聖山宣言 第 1 章 第 11/17 段

For the very inscriptions of the patristic sayings do not permit this to be accepted; and even if someone, more contentiously, should object and strike out the inscriptions as spurious interpolations, we shall show him that the sayings themselves bear witness to this: "one Father, one Son, one Holy Spirit"; so that this is united to those to the degree that a monad has kinship with a monad; and the demonstration of the communion is not, he says, from this alone; and in one place, after gathering it together, it is demonstrated, crying aloud; in another it lies in the middle, "we demonstrate"; and in another it is even promising (p.)

) you seek, he says, the demonstrations—I am ready to provide them.

Some oracle of those handed down from God, or even God-inspired, and everything that would follow from these and be concluded from them.

For what God is in His essence, none of the right-minded has ever said, or sought, or conceived.

But that He is, and that He is one, and that He is not a single solitary, and that He does not exceed the Trinity, and many other things contemplated concerning Him—these one can both seek and demonstrate.

For if not these things, then there is no learning at all about God.

But if we learn and seek even this from those who know well and understand, then some things of God are known, others are sought, and there are things even demonstrated, while others are altogether inconceivable and unsearchable: the manner of begetting, of procession, of the procession at once perfect and never-departing, of the division at once undivided and yet perfect, and other things which we hold knowingly through faith.

For just as sense-perception, in matters subject to sense, needs no logical proof, so neither does faith, in such matters, need demonstration.

And it is an evil nearly equal and in no way less, both to suppose one knows the things beyond mind, and not to declare that what is knowable of God is of this kind—likewise also what is to be sought or accepted.

For one may have at hand not a few common notions and axioms, which, providing knowledge in a way better than by demonstration, become demonstrative principles for the one who knows them to use.

For it is known and agreed by all that God is perfect and not without reason, from which it is demonstrated that He is one and not a single solitary.

When, therefore, we say that God is perfect, that the perfect is one, and contemplate stringing together other things in concord with the fathers as to how the perfect is one, if one of these ignorant demonstration-talkers should object, saying that in the case of singulars there is no demonstration, he will at once hear from us that there is indeed none in the universal sense—for how could there be, in the case of non-universals?

) Yet there is no less a true demonstration, for it is necessary even in the case of singulars, and indeed this demonstration is the more undeceiving.

For in the case of universals deception is more apt to arise, since such demonstration is hunted by means of imagination, all the underlying subjects being hard to grasp and hard to comprehend.

Nevertheless, even in cases where the common term is unnamed, in the same way a demonstration could come to be; and in the case of some species of the universal, and of each one of the particulars, demonstrations come to be—not in the universal sense, for how could they?—

but they are unerring and necessary.

"Probable from probables"—which is the same as saying "persuasive from persuasives."

For they know nothing firm or secure about God, but "they became vain in their reasonings."

But we do not set out to theologize from probable principles; rather we hold to these unshakeably, since they are taught by God.

How then shall we call such a syllogism not demonstrative but dialectical?

And indeed, if anyone of those who introduce dialectic into the things said about God—which has been expressly forbidden by the theologian fathers—if then anyone should analyze even the sound syllogisms among these, he will least of all find the universal in them; for the subject set forth is singular, and everything that belongs to it belongs to it alone, properly.

For "none is good," He says, "save one, God"; the only wise, the blessed and only Sovereign, the only one having immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable.

None, therefore, of the attributes following upon Him could be of wider extension than He; so that each of these too is singular, and whatever is predicated of them is not universal.

How then could they construct a syllogism without the universal?

But if, on account of the singularity of the subject set forth, advancing as a whole the (p.)

And if again someone should say, "demonstration is from prior things, but nothing is prior to God," we shall say to him: we are not examining the things of His essence, my good man, but something of the things about Him.

For the "one" and the "three," and the "from Him alone," and the "unto Him alone," do not show the nature, but are things demonstrated concerning it.

Therefore none of the things on account of which these are shown need to pre-exist what is being shown, just as neither do the things demonstrated concerning God pre-exist.

For that—whatever it may be—is contemplated as being about that inconceivable nature: the commonalities, the properties, such as procession or generation; and these not by position but by nature; and wealth, or motion, or perfection—as also one of the foremost theologians says: "the monad being moved on account of its richness, the dyad being surpassed on account of matter and form, from which bodies come, and the triad being bounded on account of its perfection."

This is not an aetiology of divinity, but a demonstration of the pious opinion about it.

Furthermore, how, my friend, do you seek the "prior" in the case of demonstration?

If you seek it as prior in time, then you will never accept any demonstration even concerning heaven and the bodies and wonders within it, nor of earth and sea and the things in them, nor of air and the creatures of the air, nor of the aether and the things on high.

If, then, you seek the "prior" in this way, you will undo this science, removing it from the midst of beings; but if you take the "prior" otherwise, I do not think you will be at a loss for an argument even in the things demonstrated concerning God, (p.)

) considering this further: that the things demonstrated are present in the things concerning them—but neither is the cause altogether of wider extension than, or older than, that of which it is the cause. So that even if the causes themselves are equal to the things caused, and even if they are not pre-existent, this will not impede the demonstration.

From the common notions, then, and axioms, in this way it is possible, in some cases, for demonstrations of divine matters to be constituted.

But what of the things handed down by the very One of the divine-ruling Trinity, who in a divine-human way conversed with us?

And what of the things revealed by the Holy Spirit Himself through those who spoke in Him to us?

Shall we not receive these as self-attesting and indemonstrable principles, and shall we not call divine demonstrations everything that would follow from these and be concluded from them?

"Spirit of the divinity-begetting Godhead, as it were blossoms and supersubstantial lights"—if one should say that the supersubstantial Spirit is by nature from God, and that what is by nature from God wells up from God, that is, has its being from the fontal divinity, and that the fontal divinity is the Father alone, and then concludes that the Spirit is from the Father alone—what argument could anyone hold who thinks this syllogism is not at once pious and demonstrative and incontrovertible?

Are not these premises true?

Are not the things opposed to them false?

Are they not primary and immediate and more knowable?

Are they not proper to the matter set forth?

Do they not contain in themselves the cause of the conclusion?

Do they not terminate in a self-attesting and indemonstrable and most principle-like principle?

But what when we make our demonstrations by evidence-signs—from things posterior, but prior in relation to us—of the "that it is"?

How could we be persuaded by the one who says that not even thus is it possible to demonstrate any of the divine matters?

) For it is necessary, he says, that the signs be of the same kind as the things of which they are signs; but nothing is of the same kind as God.

How then is the not-twinkling of the same kind as the moon, or the twinkling as the Pleiades, by which we infer that the one wanders nearer to us, while the others are fixed farther off?

For these belong to place, but those are substances; and the things by which the latter are shown to those substances—these in turn are an operation or a passion, and not of the star more than of the one gazing at it.

But neither is the cone-shaped shadow of the same kind as the illuminating body, by which the illuminated body is shown to be greater; nor is the illumination of the same kind as the sphere; but if they are of the same kind in another way—because the "far off" and the "twinkling" and the "not" of each are contemplated about the same thing, and the rest similarly to these—then there too the thing demonstrated and that through which it is demonstrated would rightly be contemplated about the same thing.

Those who have been purified in heart know, by the evidence of the sacred light-manifestation arising within them, that God is and what kind of thing He is—or rather, that He is a fount of intelligible and immaterial light.

Wherefore they give thanks not to themselves but to the One who illumines—just as the air illumined to the senses owes no thanks, for the brightness is not its own but the illuminating sun's, and only the transparency of the air is what makes it pleasing; so too in the God-bearers, what shows forth the intelligible illumination is due to purity of heart.

Even those who have not ascended to this contemplation are able, from the providence over all things, to perceive the common Provider; from things made good, the Goodness-itself; from things given life, the Life-itself; from things made wise, the Wisdom-itself; and, in short, from all things, the One who is all things and is removed above and seated above all—that many-named and unnameable supersubstantial Essence.

What then—are not all these things contemplated immaterially about that One, (p.)

) whatever that One is?

For my part I think so—and indeed I am quite sure of it—and I do not think anyone could contradict it.

So we too, likewise: since it is theologized in the Symbol of the faith concerning both the Son and the Holy Spirit—the one being proclaimed as begotten of the Father, the other as proceeding from the Father—we conclude that the "from the Father alone" applies to both, demonstrating from things theologized later, in like manner, the things that pre-eternally subsist in like manner with respect to this.

...I shook off the creeping reproach against the inscription, that it might not be referred to the one who praised it.

In order, then, that I might make you too a worthy judge of this name, I shall set before you the differences between the demonstrative and the dialectical syllogism.

It is yours to examine and, incorruptibly, to judge to which the things composed concerning the divine dogmas more properly belong—and especially when we set forth our own pious and unbending opinion about God.

The demonstrative reasoner, then, deals with the necessary and ever-existing and truly-existing and ever-self-same; but the dialectician deals with the probable and persuasive, and with what is by nature now this way, now that—now being, now not being, and at one time true, at another not.

) ...receiving, and that it is divided—even if not in itself, wherefore in the division it remains undivided; and that even in what is divided it has one and undivided principle, wherefore in this too there is one God; and that He is Creator and that He is Provider and that He is Sustainer, and the other things like these—it is possible, as one ought, for those seeking the causes (which would themselves be among the things concerning God) to attain to discovery; and having attained it, by God's help, no longer to be in a state of perplexity, that is, dialectical, but to know demonstratively and to convey the divine science to others through reason.

But if we do not attain it, those who are weak in faith we are least able to strengthen by the power of arguments, yet we ourselves hold knowingly through faith.

For we do not believe everything by demonstrations, nor do we think the mystery of the faith ought to be reduced to art—neither we, nor those before us who through reason advocated for the word of truth by reason; but even in this we show the strength of the word of truth, and to those who in some respect limp in it we provide occasion for correction, and to those who rightly handle it a ground of security.

But the one who conveyed to you those discourses on these matters—Joseph, in every way noble and good, and in his manner of life God-loving if anyone is, and on this account dear to us also—hastening for his return, snatched them from us almost off-hand, like newborn children that had not received their due care.

But since they were brought forth for the demonstration of truth, not for a display of beauty, on this account, I think, they are also praised by your wisdom.

Take this also to mind: that we, having long ago longed for the highest wisdom—or rather, having been drawn toward longing for it by the highest loving-kindness—and having let go of every kind of discourse and the study pertaining thereto, devote ourselves to this through life, (p.)

) and there are those who know this together with us and will testify to it among you, many of them; and you yourself are not unappreciative, as far as I can persuade myself.

All other things have been let go by us of necessity, since that wisdom is by nature constituted in the renunciation of all things and the forgetting of all things, just as also in the removal of all things the Divine is conceived in a certain transcendence.

But the end of that wisdom is not equal to this; for from this the mind reasons about the things that are unfitting to God, whereas there the mind receives in deed, intellectually, the divine manifestations, becoming, and ever becoming, an unstained mirror of God.

And even if we have nearly altogether forgotten the sciences of discourse—though, when need presses, we try as far as possible to take up some of these not willingly, wherefore we have also renounced those Attic graces and the over-artful manner of expression—yet of the true wisdom we have grasped nothing, or little, but as it were we run toward the fragrance of myrrh, not yet having the myrrh itself in our hands.

But may He who, out of the excess of His loving-kindness, implanted in us this longing, also, for the sake of His compassions, grant an unending end—a beginning of the ambrosia to come.

Pray this together with us, you too; and we pray over your virtue; and may God be from above your helper and the one who hearkens.

) CONCERNING THE DIFFERENCE OF BARLAAM IN THE DOGMAS. Having made our readiness and cleverness in accusation his pretext, he sent off discourses aimed at us, and in addition wrote a little note promising to do him this favor—that if any argument was still left to us, it should come from us not against another but against himself; and so, by two opposing pulls—both by the request of the matter—he kept drawing the defense onto himself.

But since now, with your letter to us, there is need of almost the same arguments, and you so long for them that you even, by way of entreaty, lay upon us the necessities for writing—and these, as you yourself would say, not very becoming—since, then, you have been so utterly captured by the power of longing, to you also I have sent the same apologetic discourse.

Reading this carefully, you will know that I sought not my own cause alone but yours also, and not these two alone, but that it was wrought also on behalf of the God-bearing fathers common to us.

Go through it, then, not once but many times, that you may store up in the treasury of your soul the profitable dogmas; and remember my words, which many a time I addressed to you when you were present, and guard yourself with all your power against the empty deceit from outer philosophy; rather, hasten now even to cleanse yourself anew, employing propitiatory prayers and the sprinkling-vessels of sound words; for you seem to have shared in unhallowed knowledge by not opposing the argument, nor (p.)

And yet I myself reckon the man among the best in cleverness with words, and am persuaded that he is well-natured toward nobility of character, and there is no way I can not love him—though indeed I cannot grant him anything far from what is fitting, and that in the dogmas and words concerning God and the divine things; for it is not the mark of one who truly loves either to grant such things, or to reckon as no friend one who does not grant them; rather one must set the Friend before friends, and deem that the only friendship which depends upon that Cause and comes thence, and which, circulating through the lovers of one another in heaven-imitating fashion, according to the harmony of the divine music, is carried back graciously in a double revolution, returning to God from both sides and keeping this sacred and heavenly turning ever in motion; but that other friendship—the flowing kind, which ever seeks the lower (for so indeed it will flow downward), and which on this account grants everything—it comes over me to call a falling-away from friendship rather than friendship.

For these reasons, then, I now bring forward in turn long discourses—I who have neither learned nor am even now learning, and, to say it all, who know nothing, and have made this very thing almost my way of life—against one who has learned and is learning and knows how to speak supremely well, and has made this his harmonious life's care.

Yet I have restrained myself as best I could; for know that I made my defense not at leisure or with diligence, but off-hand, and that I left behind most of the writings and the longer arguments that gave Barlaam occasions and handles against me—partly out of reverence for the divine things, partly out of sparing for the one who persecutes us; and indeed there were things that required reflection (p.)

...we wrote back in time; for there was expected, immediately after the return to us from you, the one who would succeed to the stewardship of the wise and most worthy Thessalian Neilos, and who would come from us to you; now, then, ahead of you, the brief space readily improvised the argument Against Hellenic Speculation and those who exalt it; and should we send a third letter, or rather write back a third time, it will be such as no longer to require a fourth—if indeed the fathers among us permit.

But you, train the philosopher for us not to dart out anything rash and reckless, putting off, like some garment, the reverence that is congenital with philosophy (for thereby he both disgraces himself and ruins his offspring, and forces us against our better judgment—know it well—to harsher arguments); but having now, after a long while, shown himself a praiser and zealot of all the ancient sages and sophists among the Hellenes, it is no wonder that he too has become a certain new and common conglomeration of those who differ in both camps and within each camp; and since those very men are overturned by one another, he himself, suffering this from his own self, when refuted would perhaps be less aggrieved.

For if, striving and contending to show that the duality of principle is no great error, then, being unable to lack things to his desire, he should rouse his anger against us, and—feigning kinship—undertake to contradict our positions, and grievously and at great length disparage our demonstration, and exalt himself exceedingly, as having discovered and declared the Aristotelian "beyond demonstration" in the case of God, which had not even to this day been set forth—if his argument had run only to these things, it would not have been judged worthy of a defense by us; but as it is, I know not what came over him, that the (p.)

This, then, more than all else, did not allow me to fetter my tongue in silence and betray the common protectors, and to install in their place those long ago cast out as profaned; and since there was a necessity to contradict, it was necessary first to release the consequent charges concerning demonstration, and before these to show that we gave no offense to the one who slanderously assailed us; and in addition, to censure with all frankness the things now again in his discourses that least accord with the exactness of piety; for it is not better, for the sake of friendship or fear, to keep silent about such things.

And indeed the things of the Latins, in the one who plays their part, were necessary to refute among the most essential, and were aptly fitted into the discourses; for in this way my own things against them are shown to be prior and superior to the one who undertook to insult us; for we did not even hope that the Latins themselves would bear our arguments in silence, but we expected them to contradict—yet easily overturnable, such as is also the one who now plays their part himself, to whom indeed we owe thanks; for what those men were going to say, we, having gotten in this an occasion, can now overturn beforehand.

How each thing has been worked out, the discourse will teach you.

But let it not be set before all—unless his things too (for though it is borne against him, even if of necessity; yet believe that I am not moderately grieved on this account)—yet before those who love it, and especially as many as are sufficiently competent to judge with discernment, that the discourse would not be very blameworthy, and perhaps not even toward the one against whom it is; for these stumbling-blocks are almost common to those over-ambitious about discourses; yet there is need, for the sake of correction (p.)

...a clear and common, if one must so call it, cleansing or precaution: to those still ambitiously spending their time on discourses, against the irrational opinion arising in the soul from discourses; and to those who, through stillness, have stripped themselves for the better pursuit of the Word, an exhortation and bulwark, and an exposure of the deceitful entry of the one who ever attempts to lead astray.

Besides this, it sufficiently indicates, through a few words, whence the unerring may come, and in but a little, through brief words, tears down the Hellenic and satanic swellings, refuting the Hellenic demonstration and the "beyond demonstration" rendered useless thereby, and uncovering the heavy and deep darkness of the intellectual illuminations according to those men.

) CONCERNING TWO PRINCIPLES, OR AGAINST HELLENIC SPECULATION. As a nursling of the highest education in discourses, and a gift of natural wisdom granted to us by God through it—a delightful and pleasing blend of knowledge and mind, of taught and untaught light: we did not, as you assert, first call you one of the heterodox; and our discourse, the one among you, is witness to us, on account of which you maintain that you came to this opinion; for in it we say, word for word, that we approved your refutations against those evil-believing men, and that you showed the Latins, by reduction to absurdity, to be healing evil with evil.

And what when, asking again, we add that we shall hear the thing sought, and that with pleasure indeed (for what else could we expect from a man who, out of longing for exact piety, has left his homeland behind?)—did we not show it with praises referred to your piety, suffering nothing ill-omened in our hopes concerning your wisdom?

And the thing written by us to the one who would inquire from us—that, having asked with the becoming fairness and frankness, or rather love of learning, "learn and teach us"—shows the disposition of one rather wishing to learn than of one finding fault.

And yet, had I wished to use the discourse aggressively, no small occasion for it has by no means escaped your acuteness.

But in the matters concerning demonstration he gave occasion to understand—to those who give heed to the things said—that not only my position but yours too is sound, even though he himself, I know not how, like one (p.)

) stopping his ears with wax, you pass over these things unhearing.

I, then, thus stand toward you; but you know with what and how many charges you were eager to encompass me, supposing—without having shown anything at all—that we could not even moderately defend ourselves against the inferences against us (or, to call them more properly, abductions); and being besieged I have already gone up, and together with us others on our behalf, having no power even to defend ourselves.

But I am ashamed to win in such contests, and I would not have defended myself—by no means, though accused—had I not intended to transform the enmity that appears in your letter to us.

An irrational reconciliation with one so most reasonable as you are—how shall I endure it? And when the rational contests of the fathers on behalf of God are assailed together with me, how shall I not lend my hand as far as I have power? And you yourself sharing the danger with me—against whom the discourse is, as the discourse will show as it proceeds—how shall I in silence betray my friend?

Do you wish, then, that I set you over your own writings as judge?

And what could you call more pleasant, surely, than that the one who produced them should sit as lord of the verdict?

Two letters, then, were conveyed to me from the same person, about the same matter, in the same respect, contrary to one another; for the one says that I have most excellently opposed those things deemed not to be right, and as one might judge them without envy; but the other, again, says I have done most ill toward the same things—for it slanders all the arguments I made against those things.

Since, then, your letters to us thus stand opposed and are mutually destroyed, what opinion of his own character would the one who wrote these provide to the readers?

But let this be let go, lest we again bring upon ourselves the charge of slander.

What, then, do you say of the things crushed by one another—that they are useless (p.)

And how could you yourself pronounce this, presiding as arbiter over your own affairs? Will you not rather strain the votes, longing to preserve for yourself at least one of the two letters—or rather, that we may not again be caught saying something not good about you—not deflecting justice and reasoning fallaciously, but, like some rational high-soaring eagle in mind, will you preserve one of your offspring?

For what, if no rational vulture be at hand for you, ready as a helper to the one despised? Nor do the eagles care for him?

And which of the letters, then, will you make your own?

The noble one, surely, and great, and most able to look us in the face—the one with which the worst things are joined.

This, then, it is most necessary for you to co-judge: that since by the one who judges the cast-off of the contraries without envy, as you said, the best things have been testified to us, this that still stands with you is wholly composed unto envy.

Yet, even apart from the one set against it, this one by itself again needs the judge, since it does not agree with itself, nor is brought forward consistently with itself, but fights against itself in many places and in many ways, and over the greatest matters.

For the one who in it says that it would make no difference to him if someone called all his proper arguments against the Latins mere drivel—against one who wished to bring nothing else of the things having a handle into the open, and praised all the rest besides, but who against one point, and that almost the least of the parts, set himself in no opposition but was perplexed and asked questions (for the objections we assigned to other persons)—against the one, then, who so, with all fairness, requested the solution of the perplexity, you led forth long and bitter arguments; and this, as you yourself happen to have admitted, having scraped off for yourself (p.)

) from your discourses what among those things was disputable on our part, as though indisputably not good.

For if it makes no difference to you, good sir, should someone call your arguments drivel, and you stand so unconcerned toward the opinion of men, for what reason, as you yourself say, have you cast out that thing from your arguments—unless you yourself too have taken the worse opinion concerning it?

And what if it is even the cause of a stumbling-block, as you yourself say it is?

Then it is just not only to be cast out, but even to be flung into the wave of the loud-roaring sea—or rather, that, as lead, to use Moses' phrase, it might sink in the mighty water, having first been bound to a good-sized stone, and then given to the waves.

But, O you who if anyone are excessive in wisdom, if you have somehow removed that thing from those arguments of yours, what need have you then of so much long-winded talk on its behalf, from which it has befallen you to shoot not only beside the mark, as the proverb says, but altogether off-target?

...you were turned about, not only in the arguments against us, but even when discoursing about higher matters; and this you suffered from your untimely loquacity; for as though to some most turbulent spirit you gave yourself over to it, and being tossed about by it in many directions, willing yet unwilling, you suffered, alas, many stumbles and shipwrecks in vain.