For some, indeed, at times become the more approved, and through endurance attain the heavenly prizes; but the Lord will destroy all who speak falsehood.
But if one who is himself a defrauder cries out as though he had been defrauded, and the slanderer, as though slandered, laments against the one who has suffered and done nothing terrible, what excess of wickedness does this leave [unattained]?
For seeing him arrayed in the garb of a monk, I rejoiced within myself, reasoning that, as he advanced, he would also become wise in divine things, having consorted with the elect among our monks, who, having bidden farewell to all else, devote themselves for life to God in stillness.
But now the very opposite has come to pass, and he, on whose account I rejoiced in good hopes, has just now brought mourning down upon my soul on behalf of his own soul.
[...the] more simple ones, feigning himself to be an eager disciple; but he departed, having shown that he had judged/condemned them to such a degree that he even composed treatises against them, bringing charges neither small nor moderate, and with these treatises spoke openly against them — not before all, but before the youths who attended upon him and buzzed about him — and of these he persuaded as many as did not profess the mind of an elder, and, among the monks, those who had had no experience of the hesychast way of life.
Then the report began to spread among all, that a detestable opinion was being propagated by those who practice stillness; for he even attached to them the most vile of names, calling them 'navel-souls' (omphalopsychoi), and having termed the heresy which he thus spoke of 'omphalopsychia'; and while putting forward no one by name among those he had condemned, but saying that he had encountered the better sort among us, he thereby clearly made all of us alike liable to his accusations.
1:733
Ἐζήτουντοίνυνκαίαὐτόςπαρἐκείνουταυτίτάγράμματα
於是我自己也向他索取這些著作。
I myself, therefore, sought from him these very writings.
But he took such great pains that these should come to the sight of none of our people, that he would not even give them to those who had recently conversed with us and had once beheld us, unless he had first bound them by oath not to show them to any who embrace stillness.
Having obtained them, then, I myself too went through some of them, and found that, so to speak, nothing in them was sound, but all was falsehood and terrible slander.
For he said that he had been taught by those whom he accused, that all divine Scripture is altogether useless to all men, and that the knowledge of beings is wicked, and that the [essence...]
[...that] the essence of God is perceptible to the senses and can be contemplated, and that certain other sensible observances, exercises, and practices lead to this contemplation.
Having called all these things — I know not how — 'omphalopsychia,' and having refuted them as demonic, as he himself supposed, and having established himself as the only safe teacher, he thereupon proceeded to discourse concerning noetic prayer and sacred light, and set forth ascents and degrees of contemplations and kinds of knowledge, and testified that the greater part of the perfection found in these came to him from secular learning and the zeal devoted to it — as though it were a gift of God, given equally with what was given to the prophets and apostles.
Such, then, was the state of his writings; and he was devising and preparing matters not a little worse than these, until, having learned of our counter-arguments against him, he became so afraid that he confessed publicly, before the church, to enclose these writings, as being causes of scandal, and to abandon and utterly destroy them.
But when, by means of these words, he was released from just condemnation, and also came upon some of our books that argued against such things, and perceived that the refutations were inescapable, unable to bear the shame, he sat down once more, and partly erased his own writings, and partly altered them; and he utterly effaced the very name 'omphalopsychia' — a name that has now been refuted and left with nothing of substance, deprived of any real referent, and unable to be predicated of any actual subject — like the goat-stag, or the man-horse, and whatever else belongs to bare invention.
As for those of my writings which he came upon, some he passes over as though he had not even seen them, not even daring to look them in the face; but there are others which, having altered them slanderously, he then proceeds against — and while doing this, he himself laments as though he were the one being slandered.
Yet he entrusts these not even to all his own friends and companions, but only to a very few of his most intimate associates — one of whom judged it right to convey these to me, having himself detected the deceit, and having entreated me to employ both myself and words [in answer], opposing myself in turn to each of the strongholds of falsehood, and, so far as I am able, rendering the light of truth unobscured by spurious teachings.
Having judged it necessary, then, to obey this good request, and once again, to the best of my ability, to make myself an advocate of the truth, I shall now begin, as before, from his treatise 'On Words.'
His prooemium runs thus: 'As it is with health, so it is also with philosophy: it is given directly from God, and it is also found through diligence; and just as it is not one kind of health that is given by God and another that comes through medicine, but the very same, so also with wisdom. Now God gives this to us through prophets and apostles; and He has given us both the theurgic oracles and the disciplines of philosophy, through which, in turn, we find wisdom by seeking it.'
These things are not yet altogether outrageous, although he is equating things that differ by a very great deal indeed, and to a degree scarcely expressible; for God heals even the incurable, and raises the dead from their tombs, and the wisdom given to prophets and apostles is Himself the Word of the Father, the wisdom before the ages, as Paul also says concerning Him: 'who became for us wisdom from God.'
[The wisdom of secular] learning, and the health that comes from physicians, are not the same as those [former things], to the same degree that the prophets differ from the Greeks, and the disciples of Christ differ from the Galens and Hippocrateses — or, if you will, Christ Himself, that is, Jesus, who deigned to be so called for our sake.
It seems to me, then, an equal [error] to say these are the same things, as to say the sun is comparable to a firefly, merely because both display light in the air.
'But,' he says, 'the oracles of the theurgic [writers], and the wisdom contained in them, look to one and the same aim as the philosophy of secular disciplines, and possess the same end: the discovery of truth.'
'For truth is one throughout: given to the apostles immediately from God at the beginning, but found by us through diligence; and toward this truth, given from God to the apostles, the disciplines of philosophy are also naturally inclined of themselves, and contribute the greatest help toward being led up, without error, to the immaterial archetypes of the sacred symbols.'
Who, hearing these things — of those who think rightly and know how great the difference between them is — will not be indignant, that the theurgic wisdom of the Spirit is thus altogether ranked together with the philosophy of secular disciplines, and this by men who seem to us to hold the same views as we do, and who yet blame our counter-arguments as though directed against like-minded men?
Is not the one [philosophy] barren and unfruitful — according to Gregory, the theologian of Nyssa — giving no fruit for its long labor-pains, nor leading forth into the light of the knowledge of God; while the other, that of the Spirit, is most fruitful and prolific, bearing not two or three at a time, as do the animals that bear many young, but regenerating whole thousands at once, and transferring [them] out of dreadful darkness into the wondrous light of God, as we have been taught from the Acts of the Apostles?
Which the prophet, too, foreseeing, and being wholly caught up in wonder at it, said: 'Has the earth been in travail suddenly? Has a nation been born all at once?'
Is it not the case that in the one, truth is disputable and mixed with falsehood — wherefore it is by nature always contradicted, as even its own leaders would testify — whereas in the other, no one, according to the divinely-inspired voice of the Gospel, is able to withstand it, since it sets forth truth that is clear and altogether unmixed with its opposite?
[...the] truth [of the one] is necessary for us, and profitable, and salvific, while that of the secular [learning] which comes to us from without is neither necessary nor salvific?
Whence it is also shown that the kind of truth is twofold: of these, the one is the goal of the God-inspired teaching, while the other — neither necessary nor salvific — is what secular philosophy seeks, yet attains less fully.
1:758
Πῶςοὖνδιἀμφοτέρωντούτωνμίανεὑρίσκομεντήνἀλήθειαν;
那麼，我們又如何能從這兩者中找出同一個真理來呢？
How then do we find one and the same truth through both of these?
But even we, in transferring the investigative method of the philosophy of secular disciplines to the inquiry of things necessary, and, in some instances, using that learning for the clarification of the sacred sayings, could most easily be turned aside from what is right, were we not to possess the one and only key of the sacred Scriptures — namely, the grace of the Spirit — and were we not guided by the God-inspired sayings themselves.
It is clear, then, that from this it follows that even those [secular disciplines] are transformed and re-ordered toward what is profitable; for the wisdom of the Spirit stands in need of nothing, but in that which is truly good, even that which is not truly good is made good — according to the nature of fire and light, which, as in a faint image, make the things that draw near appear fiery and luminous.
How then will there come to us one kind of wisdom out of the sacred teachings and the Greek disciplines together, identical with the apostolic wisdom — which, having shone forth briefly at that time, encompassed the ends of the inhabited world, convicting the wise of the outer world as unwise, yet not freeing the unlearned from their unlearnedness, but transferring both wise and unlearned alike, out of godless error, unto piety?
1:762
Πῶςοὖνμίαἡδιάτούτωνἀλήθεια;
那麼，透過這兩者而來的真理，又怎能是同一個呢？
How then is the truth through these one and the same?
[If] he should attempt to join it to the teaching of the Spirit, and to reckon it among the catalogue of divine gifts belonging to it, saying: 'God bestowed on us the God-inspired teaching, and the [...]
And yet the philosopher did not select out this [true] truth and then join it to the spiritual and truly divine gifts; rather, he joined the disciplines of philosophy — which have wrapped around them, so to speak, the superfluous foreskin of wicked doctrines.
To introduce secular philosophy directly as leading to the knowledge of beings is, perhaps, not entirely false — for it might be true in some respect — but this is not the knowledge of beings, nor the wisdom, which God gave immediately to the prophets and apostles.
For that [wisdom] is the Holy Spirit; but we have never yet, even to this day, heard of Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks being partakers of the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is far removed from the training of blameworthy thoughts and deeds, and, as it is written, 'will neither enter into a deceitful soul, nor dwell in a body enslaved to sin.'
But of all men, it was the soul of Aristotle that most of all attained to the knowledge of the disciplines of philosophy — Aristotle, whom the theologians called a man of evil craft; and what proof of the purity of his body could anyone give?
But even in the Platonic body the knowledge of these disciplines dwelt — he who cohabited with a mother and her two daughters. And if anyone should acquire, through diligence, the knowledge of the prophetic and apostolic sayings, he is as far from possessing their wisdom as an eye is from becoming the sun or the moon, though it partakes of the rays of both sun and moon; wherefore, though we know the sayings of the prophets, we are by no means, in ourselves, prophets.
...raised it up wholly on high to heaven, having wrapped it about with the bonds of the Gospel; but now, though as many as are presently reckoned wise should come together as one, and persevere in their zeal for however long, they could not draw up from the depth of impiety even a small part of the world.
But neither would the knowledge that comes to us from the sacred oracles — though it falls far short of the wisdom of those who wrote them — be the same as the knowledge supplied by the external disciplines.
And the greater part of divine wisdom tends toward this: to know what is the will of God — the good and perfect and well-pleasing will — which the disciplines of external philosophy are as far from seeking as swine, ever inclined by nature to bend toward the earth, are from knowing the well-ordered position of the stars.
But he who seeks the divine will, and has come to know this concerning each of the things that are — for what purpose it was brought forth by the Creator of all — and who makes use of them according to this divine intention, this man is the one who knows the causal principles of beings; this man is the one who possesses the knowledge of beings; this man is the true philosopher and the perfect man, according to the Solomonic saying: 'Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole of man.'
This man indeed possesses wisdom beyond dispute — for his life bears witness to his understanding — a man who admits no contradiction, and has within himself the testimony of conscience, and, beyond this, also the verdict from above, through the mystical indwelling and manifestation of the Spirit.
But he who has gathered his understanding from external wisdom — even if he has partaken of some truth — offers, by reason alone, proofs to a reasoning that, precisely as reasoning, is ever at war, furnishing thereby the grounds of an unstable...
...judgment; or rather, priding himself greatly and being ambitious if, by arguing the contrary, he could persuade concerning the very same matter; thus he holds, and offers, an opinion that is unstable and easily changed, rendering useless the transitive and divisible faculty of the soul's reasoning; so that such a man could not accurately be called even rational, much less noetic.
What means, then, is there for one setting out from such a mind to behold the immaterial archetypes of the divine symbols within the Church of Christ, as this valiant champion of the Hellenic disciplines explains them?
But he who seeks the will of God, and does it, is a philosopher — possessing a reason that is active and a deed that is reasoned — and through the very deeds themselves he demonstrates the unerring quality of the discursive movement of his own thoughts; and, being already perfectly rational, he is able also to be led up, from the divided sacred symbols, to the unified character of the archetypes, himself perfecting noetically, through himself, the matters set before him, and himself being mystically perfected through them; and this man sometimes attains even to the transcendent vision and ascent through spiritual prayer.
Could anyone still say that the knowledge of beings which God gave immediately to the prophets and apostles is the very same knowledge we discover through the external disciplines?
And yet, since the knowledge of beings is the best of the things within us, and the disciplines of philosophy of themselves lead us to this, while sacred Scripture sets forth symbols of it, and — as the philosopher says — the disciplines of philosophy lead up to the immaterial archetypes themselves: these disciplines are for us the best of disciplines, and are as much superior to divine Scripture as the truth of the archetypes is to symbols; but if they are not superior to it, then of necessity they are not inferior either, since the knowledge of beings is the best of the things within us — for what greater thing could those things which lead one in to it, and lead one up toward it, possibly accomplish?
1:782
Ἔστινἄρατιτῶνἐκτῆςθεοπνεύστου ( σελ
由此可見，在那些從神所默示的……
There is, therefore, something among the things that accrue to us from the God-inspired...
...Scripture that is incomparably better than the knowledge of beings, on account of which the theurgic oracles are incomparably better than that philosophy, with reference to that superior knowledge which the disciplines belonging to that philosophy neither introduce one to, nor lead one up toward, by themselves.
For neither was the philosopher able to perceive this: that the greater part of the healing and wisdom that comes from God looks to the soul, whereas these inventions devised by men, having brought but a small treatment to the body alone, thereafter become of no avail, once death has dissolved their subject.
But he, having declared that in this he holds the truth, says: 'There are those who dispute with us concerning these matters; for some suppose that the reading of the oracles is confusion, while others suppose that the disciplines of philosophy, and every pursuit concerning discourse, is in no way a gift of God.'
But among the hesychasts in our midst, we have known no one who does not devote himself to the sacred oracles, if he has learned letters; and as for those who do not know letters, one might see them as other, living books, aptly reciting from the heart the greater part of the oracles.
Since, then, these are clearly of this sort, his argument seems rather to be directed against the fathers; for as one of them, he says, counsels toils and not tablets; and the heart of him who merely reads through many pages is merely emptied; and another monk, reading for the sake of knowledge and not for compunction, acquires only conceit.
1:790
ΟὐγάρἐπίδιαβολῇτῆςἱερᾶςΓραφῆς ( σελ
因為，並非為了毀謗聖經……
For it was not for the disparagement of sacred Scripture...
...that such things were said by them; rather, knowing that it is practice, and not mere knowledge, that saves, and having learned from the Apostle, who says that not the hearers of the law but its doers shall be saved, it is to this end that they themselves also, through such words, exhort their foundational disciples.
And I too continue to remember having said — after distinguishing and casting away all that is mythical and ill-reputed in wisdom from outside — that the knowledge derived from external education could not, even so, be called a spiritual gift, but rather a natural one, given to us by God through nature and brought to increase through practice; and this is indeed clear proof that it is a natural and not a spiritual gift, that it comes to none at all without practice. For properly a gift of God, given in the Holy Spirit, and not natural, is that divine wisdom which is ours — which, even should it fall from above upon fishermen, makes them 'sons of thunder.'
For just as the earth is the Lord's, and all who dwell in it, yet few are 'of God,' although all alike are His creatures — in the very same way, God indeed is the one who supplies knowledge to man, yet few are they who have acquired the wisdom of the Spirit, although all have been made by Him rational by nature and receptive of knowledge.
And the slander is at hand at once, setting before him things he was in no way able to establish; for, 'It is for this reason that you do not agree,' he says, 'with the divine Dionysius — because you claim that philosophy has appeared from demons and leads to demons...'
But after this, again, as though forgetting himself, he says: 'concerning this very philosophy which we ourselves profess, you have let loose the same words against us.'
1:799
Πῶςἄντιςμᾶλλονδείξειενἑαυτῷἀντικείμενοςὤν;
還有誰能比這更清楚地顯明自己與自己相矛盾呢？
How could anyone more clearly show himself to be in contradiction with himself?
'Because,' he says, 'you bring forward the foremost of the Greeks, saying quite plainly that they received their knowledge from the inspiration of demons.'
No — not so long as we are true to ourselves and remain servants of the wisdom that truly is, which does not enter into a soul that is malicious in its craft and a friend of demons; and even should it have already entered, once that soul has turned toward the worse, it flies away; for the Holy Spirit of instruction will withdraw from thoughts devoid of understanding — according to Solomon, who was blessed with the wisdom of God and wrote concerning it.
For it is not concerning philosophy simply, in general, that we say what we now say, but concerning the philosophy of such men; for if, according to Paul, no one can drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons, how could anyone possess the wisdom of God and at the same time be inspired by demons?
He then strings together, next in order, a second, similar slander, saying that I hold even the astronomical method to be from demons, since I condemn the same things from the same sources — both those philosophers and the astronomers.
...having himself praised this discipline, he then, on hearing of it, took offense like one recognizing his own likeness in the charge — as though he himself had not been the first to affix upon the stricter part of the Church a novel and dreadful epithet of defamation, just as upon heretics.
But not much time passes before, changing his tone, he says that it is not fitting for him, as a disciple of Christ, to be vexed at this very insult, nor to repay in like measure, being mindful of the commandment — he who has retorted many times over, and has made unrestrained use of every slander against us.
And yet my earlier writings were directed at him not at all, but rather against what was being noised abroad by rumor; and I lead out my argument against arguments, not against the one who utters them; and I am so far from resorting to slanders concerning his words, as he does concerning mine, that I even passed over the worse of the things said by him.
But the greater point is that I write not on my own behalf, but on behalf of the simpler brethren who are being wronged — myself having borne their burden, according to the apostolic commandment.
But he writes on his own behalf, and plainly directs his words against me, and, openly setting forth certain of my own statements, becomes vehement in distorting and opposing them.
But the worse thing is that he himself, having both begun this abuse and now defending himself in it, then justifies himself as though he had neither begun it nor were defending himself, claiming to be a disciple of Christ, who, 'when reviled, did not revile in return; when suffering, did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges justly.'
But indeed, as though ascending by degrees of evil, he progresses to worse things and advances against the saints — now shamelessly contradicting them himself, now accusing them of contradicting themselves and one another, and there are even places where he falsifies their very sayings and sets them forth thus corrupted.
For whereas Gregory of Nyssa, wise in things divine, says that the manner of life in the age to come will not be alike for the one who has arrived there through every virtue and for the one who has not partaken of this life at all, in that as an infant he was snatched away untimely and passed from here to there ('for the one,' he says, 'through every sense and every kind of instruction came to know and to please God, while the other passed through life with a mind unexercised and untried'), this wise man supposed that in the mere fact that one is benefited through instruction and the disciplines he had found a windfall against the great Basil and against our own arguments.
For since the great Basil was brought forward by me as a witness, saying that geometry is vain, as is the school devoted to geometry which the Egyptians discovered, and figures and shadows, and meteorology, which was honored among the Chaldeans — he sets against him his own brother, as though he did not think in brotherly agreement with him, thereby contradicting, together with him, me as well.
To which one might say: O admirable man, the one who has arrived through every virtue has profited even from vain things — just as Gregory also says that Basil profited from the superstitious error at Athens, by laughing the demons to scorn in the very place where demons are held in awe.
In the very same way, then, the one who calls that discipline vain and harmful does not thereby contradict the one who says that some benefit may indeed come, from geometry and the other disciplines, to the man who has arrived through every virtue.
For evil works together with good, though not by a good intention — just as the flesh of a serpent becomes saving food, but only once it has been killed and reworked by the methods of the great art of medicine.
For neither did the Egyptians who discovered these things, nor the Chaldeans who honored them, discover and honor geometry and astronomy as being profitable toward the knowledge of God; rather, they erected thereby a kind of dreadful dividing-wall between God and men, and, having made a solemn display through these disciplines, they raised up toward the stars the reverence that men owe to God, while dragging down to these created things the cause of beings and of things that come to be — a cause that properly belongs to God.
But if the man who has arrived through every virtue was indeed benefited even by these disciplines, it was by pulling them down, and analyzing them, and reworking them, and making use of them together with reason — as I myself propose, I against whom you have wickedly chosen to contend — and moreover by not growing old in the pursuit of vain things, but by discerning what ought to be disregarded, as also did Athanasius the Great; and by choosing beneficial instruction and renouncing what is useless and harmful, as the great Basil says — Basil, who nobly traded in the 'wealth of Egypt,' that is, clearly, secular education, in the time of his youth, then, advancing in age, renounced it, plainly counting it a shame to be called 'child' — that is, disciple — of this wealth's mother, according to what was said concerning Moses by his brother; for if the barren and...
...and barren woman, being a king's daughter — whom, I think, he says, is properly to be understood as external philosophy — by taking up the infant, contrived that she be called 'mother' of such a one; up to that point, the argument permits one not to reject the kinship of this falsely-named mother, so long as one still perceives in himself the incompleteness of his age; but he who has run up to the height, as we have learned concerning Moses, will consider it a shame to be called 'child' of the barren woman; for the external education is indeed truly barren, ever suffering birth-pangs, but never bringing forth life in its delivery.
1:832
Τίναγάρἔδειξεκαρπόντῶνμακρῶνὠδίνωνἡφιλοσοφία;
哲學那漫長的陣痛，究竟結出了什麼果實呢？
For what fruit has philosophy shown from its long labor-pangs?
Are not all her offspring wind-eggs and unfulfilled, miscarried before ever coming to the light of the knowledge of God — offspring perhaps capable of becoming men, had they not been wholly enveloped in the bosom of this barren wisdom?