要理講辭 第 1 章 第 18/23 段

But when they themselves, being stirred by the evil one, erase again the very things which they had written, they do not choose to inscribe in their place the things of Christ — so that, when the adversary comes, he might find the tablets of their hearts already written upon and turn away defeated and put to shame. Rather, through sloth and negligence each of them leaves these tablets unwritten; and so, whenever the Lord sends to write His own teachings upon one of such men, straightway those men eagerly write the things of the enemy.

The Lord Jesus, our God, who committed no fault, was struck, so that we sinners who imitate Him might not only receive forgiveness of our sins, but might also, through their obedience, become partakers of His Deity;

and he who does not accept this in humility of heart, being as it were ashamed to imitate the sufferings of the Master, of him also Christ will be ashamed before the angels and before His Father who is in the heavens.

Being God, He became man for our sake.

He was buffeted, spat upon, and crucified, teaching, as it were, and saying to each one of us through the things which He, impassible in His Deity, suffered:

'If you wish, O man,' He says, 'to become a god, and to attain eternal life, and to be with Me — that which your forefather once rightly desired but did not obtain — then humble yourself, as I humbled Myself for your sake;

but if you are ashamed to suffer for the sake of My commandments, as I, God, suffered for your sake, then I too shall count it a shame that you should be with Me at My coming in glory, and I will say to My angels:

This man was ashamed of Me in My humiliation, and would not accept to forsake the glory of the world and to be made like Me; but now, when he himself has been stripped of that corruptible glory, while I am glorified in the immortal glory of My Father, I am ashamed even to look upon him at all!'

'Let him therefore be cast out, let him be taken away like the ungodly, that he may not see the glory of the Lord!'

These things, then, shall be heard by those who keep all the commandments, as it seems, in appearance, but who, on account of shame and human respect, do not accept the insults, dishonors, or revilings brought upon them by their fellow men, nor endure the blows and the beatings inflicted by them.

Shudder, O men, and tremble, and do you also endure with joy the insults which God underwent for the sake of our salvation!

God is struck by a most vile slave, giving you an example of victory; and will you not accept to suffer this at the hands of a man who shares your own nature?

Are you ashamed to become an imitator of God? Then how will you reign together with Him and be glorified together with Him in the kingdom of the heavens, if you have not endured for Him?

For if He too, so far as it depended on you, had been ashamed to become man for your sake, and had left you lying, until the present, in the ruin of the transgression, would you not have remained, O wretched one, together with the unbelievers and the ungodly in the recesses of Hades?

Do you believe that Christ is God?

If then you believe that He is the God who made heaven and earth — who without being emptied was emptied out of the bosom of the Father, who came down to earth from the boundless height of His Deity and His ineffable glory, and became a lowly and poor man for your sake — while you are but clay and ashes and dust, do you not accept to come down from your supposedly lofty throne and to humble yourself to your brother, who, according to this outward appearance, stands below you, yet is perhaps superior to you in virtues?

Do you not despise all these things, which are truly but a plaything and rather a mask of unseemliness, and not a glory of splendor?

Do you not become in all things like your Maker and God, when you humble yourself together with your brethren?

If, then, you cannot bear to be made like Him, you are, without knowing it, contriving to make yourself greater and more glorious than He, showing yourself to us as another Annas or Caiaphas or Pilate and tyrant, wishing the Maker of all to stand beside you not as one seated with you, but as one of the condemned.

These things, then, are addressed to the rich and to rulers, and to those who set themselves above others and lift up their brows with a haughty spirit.

Behold, therefore, this One who is now present with you and dwells in your company — He who is above all the heavens.

Behold, the two of you journey together;

someone met you on the road of life, gave your Master a blow, and gave one to you likewise.

The Master does not answer back — and will you resist?

'Yes,' one says, 'for He said to the one who struck Him:

If I have spoken wrongly, bear witness of the wrong;

but if rightly, why do you strike Me?' This He said not by way of answering back, as you supposed, but because that One committed no sin, neither was any guile found in His mouth;

and, besides, that it might not be thought that the one who said to Him: 'Do You so answer the high priest?' had struck Him justly, as one who had committed sin,

for this reason He uttered this, declaring Himself to be without blame.

For indeed, afterward, having endured far worse things than this, He is found to have spoken nothing at all — nay, rather, He is shown even praying on behalf of those who crucified Him.

That One, when mocked, is not indignant — and will you be aggrieved?

That One accepts the cross and a dishonorable death and the pains from the nails — and will you not accept to perform the most menial services?

Truly, you have forsaken your wealth in vain, since you were unwilling to take up the cross, as He commanded, together with the word of truth;

'Sell your possessions and give to the poor' — this Christ enjoined upon the young man and upon us as well — 'and take up your cross and come, follow Me!'

But you scattered your wealth, yet, as has been said, did not accept to take up the cross — which is to bear ardently the onslaught of all temptations — and so you have been left behind on the road of life and, most unhappily, have been separated from your most sweet Master and God!

But I beseech you, fathers and brethren, let us keep all the commandments of Christ; let us endure the temptations that come upon us even unto death, out of longing for the kingdom of the heavens, that we may become partakers of the glory of Jesus, sharers of eternal life, and heirs of the enjoyment of the unspeakable good things, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory unto the ages.

Concerning the life-giving mortification which comes about through the Spirit, even before death, in those who struggle;

and that those who, in grace, have come to be above the law receive the grace of the divine light consciously within themselves;

for those who have not already received this light in the present life, and do not behold it, are still under the shadow of the law and shall be judged by it.

And of what sort both the superior and the priest ought to be — he who has received from above the authority to bind and to loose.

And that to the one who truly performs the sacred ministry and is illumined by the divine light, all are manifest—both those who walk in the Spirit of God and those who have not yet put off the earthly man.

Brethren and fathers, take heed how you hear.

That first of all we may be taught the way that leads to salvation, and then, having walked without turning back through the practice of the commandments, we may attain to that very salvation of our souls.

What, then, is our salvation?

Jesus Christ, as the angel who stood by the shepherds said:

Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people; for unto you is born this day a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David.

Let each one of us therefore make haste, beloved; let us run with vigour, carrying nothing burdensome or worldly or hard to bear, lest, being thereby compelled to walk more slowly, we should be unable to arrive and enter into the city of David.

Let us worship Him and fall down before Him; and let us not stand still even at this, but continue until He too shall say to us:

You are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.

But how does one come to be no longer of the world?

If he crucify himself to the world and the world to himself, as Paul also says:

The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

And how, one may say, do these words agree with those?

The words indeed, he says, are different, but the power of both is one and the same.

For just as one who is outside the house does not see those who are shut up within, so neither does he who is crucified to the world—that is, put to death—possess any perception toward the affairs that are in the world.

And again, just as a dead body has no perception whatever, neither toward the living nor toward the dead bodies lying together with it, so neither can he who has come to be outside the world in the divine Spirit and is with God have any perception toward the world or toward the affairs of the world.

So then, brethren, there comes to be a death before death and, before the resurrection of bodies, a resurrection of souls—in deed, in power, in experience, and in truth.

For when the mortal mind is done away by the immortal intellect, and deadness is driven out by life, then the soul, as though risen from the dead, sees itself in an undeniable manner—just as those who have risen from sleep behold themselves—and it recognizes God who raised it; and contemplating Him and giving Him thanks, it worships and glorifies His boundless goodness.

But the body no longer has any inspiration or movement or thought toward its own lusts, but becomes wholly dead and breathless in these matters.

There are times, indeed, when a man often forgets even his very natural functions, because his soul is ever occupied intellectually in things above nature.

For the flesh, being made dead, as has been said, through the coming of the Spirit, will thereafter leave us untroubled, and you shall live unhindered; since the law is not laid down for the righteous man, according to the divine Apostle, inasmuch as he clearly lives above the law.

For where the Spirit of the Lord is, he says, there is freedom—freedom from the utter bondage of the law.

'This you shall do, and that you shall not do'—but grace and truth are not so; rather, how?

You shall both do and speak all things according to the grace given to you and speaking in you, as it is written: And they shall all be taught of God—not learning the good through letters and written characters, but taught this in the Holy Spirit; nor in word only, but being mystically initiated into divine things in the light of the word and in the word of light.

For then, he says, you shall be teachers both to yourselves and to your neighbors—nay more, both the light of the world and the salt of the earth.

Those, then, who were before grace, as being under the law, dwelt also seated beneath its shadow;

but those who came after grace and became day were set free from the shadow—that is, from the bondage of the law—having plainly risen above it, as by a certain ladder, namely the evangelical way of life, being lifted up to the heights and living together with the Lawgiver, being themselves rather lawgivers than keepers of the law.

Is there then anyone who has ears to hear, that he may be able to give ear to the power of the things spoken by the Spirit?

Is there even now anyone who possesses the mind of Christ, that he may understand rightly and in a manner befitting God the things written by Him?

For we speak wisdom, he says—not the wisdom of this age which is being brought to nought, but wisdom in a mystery, hidden indeed from the many, but revealed and made known abundantly to us, to those who are grounded in the fear of God and ever look to Him. For we do not speak what we do not know, but we testify to what we have seen: that the light already shines in the darkness, both by night and by day, both within and without—within, in our hearts, and without, shining round about us in the intellect, unfailingly, unchangeably, unalterably, without form; speaking, working, living and giving life, and making those it enlightens to be light.

We testify that God is light, and all who have been deemed worthy to see Him beheld Him as light, and those who received Him received Him as light; for the light of His glory goes before His face, and apart from light it is impossible for Him to appear; and those who have not seen His light have not seen Him either, for He is light; and those who have not received the light have not yet received grace.

For those who received grace received the light of God and God, as the light, Christ, said:

I will dwell in them and walk about among them.

But those who have not yet experienced this or been deemed worthy of it—all such are under the law that was before grace: they are slaves and disciples of slaves and hearers of the law and children of the bondwoman and sons of darkness, be they kings or patriarchs, be they high priests or priests, be they rulers or ruled, be they laymen or monks, be they ascetics or abbots, be they poor or rich, be they weak or sound in body.

For repentance is the door that leads out from darkness and brings one into the light.

He, therefore, who has not entered into the light has not rightly passed through the door of repentance;

for had he passed through, he would have come to be in the light.

But he who does not repent sins, precisely because he does not repent;

for to him who knows to do good and does it not, he says, to him it is sin.

And he who commits sin is a slave of sin, and hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works be made manifest.

For now, when we willingly and of our own free choice enter through repentance toward the light, we are indeed reproved and judged, but this happens mystically and in a hidden manner, in the inner chamber of our souls, for the cleansing and remission of our sins, by the mercy and love of God for mankind we undergo it, with God alone and ourselves being present—He who knows and beholds our affairs;

but then, that is, at the coming of the Lord, to those who are unwilling now to come to the light but hate it, the light now hidden shall be revealed, and all their hidden things shall be made manifest.

And whatever sort each one of us men now is, hiding ourselves and not willing to make manifest our own things through repentance, then by the light we both become and shall become plain and manifest to God and to all.

And consider with me here the magnitude of the shame.

For just as in a house whose doors are shut fast within, if one of us, being present and as it were not seen by any of those outside, sins unsparingly—committing adultery, forsooth, and corruption of children, or working some other abominable things—and then is suddenly exposed while working the evil, he undergoes great shame;

and night shall be lit up as day, and every house and cave and heaven itself and earth shall be taken away, and all who have not put on Christ—that is, who have not received the light, as we said before, and been in it beforehand and become light—shall appear naked and shall be filled on every side with much shame.

And not only this, but every deed of each one, both good and evil, and every word and every notion and thought—that which was begotten in us from the very birth of each one of us and up to the last breath—shall then appear gathered together in each of men.

And what then, brethren, will be comparable to this shame, and this alone, at that time?

Or what punishment is greater than that fear and shame for those who are then found, as has been said, in darkness and apart from the enlightening Spirit?

And what kind of life, what manner of conduct ought the man to have who sits in darkness, lest at the sudden flashing forth of the light some defilement of a thought or of some deed be found in him?

Wherefore let us be diligent, my brethren, from this very moment already, to enter through the narrow gate by repentance and to behold the light that is within it.

Yea, I beseech you, let us not grow weary of knocking and seeking and asking, until it be opened to us and given and we be heard—yea, and until we enter and receive light and hold it unquenchable in our hearts.

But let us not deceive ourselves and, following after the desires of our flesh, commit fornication in our pursuits, setting ourselves up as teachers, becoming abbots and high priests and priests in contempt of God and, plainly, of our own salvation.

For if, when Jesus said to Nicodemus:

Unless one be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God—and Nicodemus answered Him:

How can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?—Jesus rebuked him and said:

Are you the teacher of Israel and do you not know these things? And yet he had not yet believed at all nor understood the things of grace—of how great a condemnation, then, are we worthy, who after grace are teachers and yet do not understand the mysteries of grace, we who have enjoyed such great teaching and are daily taught and forewarned by apostles and prophets and teachers and by the Lord Himself?

For if we do not know how we ought to conduct ourselves in this life, nor how we must first be nourished in good works and present ourselves as slaves to righteousness, standing as before the Lord and not before men, and having engaged ourselves to serve blamelessly the living God, nor what sort and manner of persons we ought first to become and thus to preside over others—how, tell me, should we be entrusted with the guarding and care of the Master's flock?

How shall we shepherd it according to the will of the chief Shepherd Christ, and lead it out to ever-living pastures?

But O, our hardness of heart and our contempt of God and of divine things!

For just as, having stopped our ears like the asp, having become as it were deaf and dumb after the manner of the dead, and being maimed in the perceptive faculties of the soul, we take no perception even of the things spoken, nor do we understand what Christianity ever is, but being ignorant also of the mystery of the economy and not accurately knowing the mysteries of Christians, we nevertheless shamelessly undertake to demonstrate to the many, as it were concerning the light of knowledge—nay rather, the very light of knowledge itself.

Knowledge is not the light, but the light is knowledge, since in it and through it and from it are all things;

we, denying the vision, make ourselves plainly to be neither born nor come forth into the light from above, but still being embryos or, to speak more truly, untimely births, we leap upon the sacred places and mount the apostolic thrones and—what is more grievous—the greater part of us purchase the priesthood with money, in fearlessness of God, and, as shepherds of the royal flock, we who have never even been lambs, seek to preside;

and this only in order to fill our own bellies like beasts and to accomplish all the other things that the appetite for the worse demands, and the desire and craving for things below.

Were the apostles such from the beginning, brethren?

Were the successors of the apostles such?

Were our fathers and teachers such?

Alas for the fearful audacity of such men! For not only do they become betrayers and sacrilegious plunderers with respect to perceptible riches—those who incline toward the money-box alone—but they even dare to lay hold of the divine wealth itself, whence they are not even ashamed to say:

Ours is the power to bind and to loose, and this we have received from above for the present life.

O the shamelessness, not to call it the utmost madness!

From whom, O you there, tell me, and for what reason did you receive this authority from on high?

Because you forsook all things and followed Christ?

Because you have despised earthly glory?

Because you have lost your own soul, that is, put it to death for the world, and did not find it in any desire of the flesh?

Or have you also, like the disciples of Christ of old, heard from Him, He breathing on you plainly and saying:

'If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them;

if you retain the sins of any, they shall be retained'?

'But this authority belongs to the priests,' he says.

Yet not to all, nor merely to those who are priests, but to those who minister the Gospel in a spirit of humility and conduct themselves in a blameless life; who have first presented themselves to the Lord and shown forth within themselves, spiritually, a perfect, holy, well-pleasing sacrifice—their pure worship in the temple of their own body—and have been accepted and made manifest at the altar on high, and have been offered by Christ the High Priest as a perfect offering to God the Father, and by the power of the Holy Spirit have been transformed and changed and transfigured into Christ, who died for us and rose again in the glory of the Godhead;

those who in perfect humility repent night and day and mourn, and with tears make supplication not for themselves alone, but also for the flock entrusted to them and for all the holy churches of God throughout the world;

and not only so, but those who weep vehemently before God for the sins of others; who take no more than the necessary food, and in no way pamper the body with any indulgence or gratification, but, as it is written, walk in the Spirit and do not fulfil the desire of the flesh;

and further, those who for the sake of righteousness and the commandment of God show no partiality to poor or rich, ruler or ruled, nor even to him who wears the diadem; who under no pretext of mercy, nor for the sake of giving gifts, nor from fear or love or any other thing seen or unseen, grow soft and overlook or transgress the commandment of the God who is over all.

To such as these belongs the power to bind and to loose, to minister and to teach—not to those who receive only the vote and the ordination that come from men;

for no one, it says, takes the honour to himself, but he who is called by the Lord;

not he who receives the vote from men, but he who has been foreordained and appointed by God to this.

For those who come from men and through men are thieves and robbers, as the Lord said:

'All who came, and who come, not through Me but climbing in from elsewhere, are thieves and robbers.'

Therefore be not deceived, brethren: he who lives in darkness is outside the door, and he who thinks he has entered, yet has not entered through the light, he too is outside the fold.

For if Christ is the light of the world and the door, then He is assuredly a door full of light, and not merely a door; and he who has come to be within this door has come to be in the light of the world.

But He is the light of the world not as one perceived by the senses, but as one contemplated with the mind.

For the sensible sun illumines only the bodily eyes, not of men only but also of the irrational animals, both of quadrupeds and of birds;

but the intelligible Sun, who has appeared in the world, illumines rational souls alone.

Yet not even these does He illumine all indiscriminately and unworthily;

for He is not without soul, or rather without life, nor is He a slave or a creature appointed for the service of others, as indeed is this sensible sun, which rises upon the just and the unjust and upon the evil and the good alike.

But though He is called light and named sun, yet He is also above all light and above all sun, being, as the Maker and Master of light and sun, life and life-giving, truth, righteousness, sanctification, simple, uncompounded, good, and every good, and above every good.

So then, being and being called truth, He becomes truth to those who truly turn to Him;

being righteousness, He is righteousness to those who have hated all unrighteousness;

being sanctification, to those who have been washed and cleansed through tears;

being simple, to those who bring in no wickedness or malice within;

being uncompounded, to those who have no duplicity or double-mindedness or unbelief of soul;

being good, to those who do not drag along with the spiritual works of repentance any bodily or worldly cares and anxieties, nor mingle and confuse these with them, but come to Him bare in mind and in the disposition of the soul, in innocence; from whom He accepts their freedom from meddling, and speedily fills them with every good, and, as soon as He is revealed and made manifest, at once restores them to be partakers of the goods that are beyond mind and beyond thought.

'And who,' he says, 'will recognize such men, if indeed there are such even now?'

He who is illumined from above by the Spirit.

Does he not know that, even if unwittingly he should bring a wolf in among the sheep of Christ, he himself will receive the judgement due for the sheep?

He is a man and does not know the things in the heart.

If he is not blind, he would never fail to recognize such a one at any time.

But if he is blind to these things, let him seek out a guide and leader; or rather, let him also cease from such a work and discernment, neither becoming a guide to others nor appointing himself as a guide for others—even if he should have the whole world bearing witness to him.

For this is what I say: that he who sees spiritually and likewise hears, whomever he may see and meet and often converse with, sees that man's very soul—if not according to its essence, yet according to its form, of what sort and character it is.

Accordingly, if the beholder has been counted worthy to partake of the Holy Spirit, he knows this from the very sight of the man;

but if he who is beheld is still imperfect with respect to grace and has not yet become godlike, then he who beholds and converses with him will recognize it rather through his words—even as our Master and God Himself declared, saying:

'By their fruits you shall know them'; and again:

he is known—yet even this one is known by those who are healthy in word and in the faculties of the soul;

for the rest of men are disposed without perception and without discernment even towards the very works themselves.

One man, who practises self-control in humility, they reckon to be a hypocrite; but the man who eats with gluttony they regard as simple and unaffected, with whom they take pleasure in eating the more often, thereby soothing their own passions.

For indeed, those who feign madness and speak witticisms and nonsense out of season, who carry on with unseemly gestures and move the rest to laughter—reckoning that by such practices and gestures and words they are, forsooth, striving to conceal their virtue and dispassion—these they honour as passionless and holy; whereas those who pass their lives in reverence and virtue and simplicity of heart, and who are in truth holy, they misjudge and pass by as though they were but one among other men.

Others turn away from the man who speaks in the Holy Spirit as though he were high-minded and proud, being smitten by his words rather than pricked to compunction; but the man who spins out fine phrases from the belly or from book-learning, and lies against their salvation, they praise excessively and welcome.

And thus among such men there is no one able to see and discern rightly and as the matter truly stands.

For he who is once blind is blind towards all things; so also he who is deaf is deaf towards all things.

For the blind man does not see this and not that, nor does the deaf man hear this voice and not that; but altogether both that man and this are maimed in their senses.