Letters 1 part 2/32

But you, O heads most divine and most beloved of all to me, guard yourselves against the shepherds of the Philistines, lest someone should secretly stop up your wells and muddy the purity of the knowledge concerning the faith.

For this is always their concern: not to teach the more guileless souls from the divine Scriptures, but to distort the truth by means of outward wisdom.

'Holy, but not eternal' — is not this plainly the mark of a Philistine, spitefully begrudging the sheep of our patriarch, that they should not drink of the pure water that springs up into eternal life, but should rather draw upon themselves the saying of the prophet: 'They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and hewn out for themselves broken cisterns that are not able to hold water' — when it is necessary instead to confess God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, as both the divine oracles themselves and those who have understood them more sublimely have taught? But to those who reproach us with tritheism let this be said: that we confess one God, not in number, but in nature.

For everything that is called one in number is not truly one, nor is it simple in nature;

but God is confessed by all to be simple and uncompounded.

Therefore God is not one in number.

We say that the world is one in number, but not one in nature, nor is it in any way simple.

For we divide it into the elements of which it is composed: fire and water and air and earth.

Again, man is called one in number.

For we often say 'one man.'

But he is not simple, being composed of body and soul.

Likewise we will also say that an angel is one in number, but not one in nature, nor simple;

for we conceive the hypostasis of the angel as substance together with sanctification.

If, then, everything that is one in number is not one in nature, and that which is one in nature and simple is not one in number, and we say that God is one in nature, how do they introduce number upon us, when we altogether banish it from that blessed and intelligible nature? For number belongs to quantity, and quantity is bound up with corporeal nature;

for number belongs to corporeal nature.

But we have believed our Lord to be the creator of bodies.

He, therefore, who confesses the Son of God or the Holy Spirit to be subject to number, or a creature, unwittingly introduces a material and circumscribed nature.

By 'circumscribed' I mean not only that which is contained by place, but also that which he who was about to bring it from non-being into being had already comprehended in his foreknowledge — that which it is also possible to comprehend by knowledge.

Every holy being, therefore, which has a circumscribed nature, also has holiness that is acquired, and is not incapable of receiving evil.

But the Son and the Holy Spirit are the fountain of sanctification, by which all rational creation is sanctified according to the measure of its virtue.

And yet we, according to the true doctrine, call the Son neither like nor unlike the Father.

For each of these is equally impossible to say.

For 'like' and 'unlike' are predicated according to qualities, but the divine is free of quality.

But confessing the sameness of nature, we also accept the term 'consubstantial,' and we avoid composition, since God the Father, who is God according to essence, has begotten God the Son, who is likewise God according to essence.

For from this the term 'consubstantial' is demonstrated.

For he who is God according to essence is consubstantial with him who is God according to essence — since even man is called 'god,' as in, 'I said, you are gods.'

And the demon too is called 'god,' as in, 'the gods of the nations are demons.'

But some are so named by grace, others falsely; whereas God alone is God according to essence.

But when I say 'alone,' I mean the holy and uncreated essence of God.

For 'alone' is said both of a particular individual and, simply, of a nature universally.

Of a particular individual, for example — take Paul: that he alone was caught up to the third heaven and heard ineffable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

Man — his days are as grass.

For here it signifies not some particular man, but human nature universally.

For every man is temporal and mortal.

In this way we also understand those sayings spoken of the divine nature: 'Who alone has immortality,' and 'To the only wise God,' and 'No one is good but God alone.'

For here 'one' signifies the same as 'alone.'

And again: 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.'

And: 'There is no God besides me.'

For the words "one" and "only," said of God in Scripture, are not spoken in contradistinction to the Son or the Holy Spirit, but in contrast to those who are not gods, yet are falsely so named.

As in, "The Lord alone led them, and there was no foreign god with them."

And, "The children of Israel put away the Baals and the groves of Ashtaroth, and served the Lord only."

As in, "For though there be that are called gods and lords many, yet to us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things."

But here we are inquiring why, having said "one God," he was not content with that expression (for we have said that "only" and "one," said of God, signify [His] nature), but also added "Father," and made mention of "Christ."

I suspect, then, that Paul, the chosen vessel, did not think it enough merely to proclaim that the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God — which he made clear through the expression "one God" — unless he also, by adding "Father," indicated the One from whom are all things, and by the mention of "Lord" signified the Word through whom are all things, and again, by further including "Jesus Christ," declared the incarnation, set forth the passion, and made manifest the resurrection.

For the name "Jesus Christ" displays to us these very ideas.

For it was his purpose that, having completed the [saving] dispensation — after the resurrection from the dead and the ascension into the heavens — he should permit them to proclaim him as Jesus the Christ.

Such also is the meaning of, "That they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent," and of, "Believe in God, and believe also in me" — the Holy Spirit everywhere safeguarding our understanding, so that in advancing toward the one we might not fall away from the other, and that, attending to the theology, we might not despise the dispensation, lest impiety befall us through what is lacking.

As for the words of divine Scripture which our adversaries take up and twist to their own understanding, putting them forward to us for the diminishing of the glory of the Only-begotten, let us examine them thus, unfolding their meaning as far as we are able.

And let the first to be set before us be, "I live because of the Father."

For this is one of the arrows shot up to heaven by those who use it impiously.

Here, I think, the saying does not name the eternal life [that the Son has of himself] (for whatever lives because of another cannot itself be life-in-itself, just as that which is warmed by another cannot itself be heat-in-itself —

but our Lord has said:

"I am the life"), but rather this life lived in the flesh and come to be within this present time, which he lived because of the Father.

For it was by his own will that he came to dwell in the life of men, and he did not say:

"I lived because of the Father," but rather, "I live because of the Father," clearly indicating the present time.

And that this is what is signified, we shall know from what follows.

And, "He who eats me," he says, "shall live because of me."

For we eat his flesh and drink his blood, becoming partakers, through the incarnation and the sense-perceptible life, of the Word and of Wisdom.

For by "flesh" and "blood" he named his whole mystical sojourn among us, and indicated the teaching composed of the practical, the natural, and the theological, by which the soul is nourished and is meanwhile prepared for the contemplation of the things that are.

And this, perhaps, is what is signified by the saying:

"My Father is greater than I."

For this saying too is used by ungrateful creatures, the offspring of the evil one.

But I believe that this very expression also declares that the Son is consubstantial with the Father.

For I know that comparisons, properly speaking, are made between things of the same nature —

as one man is called greater than another, one man more righteous than another, one bird swifter than another.

If, then, comparisons are made between things of the same kind, and the Father is said, by way of comparison, to be greater than the Son, then the Son is consubstantial with the Father.

But there is also another meaning laid up within this saying.

For what is astonishing if, being the Word and having become flesh, he confessed the Father to be greater than himself, seeing that he also appeared inferior in glory to the angels, and inferior even to men in outward form? For it is said, "You made him a little lower than the angels."

But he who was made "a little lower than the angels" —

And, "We saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness, but his form was lacking beyond all the sons of men."

He endured all these things because of his great love for mankind toward his own creation, that he might save the lost sheep and gather in the one that was saved, and that he might bring back, whole again, to his own homeland the man who had gone down from Jerusalem to Jericho and on that account fallen among thieves.

Just as if someone were to blame the physician because, bending down over the sufferings, he shares in the foul odor, in order that he may heal those who suffer.

And yet nothing escapes the notice of true Wisdom;

for all things came into being through it.

Nor indeed has any man ever been ignorant of what he himself has made.

But he arranges this for the sake of your weakness, so that those who have sinned may not fall into despair, as though no time remained for repentance because the appointed limit is short; nor, again, that those who have long been warring against the opposing power might desert their post because of the length of time.

He therefore provides for both, by means of this feigned ignorance:

for the one, shortening the time on account of the good fight; for the other, storing up a season for repentance on account of his sins.

And yet, though in the Gospels he numbered himself among those who do not know, on account of the weakness of the many, as I have said, in the Acts of the Apostles, speaking privately to them as to those who were mature, he says, excepting himself:

"It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority."

Let this, then, be said according to the first, more elementary, approach, in a somewhat coarser [i.e., more literal] manner.

But now we must examine the meaning of the saying in a more elevated way, and knock at the door of knowledge, in the hope that I might be able to rouse the master of the house who gives spiritual bread to those who ask him — since it is friends and brothers whom we are eager to feast.

The holy disciples of our Savior, having attained, as far as is possible for men, to a contemplation beyond [ordinary] vision, and having been purified by the Word, seek after the end and long to know the final blessedness — the very thing which our Lord declared even the angels, and himself, do not know: calling "day" the exact comprehension of the concepts of God, and "hour" the contemplation of the unity and oneness [of the Godhead], the knowledge of which he assigned to the Father alone.

I suspect, then, that it is said that God knows about himself that which he is, and does not know that which he is not.

For God, who created us, is not injustice and wickedness.

If, then, it is said that God knows about himself that which he is, and does not know that which he is not; and if our Lord, according to the concept of the incarnation and the more elementary teaching, is not the final object of desire — then our Savior does not, in this sense, know the end and the final blessedness.

"But not even the angels," he says, "know" — that is, neither the contemplation that is in them, nor the principles of their ministries, are the final object of desire.

For even their knowledge is coarse in comparison with "face to face."

For when we no longer perceive God as in mirrors, nor through things foreign to him, but come to him himself as the only and the one, then we shall also know the final end.

For they say that the kingdom of Christ is all knowledge that is bound up with matter, while the kingdom of God and the Father is the immaterial [knowledge] and, as one might say, the contemplation of the very Godhead itself.

But our Lord himself is also the end and the final blessedness, according to the concept of the Word.

For what does he say in the Gospel? "And I will raise him up on the last day" — calling "resurrection" the transition from material knowledge to immaterial contemplation, and calling this knowledge, after which there is no other, the "last day."

For then our mind rises up and is roused to a blessed height, whenever it beholds the unity and oneness of the Word.

But since our mind, having grown coarse, has become bound to dust and is mingled with clay, and is unable to gaze steadily upon bare contemplation, it is led by means of the ornaments akin to its own body, and so comes to understand the works of the Creator, coming to know these for the time being from their effects — so that, growing little by little in this way, it may one day be strong enough to approach the very Godhead itself unveiled.

And it is according to this same concept, I think, that both "My Father is greater than I" and "It is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father" were spoken.

For this is also what is meant by Christ's delivering up the kingdom to God the Father — being the firstfruits and not the end — according to the more elementary teaching, as I said, which is to be understood with reference to us, and not with reference to the Son himself.

That these things are indeed so may be seen again from this: when the disciples asked, in the Acts of the Apostles, "Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" he says:

"It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority."

That is to say, the knowledge of such a kingdom does not belong to those who are still bound to flesh and blood.

For the Father has laid up this contemplation in his own authority — calling by "authority" those who are under his authority, and by "his own" those who do not partake of ignorance of the lower things.

But do not understand "times" and "seasons" as sensible ones, but as certain intervals of knowledge brought about by the intelligible Sun.

For it is Jesus who prayed:

For God, being one, coming to be in each, unites all, and number is destroyed by the advent of the One.

And thus I have applied myself to this saying, according to the second attempt.

But if anyone should speak better, or reverently correct what is ours, let him both speak and correct it, and the Lord will reward him on our behalf.

For no envy lodges among us, since it was not for the sake of contentiousness or vainglory that we undertook this examination of the sayings, but for the benefit of the brethren — so that these earthen vessels which hold the treasure of God might not seem to be deceived by men of stony heart and uncircumcised, armed with foolish wisdom.

Again, through wise Solomon, in the Proverbs, it is said that he is "created":

"For the Lord," it says, "created me."

And he is called 'the beginning of the ways' of the gospel that lead us to the kingdom of heaven — not a creature according to essence, but one who has become 'the way' according to the economy.

For 'to have become' and 'to have been created' signify the same thing.

For just as he became 'the way,' and 'the door,' and 'shepherd,' and 'messenger,' and 'lamb,' and again 'high priest' and 'apostle,' each of these names being applied according to a different sense.

What, then, would the heretic say again concerning the God who is called 'unsubjected,' and who 'became sin' for our sake? For it is written:

"When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself also will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him."

Do you not fear, O man, that God is called 'unsubjected' on your account? For he makes your subjection his own, and when you resist virtue, he calls himself 'unsubjected.'

So too he once said that he himself was the one being persecuted,

when he wished to bind those who belonged to Christ.

And again, when one of the brethren was naked, he calls himself naked.

"For I was naked," he says, "and you clothed me."

And when another was in prison, he said that he himself was the one confined.

For he himself took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.

And insubordination too is one of our infirmities, and this also he bore.

But the enemies of God also seize upon the saying, "The Son can do nothing of himself," to the ruin of those who hear it.

But to me this very saying declares most of all that the Son is of the same nature as the Father.

For if every rational creature, being self-determining and having an equal inclination toward the worse and the better, can do something of itself, whereas the Son cannot do anything of himself, then the Son is not a creature.

And if he is not a creature, he is consubstantial with the Father.

And again, none of the creatures can do all that it wills.

But the Son, in heaven and on earth, has done all that he willed.

And again, all created things are either composed of contraries or are receptive of contraries.

But the Son is righteousness itself, and is immaterial.

And if this is not so of him, he is consubstantial with the Father.

Let this examination of the sayings that have been set forth, then, according to our ability, be sufficient for us.

Let us now proceed at last, with our argument, against those who set themselves against the Holy Spirit, casting down every proud height of thought that raises itself up against the knowledge of God.

You say that the Holy Spirit is a creature.

But every creature is a slave of the one who created it.

For, it says, "all things are your servants."

And if he is a slave, then he possesses his holiness as something acquired;

and whatever possesses holiness as something acquired is not incapable of receiving evil;

but the Holy Spirit, being holy in essence, is called the fountain of sanctification;

therefore the Holy Spirit is not a creature.

And if he is not a creature, he is consubstantial with God.

Tell me, how can you call him a slave, who through baptism sets you free from slavery? For, it says, "the law of the Spirit of life set you free from the law of sin."

But neither will you ever dare to call his essence mutable, looking to the nature of the opposing power, which, like lightning, fell from heaven and fell away from true life, because it had holiness as an acquired attribute and change followed upon its evil counsel.

Therefore, having fallen from the unity and cast away his angelic dignity, he was named 'devil' from his own conduct, his former blessed state having been extinguished, while this opposing power was kindled within him.

Furthermore, if one calls the Holy Spirit a creature, he thereby introduces a nature that is bounded.

How then will the sayings stand, "The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world," and, "Where shall I go from your Spirit?" But it seems he does not even confess the Spirit to be simple in nature.

For he calls him 'one in number.'

But whatever is one in number is not simple, as I have said.

And if the Holy Spirit is not simple, he is composed of essence and sanctification;

and who is so senseless as to say that the Holy Spirit is composite and not simple, and yet, by the very principle of simplicity, consubstantial with the Father and the Son? But if we must go further in argument and contemplate the greater things, let us above all consider the divine power of the Holy Spirit from the following.

We have found three 'creations' named in Scripture:

the first, the bringing forth from non-being into being; the second, the transformation from worse to better; and the third, the resurrection of the dead.

In these you will find the Holy Spirit to be a fellow-worker with the Father and the Son.

Again, a man is created through baptism.

For "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation."

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

You see here too the Holy Spirit present together with the Father and the Son.

And what would you say concerning the resurrection of the dead, when we shall fail and return to our dust? For we are earth, and to the earth we shall depart; and he will send forth the Holy Spirit, and he will create us, and renew the face of the earth.

Let us listen again to him who was caught up to the third heaven.

What does he say? That "you are a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you."

And if we are a temple of the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit is God.

Scripture also speaks of "Solomon's temple," but in the sense that he was the one who built it.

But if it is in this sense that we are temples of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is God —

for he who has constructed all things is God.

But if it is in the sense of one who is worshiped and dwells in us, we shall confess him to be God.

For "you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve."

But if they should refuse the name 'God,' let them learn what this name signifies.

For he is named 'God' (Theos) either from 'having set/established all things' or from 'beholding.'

If, then, 'God' is said from having established or from beholding all things, and the Spirit knows all the things of God, just as the spirit within us knows what is our own, then the Holy Spirit is God.

And again, if the sword of the Spirit is the word of God, then the Holy Spirit is God.

For the sword belongs to him whose word it is also called.

And if he is called the right hand of the Father...

Concerning the adorable and holy Trinity, then, let this much be said by us for the present.

For it is not possible now to examine the discourse concerning it more broadly.

But you, having received seeds from our humility, cultivate for yourselves a ripe ear of grain, since, as you know, we too shall be required to render interest on such things.

And I believe in God that you will bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold, because of the purity of your life.

For "blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." And do not, brethren, suppose the kingdom of heaven to be anything other than the true understanding of the things that are, which the divine Scriptures also call blessedness.

For if "the kingdom of heaven is within you," and nothing pertains to the inner man except that in which contemplation consists, then the kingdom of heaven would be contemplation.

For the things whose shadows we now behold as in a mirror, once we have been freed from this earthy body and have put on the incorruptible and the immortal, we shall then behold their archetypes.

But we shall see him, if indeed we steer our own life aright and take forethought for right faith, without which no one shall see the Lord.

For, it says, wisdom will not enter into a soul that devises evil, nor dwell in a body enslaved to sins.

And let no one interject, saying, "While ignorant of what lies at your feet, you philosophize to us about the incorporeal and wholly immaterial substance."

For indeed I judge it absurd that the senses should be allowed to be filled unhindered with their own proper materials, while the mind alone should be barred from its proper activity.

For as sense-perception apprehends things perceptible, so the mind apprehends things intelligible.

At the same time this too must be said, that God who created us has made the natural criteria of judgment need no teaching.

For no one teaches the eyes to perceive colors or shapes, nor the hearing sounds and voices, nor the sense of smell fragrant and foul vapors, nor the taste flavors and juices, nor the touch soft and hard things, or hot and cold.

Nor could anyone teach the mind to apply itself to things intelligible.

...easily fulfill their own proper activity, so also the mind, bound to the flesh and filled with the images that arise from it, has need of faith and right conduct, which make its feet like the feet of a deer and set it upon the heights.

This very thing wise Solomon also enjoins: at one time he sets before us the unashamed worker, the ant, and through it outlines for us the path of practical virtue; at another time he hints, through the wax-fashioned instrument of the wise bee, at the contemplation of nature, in which the teaching concerning the Holy Trinity is also blended, if indeed the Creator is analogously contemplated from the beauty of created things.

But having given thanks to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, let us put an end to this letter, since "every measure is best," as the proverb says.

TO MAXIMUS THE PHILOSOPHER. Words are indeed images of souls.

So we came to know you through your letter, as much, they say, as one knows the lion from its claws, and we were delighted to find you not indifferent to the first and greatest of goods, namely, love toward God and toward one's neighbor.

And we take, as a sign of the one, your graciousness toward us, and, as a sign of the other, your zeal concerning knowledge.

But that the whole consists in these two commandments is known to every disciple of Christ.

However, the books are not at hand, and therefore we have not sent them.

We do not admire everything about the man;

but there are some things which we altogether reject.

For he is almost, as far as we know, the first to have furnished men with the seeds of this impiety now so widely bruited about—I mean that of the Anomoeans.

The cause, I think, is not wickedness of intent, but his excessive desire to oppose Sabellius.

So I am accustomed to compare him to a gardener straightening the crookedness of a young plant, who then, through the excess of his counter-pull, misses the mean and drags the sapling over to the opposite side.

We have found that something of this sort happened also in the case of this man.

For in violently opposing the impiety of the Libyan, he was carried, unaware to himself, by excessive ambition into the opposite evil.

For whom it would have sufficed merely to show that Father and Son are not identical in substrate, and thereby to hold the victory over the blasphemer; but he, in order to prevail quite clearly and with something to spare, posits not only otherness of hypostases, but also a difference of substance, a diminution of power, and a variation of glory.

So that it came about from this that he exchanged one evil for another, and missed the rectitude of true doctrine.

For this reason he is also inconsistent in his writings, now rejecting the term "homoousios," because of the man who misused it against him to deny the hypostases, now admitting it in the passages where he defends himself against his namesake.

In addition to this, concerning the Spirit he has also let fall statements least befitting a spiritual man, banishing it from the worshiped Godhead and numbering it somewhere below among created and ministering nature.

As for myself, if I must state my own opinion, the term "like in substance," if it has "without variation" attached to it, I accept the expression as tending to the same thing as "homoousios," according, of course, to the sound sense of "homoousios."

This is also what those at Nicaea, having understood it, and having addressed the Only-begotten as "Light from Light" and "true God from true God" and such things, consequently added "homoousios."

For it is never possible to conceive any variation of light in relation to light, nor of truth in relation to truth, nor of the substance of the Only-begotten in relation to that of the Father.

If, then, anyone understands it in the way I have said, I admit the expression.

...as diminishing the glory of the Only-begotten.

For indeed we are also accustomed often to apply the term "like" to faint resemblances that fall far short of their archetypes.

Since, then, I think that "homoousios" is less liable to be maliciously misused, I myself likewise set it down as the term to use.

For as for us, on account of our infirmity, we are, well nigh, always held fast in the same place, like plants, and at the same time we count it among the chief of blessings to have lived unnoticed.

But you are strong, as they say, and having made yourself a citizen of the inhabited world, you would be right to come here too, as to a part of your own domain.

For even if peoples and cities are fitting for you men of action, in which you display your virtuous deeds, yet for contemplation and the activity of the mind, through which we are joined to God, quiet retirement is a good helper;

which we cultivate abundantly and without stint here at the edge of the world, together, I may say, with God himself who has granted it to us.

But if it is altogether necessary to court the powerful and to look down upon us who lie in a humble state, then write otherwise, and in this way make your letters more agreeable.