Bodily substances too will utterly perish, or at least at the end of all things these bodies will be what is now aether and heaven, and whatever other more pure and refined body can be conceived. Since this is so, it is clear what he thinks about the resurrection. The sun too and the moon and the other stars are living beings; nay rather, just as we men, on account of certain sins, are surrounded by these bodies which are gross and heavy, so also the luminaries of heaven have received bodies of this or that kind, so that they shine more or less; and the demons, on account of greater offenses, are clothed with an airy body. Every creature, according to the Apostle, is subject to vanity and is to be set free unto the revelation of the sons of God.
And lest anyone think that what we say is our own, let us set down his very words: 'At the end and consummation of the world, when souls and rational creatures have been sent forth by the Lord as if from certain barriers and prisons, some of them advance more slowly because of their sluggishness, others fly with swift course because of their diligence. And since all have free will and of their own accord can receive either virtues or vices, those will be in a far worse condition than they now are; these will attain to a better state, because their diverse movements and varying wills will receive a diverse state on either side—that is, that both angels may become men or demons, and again from these that men or angels may be made.'
And when he had treated all things in varied language, asserting that the devil is not incapable of virtue and yet is not yet willing to receive virtue, at the end he argued in a most far-reaching discourse that an angel or a soul or indeed a demon—which he asserts to be of one nature but of diverse wills—may, for the greatness of its negligence and folly, become a beast of burden, and for the pain of its punishments and the burning of the fire may rather choose to be a brute animal and to dwell in the waters and waves, and to take on the body of this or that beast; so that not only the bodies of quadrupeds but also of fishes are to be feared by us. And at last, lest he be held guilty of the Pythagorean dogma, which asserts metempsychosis, after so unspeakable a disputation whereby he has wounded the reader's mind:
'These things,' he says, 'according to our judgment, are not dogmas but merely inquiries put forward, lest they should seem to have been left wholly unexamined.' In the second book, however, he asserts that there are innumerable worlds—not, as Epicurus holds, very many at one time and similar to each other, but that after the end of one world is the beginning of another, and that before this world of ours there was another world, and after this there will again be another, and after that another, and again others after others. And he doubts whether a future world will be so entirely alike to another world that they seem to differ in nothing, or whether indeed one world will never be wholly indistinguishable from and similar to another. And again a little after:
'If all things,' he says, 'as the very order of the argument compels, should live without a body, the whole bodily nature will be consumed and reduced to nothing—that nature which was once made out of nothing—and there will be a time when its use is again necessary.' And in what follows: 'But if, as has been shown by reason and by the authority of the Scriptures, this corruptible shall put on incorruption and this mortal shall put on immortality, death is swallowed up in victory, and perhaps every corporeal nature will be taken out of the way, in which alone death can operate.' And a little after: 'If these things are not contrary to the faith, perhaps we shall someday live without bodies.'
'But if he who is perfectly subject to Christ is understood to be without a body, while all are to be made subject to Christ, then we too shall be without bodies when we have been perfectly subjected to Him.' And in the same place: 'When all have been made subject to God, all shall lay aside their bodies, and then the whole nature of corporeal things will be dissolved into nothing—which, if necessity should a second time require it, will again come into being on account of the fall of rational creatures. For God has left the souls in a contest and struggle, that they may understand that they have obtained the full and complete victory not from their own strength but from the grace of God.'
'And therefore I think that, according to the variety of causes, diverse worlds come into being; and the errors of those who contend that the worlds are alike to one another are refuted.' And again: 'A threefold conjecture, then, concerning the end is suggested to us, of which the reader may inquire which is the true and better one. For either we shall live without a body, when, being subject to Christ, we shall be subjected to God, and God shall be all in all; or, just as the things subjected to Christ shall together with Christ Himself be subjected to God and be bound together into one covenant, so all substance will be reduced into the best quality and dissolved into aether, which is of a purer and simpler nature;
or else that sphere which we have above called akatalēptos (incomprehensible), and whatever is contained within its circle, will be dissolved into nothing; but that by which the antizōnē itself is held and girded shall be called the good earth, and likewise the other sphere which encompasses this very earth with its whirling and is called heaven shall be preserved as the dwelling-place of the saints.' When he says these things, does he not most manifestly follow the errors of the Gentiles and force the ravings of the philosophers upon Christian simplicity? And in the same book: 'It remains that God be invisible. But if He is invisible by nature, He will not be visible even to the Savior.' And in the passages lower down:
'No other soul which descends to a human body has expressed in itself the pure and genuine likeness of the prior sign, except that one of which the Savior speaks: No one takes my soul from me, but I lay it down of myself.' And in another place: 'Whence it must be treated with infinite caution, lest perhaps, when souls have obtained salvation and have come to the blessed life, they should cease to be souls. For just as the Lord and Savior came to seek and to save that which had perished, and that which was lost shall cease to be lost, so the soul which had perished, and for whose salvation the Lord came, when it has been made safe, will cease to be a soul.'
'This too must likewise be inquired: whether, just as what was lost was at one time not lost and there will be a time when it will not be lost, so also the soul was at one time not a soul, and there will be a time when it shall by no means continue to be a soul.' And after much treatment concerning the soul he brought in this: 'The nous, that is, the mind, by falling became a soul, and again the soul, instructed in the virtues, will become mind.' Which we can find also by examining the soul of Esau, that on account of ancient sins he was condemned to a worse life. And concerning the heavenly bodies it must be inquired that not at the time when the world was made did the soul of the sun—or by whatever name it ought to be called—begin to be, but before it entered that shining and burning body.
'Let us think likewise concerning the moon and the stars, that from preceding causes they were, though unwilling, compelled to be made subject to vanity, and that on account of the rewards of things to come they do not their own will but that of the Creator, by whom they were assigned to these offices.'
The fire of Gehenna also and the torments with which Holy Scripture threatens sinners he places not in punishments but in the conscience of sinners, when, by the power and might of God, all memory of offenses is set before our eyes, and, as if from certain seeds left behind in the soul, a whole crop of vices springs up; and whatever we had done in life, base or impious, all its picture is portrayed before our sight, and the mind, beholding its past pleasures, is punished by the burning of conscience and is pierced through by the goads of repentance. And again:
'Unless perhaps this gross and earthly body is to be called the gloom and darkness through which, when this world has been consummated (which must needs pass over into another world), it will again take the beginnings of being born.' In saying these things he plainly defends the metempsychosis of Pythagoras and Plato. And at the end of the second volume, disputing about our perfection, he brought in: 'And when we shall have advanced so far that we shall be by no means flesh and bodies, and perhaps not even souls, but a mind and understanding coming to perfection, darkened by no cloud of the passions, we shall behold rational and intelligible substances face to face.' In the third book also these vices are contained:
'But if we once admit that from preceding causes one vessel is created unto honor, another unto dishonor, why do we not have recourse to the secret of the soul and understand that it acted long ago, on account of which it was in the one loved, in the other held in hatred, before it supplanted in the body of Jacob and was held by the foot by its brother in Esau?' And again: 'But that some souls should be made unto honor, others unto dishonor, the merits of earlier causes preceded.' And in the same place:
'But according to us, from preceding merits, a vessel which had been fashioned unto honor, if it does not do work worthy of its name, will in another age become a vessel of dishonor; and again another vessel, which from earlier fault had received the name of dishonor, if in the present life it should be willing to be corrected, will in the new creation become a vessel sanctified and useful to the Lord, prepared unto every good work.' And immediately he adds:
'I judge that some men, beginning from small vices, can arrive at such great wickedness—if indeed they be unwilling to turn to better things and to amend their sins through repentance—that they even become contrary powers; and again, that some, from being enemies and contrary powers, over long ages so apply medicine to their wounds and bind up the sins that formerly flowed, that they pass over to the place of the best. We have often said that in the infinite and perpetual ages, in which the soul subsists and lives, some of them so collapse to worse things that they hold the lowest place of wickedness, and some so advance that from the lowest degree of wickedness they come to perfect and consummate virtue.'
By these statements he tries to show that men, that is, souls, can become demons, and again that demons can be brought back to angelic dignity. And in the same volume: 'But this too must be inquired: why the human soul is now moved by these, now by other powers to diverse things.' And he thinks that the merits of some preceded before they came into bodies, as in the case of John exulting in his mother's womb, when, at the voice of Mary's greeting, Elizabeth confesses herself unworthy of her conversation. And immediately he adds: 'And on the contrary, little children, though almost still nursing, are filled with evil spirits and are inspired to become diviners and soothsayers, so that even a Pythonic demon possesses some from tender age;
and that these have been abandoned by the providence of God, though they have done nothing such as to deserve to endure madness of this kind, is not the mark of Him who wills nothing to be done apart from God and all things to be governed by His justice.' And again concerning the world: 'It pleases us,' he says, 'that both before this world there was another world, and after this one there will be another. Do you wish to learn that after the corruption of this world another is to come? Hear Isaiah speaking: There shall be a new heaven and a new earth, which I make to abide in my sight. Do you wish to know that before the fabric of this world there were other worlds in the past? Listen to Ecclesiastes: What is that which has been? The very thing which shall be. And what is that which has been done? The very thing which shall be done.
And there is no new thing under the sun that one may speak of and say: Behold, this is new; for it has already been in the ages of old which were before us.' This testimony bears witness that worlds not only have been but shall be—not that they all come into being at once and together, but one after another. And immediately he adds: 'I judge that a divine dwelling-place and true rest are to be understood as among the powers above, in which the rational creatures dwelt and enjoyed the ancient blessedness before they descended to lower things and migrated from invisible to visible, and, falling to earth, had need of gross bodies.'
'Whence God the Creator made for them bodies suited to lowly places, and fashioned this visible world, and sent into the world ministers for the salvation and correction of those who had fallen; of whom some should obtain fixed places and obey the necessities of the world, while others should with sedulous mind carry out the offices enjoined upon them at each several time, which God the artificer knows. And of these the higher places of the world—the sun and the moon and the stars, which by the Apostle is called a creature—received. Which creature is made subject to vanity, in that it is encompassed by gross bodies and lies open to sight. And yet it was not made subject to vanity of its own will, but on account of the will of Him who subjected it in hope.' And again:
Others, however, serve as governors in particular places and times, which the sole Craftsman of the world knows; and these we believe to be His angels. And a little later: This order of things, and the whole world, God's providence governs, while some powers fall headlong from loftier regions, others little by little slip down to the earth; these descend by their own will, others are cast down against their will; these take up their ministries willingly, so as to stretch out a hand to those who are falling, while those are compelled unwillingly and persevere in the office they have received for so long or so short a time. And again: From this it follows that, owing to varied movements, varied worlds too are created; and after this one, which we inhabit, another world comes to be, far unlike it.
And no other, amid diverse chances and advancements, whether in the rewards of virtues or the punishments of vices, both in the present and in the future, and in all times both past and prior, is able to apportion merits and to draw all things back again to one single end, save only God the Founder of all, who knows the causes for which He permits some to enjoy their own will and to slip down little by little from higher things to the lowest, and for which He begins to visit others and, as though by an offered hand, gradually to draw them back to their former state and to set them in the heights. And when he had begun to dispute concerning the end, he brought in these words:
Since—as we have already often said—the beginning is again generated from the end, the question is asked whether even then there shall be bodies, or whether at some time one must live without bodies, when they shall have been reduced to nothing, and whether the life of incorporeal beings must be believed to be incorporeal, such as we know that of God to be. And there is no doubt that, if all bodies belong to this sensible world, which are called by the Apostle 'visible,' then the life of the incorporeal shall be incorporeal. And a little later: That also which is said by the same Apostle:
'All creation shall be freed from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God'—this we understand thus: that we call the first creation to be that of rational and incorporeal beings, which now serves corruption because it has been clothed with bodies; and wherever there are bodies, corruption at once follows; but afterwards it shall be freed from the bondage of corruption, when it shall have received the glory of the Son of God and God shall be all in all. And in the same place: But that we should believe the end of all things to be incorporeal, that prayer of the Saviour urges us, in which He says: 'That, as I and Thou are one, so these also may be one in us.'
For indeed we ought to know what God is, and what the Saviour shall be in the end, and how the likeness of the Father and the Son has been promised to the saints; so that, just as they are one in themselves, so these also may be one in them.
For either we must grant that the God of the universe is clothed with a body, and that, just as we are surrounded with flesh, so He is surrounded with some sort of matter, so that the likeness of God's life may in the end be made equal for the saints; or, if this is unseemly—especially among those who desire to perceive, even in the smallest part, the majesty of God, and to conjecture the glory of that unbegotten nature which surpasses all things—then we are forced to accept one of two things: either that we despair of the likeness of God, if we are always to have these same bodies; or, if the blessedness of a life the same as God's is promised to us, that we must live under the very same condition by which God lives.
From all these things it is proved what he holds concerning the resurrection, and that he affirms all bodies shall perish, so that we may exist without bodies, just as we existed before, before we were clothed with these gross bodies. And again, disputing about the varieties of worlds, and testifying that either demons shall come from angels, or angels—or even men—from demons, and on the contrary demons from men, and all things from all, he confirms his opinion with such a conclusion:
Nor is there any doubt that after certain intervals of time matter shall again subsist, and bodies shall come to be, and a diversity of worlds shall be constructed on account of the varied wills of rational creatures, which, after perfect blessedness, right up to the end of all things, having slipped little by little into lower things, have taken on so great a malice that they have been turned into their opposite, since they were unwilling to keep the beginning and to possess an incorrupt blessedness.
Nor should this be left unknown, that many rational creatures preserve the beginning right up to the second, third, and fourth world, and give no place in themselves to change; while others shall lose so little of their former state that they seem to have lost almost nothing; and some are to be hurled by a great ruin into the lowest abyss. And God, the dispenser of all things, knows how, in the fashioning of worlds, to make use of individuals according to their merit and the opportunities and causes by which the governings of the worlds are sustained and set in motion; so that he who has surpassed all in wickedness and has utterly leveled himself with the earth, in another world—which is afterwards to be fashioned—may become the devil, the beginning of the Lord's formation, that he may be mocked by the angels who have lost the virtue of their origin.
By these sayings, what else does he strive to show, except that the sinful men of this world can in another world become devils and demons, and that again the demons who now exist can in another world be brought forth as either angels or men? And after a very long disputation, in which he says that every corporeal nature is to be changed into spiritual and rarefied bodies, and that the whole substance is to be converted into one most pure body, purer than every splendour, and such as the human mind cannot now conceive, at the last he brought in: And God shall be all in all, so that the whole corporeal nature may be reduced into that substance which is better than all, namely into the divine, than which none is better.
In the fourth book also, which is the last of this work, he inserts these things that are to be condemned by the churches of Christ: And perhaps, just as in this world those who die by the separation of flesh and soul obtain, according to the difference of their works, diverse places among the lower regions, so those who die from the administration—so to speak—of the heavenly Jerusalem descend to the lower regions of our world, so that according to the quality of their merits they may possess diverse places on the earth. And again:
And since we have compared the souls that go from this world to the lower regions with those souls which, coming from the higher heaven to our dwellings, have in a certain manner died, it must be searched out by a prudent investigation whether we may say this very same thing also regarding the birth of individual souls: namely, that, just as the souls which are born on this earth of ours either come up from below to higher things, again desiring better things, and take on a human body, or descend from better places down to us—so also those places which are above in the firmament may be possessed by other souls, some of which advance from our seats to better things, others which have slipped down from the heavenly places as far as the firmament, yet have not committed so much sin as to be thrust down to the lower places which we inhabit.
By these sayings he endeavours to prove that the firmament, that is, the sky, is the lower region in comparison with the higher heaven; and that this earth which we inhabit is called the lower region by comparison with the firmament; and again, in comparison with the lower regions which are beneath us, we are called heaven—so that what is hell to some is heaven to others. And not content with this disputation, he says:
At the end of all things, when we are about to return to the heavenly Jerusalem, the powers of the adversaries shall rise up in war against the people of God, so that their strength may not be idle, but that they may be exercised for battles and have material for their might—a might which they could not attain unless they first, as brave men, withstood their adversaries, whom, in the book of Numbers, we read to have been overcome by reason and order and the skill of resisting.
And when he had said, according to the Apocalypse of John, that the everlasting gospel—that is, the one to be in the heavens—so far precedes this gospel of ours as Christ's preaching precedes the sacraments of the old law, at the last he brought in—a thing which it is sacrilege even to have thought—that for the salvation of the demons Christ is also to suffer in the air and in the supernal places. And although he did not say it, nevertheless what follows is understood: that just as He was made man for the sake of men, to set men free, so also for the salvation of demons He is to become that which they are, to whom He is to come to set them free. And lest perhaps we be thought to assert this from our own understanding, his own words must be set down:
For just as by the shadow of the gospel He fulfilled the shadow of the law, so, since every law is an example and a shadow of the heavenly ceremonies, it must be more diligently inquired whether we rightly understand that the heavenly law also and the ceremonies of the supernal worship do not possess fullness but stand in need of the truth of the gospel—that gospel which, in the Apocalypse of John, we read to be everlasting, namely by comparison with this gospel of ours, which is temporal and preached in a world and age that are to pass away.
And even if we should be willing to inquire into this right up to the passion of the Lord and Saviour—although it is bold and rash to seek His passion in heaven—nevertheless, if the spiritual forces of wickedness are in the heavenly places, and we do not blush to confess the cross of the Lord because of the destruction of those things which by His passion He destroyed, why should we fear to conjecture that something similar also takes place in the supernal regions at the consummation of the ages, so that the nations of all places may be saved by His passion? And again, blaspheming concerning the Son, he spoke thus: For if the Son knows the Father, it seems that, in the very fact that He knows the Father, He is able to comprehend Him—as if we were to say that the mind of the craftsman knows the measure of his art.
Nor is there doubt that, if the Father is in the Son, He is also comprehended by Him in whom He is. But if we call comprehension this—that one not only comprehends by perception and wisdom, but by strength and power holds all things—then the one who has known cannot be said to comprehend. We cannot say that the Son comprehends the Father. The Father, however, comprehends all things; and among all things is the Son also: therefore He comprehends the Son too. And that we might know the causes by which the Father comprehends the Son, while the Son cannot comprehend the Father, he adds these words: Let the curious reader inquire whether the Father is known by Himself in the same way as He is known by the Son, and, knowing that which is written:
'The Father who sent me is greater than I'—he will contend that this is true in all respects, so as to say that in knowledge too the Father is greater than the Son, inasmuch as He is known by Himself more perfectly and more purely than by the Son. He is here again convicted of holding transmigration of souls (metempsychosis) and the abolition of bodies:
But if anyone can show that an incorporeal and rational nature, when it has stripped itself of the body, lives by itself, and is in a worse condition when it was clothed with bodies, but in a better one when it lays them aside, then it is doubtful to none that bodies do not subsist in a primary way, but come to be at intervals on account of the varied movements of rational creatures—so that those who have need of them are clothed, and again, when by the depravation of their falls they have corrected themselves toward better things, they are dissolved into nothing, and by this ever-recurring succession are varied.
And lest we should think the impiety of what he had set forth to be too slight, at the end of the same volume he joins together all rational natures—that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, angels, powers, dominions, and the rest of the virtues, and man himself too, according to the dignity of the soul—as being of one substance. God, he says, perceives an intellectual and rational nature, and His only-begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit; the angels and powers and the rest of the virtues perceive it; the inner man perceives it, who was created after the image and likeness of God. From which it is concluded that God and these are in a certain manner of one substance.
He adds one single word, 'in a certain manner,' in order to escape the charge of so great a sacrilege; and he who in another place does not want the Son and the Holy Spirit to be of the Father's substance—lest he should seem to divide the divinity into parts—here bestows the nature of Almighty God upon angels and men. Since these things stand thus, what madness is it, when a few things concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit had been altered—things which displayed open blasphemy—to have brought forth the rest into public just as they were written, and to have praised them with impious voice, when assuredly both those and these have proceeded from one and the same fountain of impiety?
To write against everything is not for the present time; and all those who have written against Arius and Eunomius and Manichaeus and the diverse heresies must be believed to have replied to these impieties as well. Whoever, then, shall wish to read these books and, with shod feet, to journey to the land of promise, lest anywhere he be bitten by serpents or struck by the arching wound of the scorpion, let him first read this book and, before he enters the way, learn what things he must beware of. CXXV. TO RUSTICUS THE MONK. Nothing is happier than the Christian, to whom the kingdoms of heaven are promised; nothing more toilsome, since he is in daily peril of his life. Nothing is stronger than he who conquers the devil; nothing weaker than he who is overcome by the flesh. Of both these things there are very many examples.