醫治希臘病 第 1 章 第 4/16 段

For since he is not visible, he is named invisible and unseen, and since he transcends the imagination of the mind, he is called unattainable;

and again, infinite, as having neither beginning nor end, and as being superior to corruption and death, incorruptible and immortal;

and the rest of the terms resembling these prove to be indicative of those things which the divine nature does not have.

But the terms good, and just, and light, and life, and craftsman, and ruler and pilot of all things, and those like these, are significant of the things which it has and which it effects, as it directs creation and confers benefit upon the nature of human beings.

Thus he is named Son, as begotten from God the Father, and Word, as having come forth timelessly and without passion, and not having divided the one who begot him;

And again, [he is called] the radiance of glory, as being coeternal with the One who begot him.

But do not be disturbed when you hear that the Word is both from the Father and together with the Father.

For it is most absurd that you tolerate Plato when he says that God is the cause of matter, and calls matter coeternal with God, and asserts that the Forms exist from God and together with God; yet you will not be persuaded that the Word of God and the all-holy Spirit both come forth from God and exist together with God.

For if the philosopher said that matter—which is of another nature, another kind, and altogether alien—is both from God and together with God, then surely it is far more reasonable and more true to accept our own teaching.

For we do not say that the Son is of another nature, nor that the all-holy Spirit is; rather we proclaim that the essence of the Trinity is one.

But if anyone seeks to learn the manner of the existence of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, let him first tell us the manner of the existence of the Unbegotten—how it is that he exists without having a cause.

For this is altogether beyond our grasp, and can be received only by pure and unmixed faith.

For reasoning would readily accept that something has come to be from a cause, whether begotten or created;

but that something exists apart from any cause, no reasoning will admit, unless somehow the surety of faith should appear.

And if we believe that there exists something both unbegotten and without beginning and without cause, then we must believe that, from this—which is Mind—the Word was begotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeded forth.

And that some of the ancients too call the God of all things 'unbegotten,' one may hear even from Timaeus of Locri, who says:

"There is one principle of all things, unbegotten."

And [Parmenides] proclaims it to be unbegotten, saying:

"only-begotten, unshaken, and unborn."

What then is that which is eternal and unbegotten and incorruptible, to which no span of time brings change? If, then, we say that there exists something unbegotten and uncaused—according to Parmenides the cosmos, but according to Plato and Timaeus of Locri and Plutarch and ourselves, the Maker of all things—then it is far more plausible to say that from that Unbegotten One the Word and the all-holy Spirit have sprung: the one, as word, begotten from the Mind; the other, as spirit, proceeding forth.

For the Spirit goes forth together with the Word—not begotten along with him, but co-present, accompanying him, and proceeding forth.

Yet we do not say that the Spirit is some breath of the mouth—for the divine is incomposite and without shape—nor that the Word is this [word] that is poured out into the air; but rather a Word who has substance and a Spirit who has hypostasis, both contemplated in the Father and believed in their own right, both conjoined and distinguished: united by the identity of nature, yet distinguished by the difference of their properties and conceived each in itself.

But these things cannot be learned accurately by one who has not engaged with the divine oracles and received the light of knowledge from the divine grace.

And one must read not only the teachings of the holy apostles, but also the oracles of the divine prophets;

for Plutarch declared that these men acknowledged no god.

And [the reader] will also flee the unseemly opinion of the Stoics concerning the divine;

for these men said that god was corporeal.

And he will abhor the ambiguous and faithless words of Protagoras concerning god;

for sayings such as these are his:

"Concerning the gods I cannot know whether they exist, nor that they do not exist, nor of what sort they are in form." And he will escape, too, the error of the other myth-makers;

and as for Plato and those resembling him, whatever they have stolen from the divine oracles he will discover and admire, but whatever falsehood they have mixed in he will scrape off and cast away like refuse and drive from the regions of the soul; and seeing the spoils of their theft, he will trust Numenius the Pythagorean, who says:

"It is high time, then, O men, to track down the very root of truth;

and just as those who mine gold-bearing and silver-bearing earth, when they find small flecks, follow them and search out all the veins, and do not cease digging until they find the mass of gold from which the flecks were scattered—so you must, having listened to the words of Anaxagoras and Pythagoras and Plato, and indeed of Numenius and Plutarch and Plotinus and the rest, seek out the spring from which these men, having drawn up a few drops of the divine streams, adorned their own discourses; and leaving behind their poverty, take hold instead of the abyss of wisdom, and learn accurately from her what is the Maker and what the thing made, and what is the dignity of the invisible creatures and what the usefulness of the visible.

For having learned this, you will no longer divide divine worship among many, but will worship the One who ever is and truly is, and who through goodness alone bestowed being upon the things that are; and instead of enemies and adversaries you will become kinsmen and friends, and will enjoy, as intimates, great freedom of access;

and you who at present have need of guides will [yourselves] lead others of those who wander toward the truth.

Among bodies, we are accustomed to admire those that are sound of limb and unmaimed, and that keep intact and complete the number [of parts] which they received from nature at the beginning;

but those in which something of these is lacking or in excess, these we are accustomed to call monstrosities.

And accusing both anarchy and the rule of many as harmful, we admire monarchy and praise the Homeric judgment, which lays down this law:

for he says, "the rule of many is not good; let there be one ruler, one king."

Now I am not idly chattering about these things, but am trying to demonstrate divine matters from human ones, and I ask you, O men, to maintain this same standard with regard to those things too: to call sound and whole those who embrace the true theology—which nature handed down from the beginning, and which the divine oracles afterward confirmed—but to call maimed not only those who think there is no god, but also those who have divided divine worship among many and have ranked the creation alongside the Maker of all things.

And there are some who have without restraint named even the most shameful passions—those condemned among themselves, and which they earnestly exhort the young to keep in check—as gods, and have assigned them the honor due to gods.

And the Phoenicians likewise, having learned this from them [the Egyptians], emulated the Egyptians' god-making.

And Plato too agrees, in the Cratylus, that the Greeks were the first to take up this error concerning the so-called gods; and he speaks thus:

"It seems to me that the first of mankind around Greece held these alone to be gods—just as now most of the barbarians do—sun and moon and earth and stars and heaven;

and so, seeing these moving along in their courses and running, from this nature—that of 'running' (thein)—they named them 'gods' (theous)." Now the all-wise Maker of all things, being in need of nothing and standing in absolutely no want of anything, whether visible or invisible, created heaven and earth and sun and moon and all the rest that is perceptible and visible, for the sake of mankind's use;

or rather, in the ambition of his magnificence, he surpassed mere need, and through these things provides them with the enjoyment of all manner of good things.

For the sun, rising and making the day, rouses the human race to labor;

and the moon, when the greater luminary withdraws, tempers the gloom of the night, and neither distresses those who wish to rest with an excess of light, nor fails to supply sufficient torch-light to those who wish to travel or to do anything else;

and when this [the moon] wanes, the stars fulfill this same need.

Now the Maker, as I said, has exercised such great forethought for mankind;

but they, having obtained these greatest of gifts—when they ought from these to have been led on, and to have hymned the Maker and Provider of these things as a great Giver—left him without honor, and instead, to speak in the words of the Apostle, worshipped and served the creation rather than the Creator; and the very greatness and beauty of the gifts furnished them an occasion for ingratitude.

For they were ignorant of the Giver of these things, and assigned to them the worship that belongs to God.

[Therefore God, in order to check] this error, allotted certain defects to the elements, so that on the one hand their beauty and greatness might dispose people to admire the Maker, while on the other hand the defects bound up with them might prevent people from offering them divine worship.

Thus, for instance, small clouds hide the most brilliant sun and the moon, and mist and haze make their rays dimmer; and there are times when, even at the height of midday, with neither clouds intervening nor haze diffused, the sun's light vanishes;

and this same affliction befalls the moon as well by night.

Furthermore, the wise Lord contrived this also:

since the moderate heat of the sun is suited both to bodies and to seeds and plants—for it makes the former grow and nourishes them, and ripens the fruits and brings them to maturity—he sometimes causes the ray to strike more fiercely, so as to distress the bodies of human beings and of the other animals, and to destroy the developing growths of seeds and plants, in order that we might not suppose this [the sun] to be the cause of life, but might believe it to be a servant of the divine will.

And indeed he also appointed the air to be a fellow-worker of life for us;

for not only we, but also every one of the irrational animals, lives by breathing it, and by its inflow tempers the innate warmth;

yet nevertheless pestilential disease also arises from the air, and bodies that are nourished by its good temperateness are corrupted, so that we might not suppose this too to be a god, but, seeing it to be changeable and alterable, might flee from worshipping it.

And the earth likewise the Maker has shown to be life-bearing and wealth-giving, a mother and nurse and common ground;

but so that we might not, seeing these things, be led astray and deify it as a provider of good things, he allotted to this too many and various defects;

for both an excess of cold and of heat ruin it, and being rained upon beyond what is needful, it dissolves and destroys both plants and seeds;

and again, when the clouds do not pour forth their offspring in due season, it becomes parched and barren;

and often raindrops borne down out of season breed decay, and force forth certain vermin and beasts, bred to the harm of human beings.

Therefore those who are sound in mind, when they behold this weakness, do not endure to worship creation as a god; rather, through it and the things that grow within it they are led as by a guide to the Maker of it and of these things, and through the visible they are conducted to the Invisible.

Hence very wisely and aptly did one of our own writers say:

"For from the greatness and beauty of created things their Author is correspondingly perceived." For the Maker is not such as the things made, nor is He of such measure as they;

for these things are visible and tangible and perceptible by the senses, and bound up with certain passions; but He is intangible and invisible, impassible and incorruptible, and not subject to any circumscription—just as the things made are.

For when we behold the vaults of the heavens, the breadth of the earth, the vastness of the seas, the brightness of the sun, the radiance of the moon, and all the other things that are visible, we do not equate the Maker with these, but we declare Him to be superior to the things made by an infinite measure both of greatness and of beauty.

Fittingly, then, did that wise man say:

"For from the greatness and beauty of created things their Author is correspondingly perceived." The divine Apostle also confirms this teaching, speaking thus:

And just as, when we see a chest or a stool, we do not call these the carpenter but name them the works of a carpenter; and when we behold a ship most excellently built, we admire not only it but also the shipwright, praising him especially though he is not present; and if we see a necklace or some other well-wrought ornament, we render the credit to the goldsmith—

so, applying our two eyes to creation, we marvel at its greatness, its beauty, and the abundant usefulness that wells up from it; yet the mind, leaving these things aside, runs to Him who so wisely fashioned them.

Most excellently, therefore, has the divine Apostle said:

"For His invisible attributes, ever since the creation of the world, are clearly perceived, being understood through the things that are made, namely His eternal power and divinity." Then he says that those who have contemplated the creation, yet have not marveled at its Creator but have rendered divine worship to creation itself, are wholly undeserving of any pardon.

"So that they are without excuse;"

"because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God nor give thanks, but became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened." And, heightening the accusation, he sets their conceit before all:

"For professing themselves to be wise," he says, "they became fools." And he tells also the forms of their folly:

"And they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man." For though they named God incorruptible, they fashioned an image of corruptible bodies—since indeed they do not know the form of the immortal soul—and to this they rendered divine worship.

And the madness of this folly did not suffice them for their impiety, but they even fashioned images of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things, and called these too gods;

and the creatures which, while living, they kill as venomous and deadly—the images of these very ones they named saviour gods.

But let us return to that which gave rise to this discourse of ours: namely, that the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, and indeed the Greeks too, first regarded as gods the sun and the moon and the earth and the stars and the other elements;

and at a later time they deified those who had done some good deed, or had shown valour in wars, or had introduced some form of agriculture, or had brought healing to bodies, and they built temples for them.

And Heracles too, as being noble and brave, the Greeks deified; and Asclepius, as having been the discoverer of the science of medicine, they proclaimed a god after he had died.

For both these men—Heracles and, besides them, Orpheus, who used the lyre and by his strains charmed the fish and compelled them to follow the harmony of the sound—filled out the roster of the Argonauts;

and that these men were one generation older than those of the Trojan War, we demonstrated in the preceding discourse.

For those who assigned this same title even to the venomous reptiles would scarcely have deprived their women of this honour.

And indeed Ganymede too, as the poets say,

And Helen too, after her notorious and manifold adultery, they separated from Menelaus and led up into heaven, as Euripides says.

So the Greeks deified not only those who had done some good, but also the most licentious men and women.

These things the Romans too, having learned from them, thought their own emperors worthy of deification after the end of their lives—and not only those who had reigned lawfully and had cared for justice, but also those who had directed their rule tyrannically, unjustly, and lawlessly.

This is the second form of deification that men devised; and the third was that of those who put their trust in the myths of the poets.

And Plato in the Timaeus enjoins men to believe these myths as well, saying:

"Concerning the other divinities, to declare and to know their generation is beyond us; but we must believe those who have spoken before, since they were, as they themselves claimed, offspring of gods, and surely knew their own ancestors clearly;

it is therefore impossible to disbelieve the children of gods, even though they speak without probable or necessary proofs; but since they profess to report things pertaining to their own household, we must, following the law, believe them." Then he brings forward Hesiod, and Chaos and Oceanus and Tethys and Uranus and Earth, and their children—Cronus, Rhea, Iapetus, and the rest.

And the philosopher does not blush, when he bids us believe those who recount such myths and introduce to us licentious gods, parricides, and slayers of children.

For Cronus cut off the genitals of his father Uranus and swallowed down the children born to him; and Zeus, having driven his father Cronus out of the kingdom and handed him over to Tartarus, showed himself a tyrant and exceedingly licentious;

for he made not only his sister, but also his mother and his daughter his wives, and besides these he had intercourse with countless other goddesses and women.

Yet nevertheless, although Plato clearly knew these things, he enjoined men to believe the poets—and that too although they speak without probable or necessary proofs—solely on account of the law.

And that this is true, he himself is witness, speaking thus in the Republic:

"First of all," said I, "the man who told the greatest falsehood about the greatest matters told it falsely and not truly—namely, how Uranus did the things which Hesiod says he did, and how Cronus in turn took vengeance upon him."

"And that these deeds and sufferings of Cronus at the hands of his son, even if they were true, ought not to be told so lightly to the foolish and the young, but should rather best be kept silent; and if there were some necessity to tell them, they should be heard only by a few under a vow of secrecy." And again, a little later, he said this also:

"For indeed," said he, "these stories are grievous, and not to be told, O Adeimantus, in our city;

nor should it be said to a young hearer that, in committing the most extreme wrongs, he would be doing nothing remarkable, nor again that, in chastising his wrongdoing father by every means, he would simply be doing the very things which the first and greatest of the gods did."

"Nor does it seem to me fitting at all," said I, "either for myself to say, or for anyone else, that gods war against gods, and plot against and fight one another;

for such things are neither true nor expedient;

if indeed we must have those who are to guard the city regard it as the most shameful thing to fall into enmity with one another lightly."

And to bring these lessons before the young, he added this also:

"The binding of Hera by her son, and the hurlings of Hephaestus by his father when he was about to defend his mother who was being beaten, and all the battles of the gods which Homer has composed—these are not to be admitted into the city, whether under allegory or without allegory." These things, I think, are plain even to those wholly uninitiated in discourse, that they are directly contrary to what he himself wrote in the Timaeus.

For there he commanded men, without dispute and beyond all controversy, to believe the poets—and that too although they speak without probable or necessary proofs;

but here he unreservedly held them up to ridicule, as having fabricated certain falsehoods and blasphemies.

And in this way he also allegorizes the names of the gods and attempts to throw a veil over the shamefulness of the myths.

And of such discourses the Cratylus is full;

for in that dialogue he named Cronus at one time "Koros" (the pure or satisfied), as being the pure reason of the mind, and at another time "Chronos" (time); and he called Rhea a flowing nature, and Hera the air.

For he who frequently makes use of the proper name of Hera, plainly means the air instead of Hera. And the moist element he called Poseidon, as that which binds and fetters the feet of those who walk and hinders them from advancing.

And the moon, so named from its brightness (selas), they called Artemis—as it were 'aerotemis'—since she travels through the air and cuts it.

It is for this reason that the Egyptians rear the Apis (I mean the bull), and the Mnevis they dedicate to the sun.

Thus, blushing with shame, some of the philosophers turned the myths of the poets into allegory.

But that mythology not even the Romans ever accepted.

For among the Romans it is not said that Uranus was castrated by his own children, nor that Cronus made away with his own offspring for fear of an attack from them, nor that Zeus overthrew the dominion of Cronus and shut up his own father in the prison of Tartarus. And he says that the other mythologies and rites of the Greeks were likewise rejected by the Romans.

This, we have said, is the third kind of god-making devised by the Greeks.

But there is yet a fourth kind, full of utter stupefaction and the most extreme derangement.

For what they call the passionate and irrational part of the soul, this they deify—the very thing which they elsewhere enjoin to be servant to reason.

And theft they call Hermes, and reason they call Athena;

and again, the crafts they call Hephaestus, since these make use of fire as their helper.

And they are not ashamed that, while denouncing licentiousness and punishing those who practise it, they yet again honour this same vice as a god; that while by law they punish fornicators and harlots, and put to death those who plunder the marriage-beds of others, and moreover impale and bludgeon murderers, they nevertheless proclaim the very causes of these sins—desire, anger, and drunkenness—to be heavenly gods, and assign to them divine worship; and while enacting all their laws on account of these passions, they yet command that these very passions be honoured by law; and while in other discourses they admire virtue, in these they drive it out as superfluous.

For if, according to their reasoning, desire is a god, then whoever does not yield to it is utterly godless;

and again likewise, if anger too is a god, then whoever masters these is an outright opponent of the gods.

We must therefore flee from virtue as being contrary to the gods, and welcome incontinence as having been named a god.

But these notions are more foolish and more harmful even than the myths of the poets;

and, as the proverb has it, in fleeing the smoke we have fallen into the very fire.

for such is the wandering deception of falsehood;

even if one escapes this path, he will fall into another that is harder still.

Such, then, is the fourth kind of god-making.

"As for me, I would shoot down Aphrodite if I could lay hold of her, because she has corrupted many of our fair and noble women." And love (eros) he called a disease of nature, to which these wretched spirits, being inferior, give the name of a god—calling the sickness divine.

For this reason he chose rather to go mad than to feel pleasure.

And that they were also at variance concerning the doctrine of allegory, anyone may clearly perceive who has read the writings of the philosophers.

For Plato named Hera the air;

but Plutarch of Chaeronea called the earth Hera, and Leto he identified with forgetfulness or with night, in which the mind receives a kind of oblivion.

And that they actually overturned one another's theologies, Plato makes clear in the Epinomis, speaking thus:

"It is necessary, it seems, that I first—since my predecessors made poor likenesses—should better represent theology and the generation of living beings according to the later account, taking it up afresh and coming round to pious discourses." Concerning men who have been made into gods, Plutarch, in his treatise On the Oracles That Have Ceased, speaks thus:

"For I learn that the Solymi, neighbours of the Lycians, honour Cronus above all others;

since, after he had slain their leaders—Arsalus, Aryus, and Tosobis—he fled and withdrew to some place or other (for this they cannot say); and so he himself came to be neglected, while they proclaimed Arsalus and his companions to be the 'harsh gods,' and the Lycians make their curses upon them both privately and publicly." And Porphyry, in his Letter to Anebo the Egyptian, says that the Egyptians worship a man in the village of Annabis, and sacrifice to him upon the altars, and then at the appointed season offer him his accustomed food.

But indeed the fourth deception did not suffice them; rather, they contrived a fifth as well, and deified the most utterly wicked demons; and having learned from them the sorceries of magic, they honoured them with rites and sacrifices.

And this Porphyry has made clear in his treatise On the Philosophy Derived from Oracles;

and I shall set down his very words:

"For it is above all the power that presides over these that is honoured by those who work evil through sorceries."

"For these evil spirits are full of every kind of phantasm, and are able to deceive by means of wonder-working and by contriving love-charms and erotic potions."

"For every hope of riches and of glory comes through these, and most of all, deception."

"For falsehood is proper to them;"

"for they wish to be gods;"

"and the power that presides over them seems to be the greatest god."

"These are they who delight in libation and the savour of burnt sacrifice, through which their bodily and spiritual nature is fattened." And it is fitting that I should at this point set beside the words of Porphyry the account of the Homeric gods;

for those gods too call the libation and the savour of sacrifice their proper portion.

Accordingly, it is plain that Porphyry names those whom the poet calls gods as wicked demons.

the poet of those, and this man of these, openly maintained that they delight in libation and the savour of burnt offering.

We must, however, inquire what power Porphyry says presides over the wicked demons—the power which, he asserts, falsely names itself the greatest god.

But indeed I need take no trouble for the inquiry;

for in that very treatise he also says this:

"We suspect that the wicked demons are not without reason placed under Sarapis—and we are persuaded not merely from the tokens, but because the propitiatory and apotropaic offerings made to them are directed to Pluto, as we showed in the first book."

"And this god is the same as Pluto, and for this reason especially is the ruler of demons." And again he has added the following:

"Perhaps these are they over whom Sarapis rules, and their token is the three-headed dog—that is, the wicked demon present in the three elements, water, earth, and air—which the god holds in subjection beneath his hand;

and Hecate too rules over them, as holding together according to the threefold division." These things were not written against the wicked demons by Moses the lawgiver, nor by Peter or Paul or John, the heralds of the truth, but by Porphyry, the adversary of the truth;

and he named Pluto and Hecate as rulers of the wicked demons, and declared that, lying, it names itself the greatest god.

And this wonder closely resembles the riddle of the noble Samson:

"Out of the eater came something to eat, and out of the strong came something sweet." For these very things were written against falsehood by the advocate of falsehood himself;

and the accuser of the truth was shown, against his will, to be an advocate of the truth.