companion, altogether follows upon the good willing — for indeed, for those who love God, all things work together for good — and he who makes all things exceedingly good would not leave a good will incomplete. Nor indeed can a good will even be conceived apart from a good activity conjoined to it, corresponding to that willing.
The activity that follows upon the willing, however, may often reasonably be hindered by providence, whenever, for the sake of something universally useful, or useful in whatever way, there is need for the lesser work, that which accords with the willing, to be checked.
In response to this, Heracleon says: those to whom the discourse is addressed were of the substance of the devil — as though the substance of the devil were other than the substance of the rest of rational beings.
In this he seems to me to have fallen into a like error as one who would claim that the eye that sees wrongly has one substance, and the eye that sees rightly another; and that hearing that mishears has one substance, and hearing that hears soundly another.
For just as in these cases the substance is not different, but some cause has supervened to produce the mishearing and the misseeing, so also, for everyone naturally capable of following reason, the substance that is capable of following is the same, whether one accepts the reasoning or refuses it.
For in our own case as human beings, we could not say what distinguishes the one who has followed from the one who has not followed, even though, after understanding what was said, one person, upon judging it, assented to what was said, while another refused it.
We have often said that if this impossibility be granted — I mean that the devil is of another substance and incapable of receiving the better things — then we shall defend him as in no way the cause of his wickedness, and we shall attach the charge instead to the one who gave him substance and created him, which is the most absurd thing of all.
The absurdity will be evident to one who has understood the substance of human souls and has perceived that it is impossible — just as it is impossible for human bodies to differ from other human bodies in substance — so also for souls to differ from souls, or the intellective faculty from the intellective faculty, or the discursive faculty from the discursive faculty.
You will say the same likewise concerning the rational faculty and concerning the powers within the soul, both the memorial and the so-called imaginative. For it is necessary, if one man is of a different substance from another, that the powers of the soul also be of a different kind, and that, for example, the memorial faculty differ in kind from the memorial faculty, and the discursive faculty from the discursive faculty.
Let the argument be examined concerning these matters, which the man they call "spiritual" and the one they say is "earthly" would similarly understand and reason about, so as either to assent, or to withhold judgment, or to refuse. For is it the case that a like experience has occurred in different substances, or has the experience turned out to be alike precisely because that to which the experience happened was of the same substance?
To say, then, that the same patterns of impressions, assents, reasonings, and rememberings have occurred in beings of different substance is irrational; and to say that, among beings of the same substance, in part, there is, alongside this substance, some other substance also present in them, is foolish.
For let them demonstrate, alongside these powers, some other substance that does not think, nor reason, nor remember, nor imagine, present in those whom they call "spiritual," which is superior to the one that thinks and reasons — or, in the case of the "earthly," either equal to it or inferior.
For indeed they will not say it is superior. But it is likely they will say that, just as it is possible for the unlike substances of gold and silver and tin and lead and wax to be impressed alike by the same seal, so it is possible that similar impressions come to be, from the same appearances, in beings that happen to exist in different substances and that receive the impression. And they will say the same of discursive thought, understanding, and remembering.
But see whether this argument, even though it may seem quite plausible, being compared unlike-to-unlike, is rather capable of carrying one away and sophistically deceiving, than of persuading the one who examines the example carefully. For in the case of the image, I am able to show — whether the impression is in gold or in silver — the point at which, although the impression is shown to be alike, there is a distinctive property in its having occurred in gold as opposed to its having been impressed in silver or in the remaining materials.
So then, let them likewise demonstrate to us the distinctive property of that which received a superior, or lesser, or inferior impression, and let them attempt, at least in speech, to describe the substance of those who received the impressions as being similarly diverse. For if they do not demonstrate it, they will merely assert it, but they will not prove it.
So much, then, against the argument of Heracleon, who said that "of the father the devil" should be said in place of "of the [substance] of the [devil]." Again, on "You want to do the desires of your father," he draws a distinction, saying that the devil has no will, but only desires.
And the unintelligibility of this argument is immediately apparent, for everyone would agree that that one wills evil things. You yourself can also gather — even though at present we do not have it readily at hand to cite — whether anywhere in Scripture "willing" is applied to the devil.
After this, Heracleon says that these words are spoken not to those who are by nature sons of the devil, the "earthly" ones, but to the "psychic" ones, who become sons of the devil by adoption; and that, from among these, some can, by nature, also come to be reckoned sons of God by adoption.
And he says that it is because they have loved the desires of the devil and act accordingly that these become children of the devil, not being such by nature.
And he distinguishes that the designation "children" must be understood in three ways: first, by nature; second, by disposition; third, by worth. "By nature," he says, is that which is begotten by some begetter, which is also properly called "child." "By disposition," when someone, doing the will of another by his own intention, is called the child of him whose will he does. "By worth," according to which some are called children of Gehenna, and of darkness and lawlessness, and offspring of serpents and vipers.
For these things, he says, do not beget anyone by their own nature — for they are destructive and consume those thrown into them — but because those called children did the works of those things, they are said to be their children. But having made such a distinction, he did not even to any extent support his own interpretation from the Scriptures.
But we would say to him that if it is not by nature but by worth that some are named children of Gehenna, and of darkness, and of lawlessness — for these things are destructive rather than constitutive — then how does Paul say somewhere, "We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest"? Or let them tell us how it is that wrath, of which we were children, is not something destructive, and indeed, according to his own logic, especially destructive.
Again he says that Scripture now calls these people children of the devil, not because the devil begets anyone, but because, by doing the works of the devil, they have been made like him.
But how much better it is to declare this concerning all the children of the devil in general — that they are made like him by doing his works, and not that, apart from any works, they are reckoned children of the devil on account of their substance and constitution! "That one was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him."
Since there is a more general sense of "murderer" — one who has in any way killed a man, which is also a morally neutral case (as when Phinehas, out of zeal for God, killed the Israelite who was fornicating, along with the Midianite woman) — and is not David too, in this sense, a murderer, who in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the battle-line of Israel, struck down Goliath? — we must inquire into life and its opposite, death, so that the one who is blameworthily a murderer may be understood as a single, distinct case.
And, so far as concerns the literal narrative, you will say that Adam and Eve, so long as they had not sinned, had not been slain; but on the very day they ate from the forbidden tree, they immediately also died — killed by none other than the murderous devil, when he deceived Eve through the serpent, and Eve gave to her husband from the tree, and the husband ate.
But according to the deeper doctrines, having understood "I shall not die but live, and shall recount the works of the Lord," and that which was spoken by the Savior to the Sadducees — most mysteriously, for those able to understand what was said — in the Gospel according to Matthew: "Concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" — and in the Gospel according to Luke: "But that the dead are raised, even Moses disclosed, as he says at the bush, calling the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all" — and further also in the Gospel according to Mark:
"Concerning the dead, have you not read that they are raised, in the book of Moses, at the passage of the bush, how God spoke to him, saying: 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." You will see that if he now lives, having been raised from the dead, then Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were dead before they lived again; for properly speaking, no one is called dead who has not first lived.
But pay attention also to "In Adam all die, and in Christ all will be made alive" — in which is signified neither the intermediate death, according to "In Adam all die," nor the indifferent life, being in itself neither good nor bad, according to "In Christ all will be made alive" — and you will see the life of the man according to the image. And having understood his life, you will comprehend in what manner the murderer killed the living man — not on account of some one particular individual, but on account of the whole race, which he killed — in accordance with "In Adam all die" — that he might be called a murderer.
This murder he committed, having begun from the beginning; and on account of this murder of his, each of those who understand it, and their own body, and to whom it belongs, will say this, lamenting himself over having died in Adam: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" — seeing also in what way it is said: "You have brought me down to the dust of death," and "You have humbled us in a place of affliction," and "the body of our humiliation."
There is also something more secret on account of which the murderer from the beginning is ruler of this world — I mean of the terrestrial region, where are the men whom he has killed. The murderer, then, killed us; but we, by the grace of God, were buried together with Christ and rose together with him — that is, if we have become conformed to his resurrection and walk in newness of life.
But if you pay closer attention also to what is written concerning the dead, such as this: "For this Christ died and rose, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living" — you will see in what way, on account of the death of Jesus, the murderer no longer rules even over the dead; for Jesus died so that he might also be Lord of the dead.
So then, as long as a man lives, he does not bear the image of the earthly man; but when dying and being destroyed by the murderer, at the same time he no longer holds the image of God, but that of the earthly and dead man. For the earthly man is dead, just as the heavenly man is living; and God is not a God of the dead, but of the living.
Therefore, if we have risen together with him, walking in newness of life, he is our God; but if we are still among the dead, then, since God is not a God of the dead, he will not be our God.
It is closely connected with examining the matters concerning the murderer from the beginning, also to see that some are dead, yet dead in none other than Christ, who will also rise first. Concerning these it is said thus in the Epistle to the Corinthians: "For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." And in the Epistle to the Thessalonians: "For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep; for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive, who remain, shall together with them be caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord."
And I judge that those who are living in Christ are those who have been made perfect and no longer work sin at all; while those who are dead in Christ are those who are indeed disposed according to faith in Christ and who choose to live rightly, but who have not yet actually achieved this, but still sin — either through ignorance of the exact, true doctrine concerning righteousness, or through weakness, their judgments being overcome by the flesh that lusts against the Spirit.
And in keeping with this it follows that Paul, being conscious of himself, says "we who are alive," on account of already having achieved this. But those whom we have called dead — these especially have need of the resurrection, since not even the living can be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, until first the dead in Christ have risen. Therefore it is written: "The dead in Christ shall rise first, then we who are alive," and so on.
You will also observe whether, on account of his murderous act, the things upon the accursed earth — which would not otherwise have come to exist — came to exist, in the labors of Adam who was cast out from the paradise of delight.
But this one became a murderer from the beginning of the present order of things — he who, I think, having become "the beginning of the Lord's creation," envied those who were created for existence.
Thus, through envy, death entered into the world, the devil continually murdering whomever he finds living, until, when all enemies have been put under the feet of the Son of God, the last enemy, death, is abolished.