The Instructor (Paedagogus) 1 part 3/15

But if anyone should concede to them that there is some food besides milk, then how shall they not be entangled in their own difficulties, having failed to consider nature itself? For food, when winter thickens the surrounding air and gives no outlet to the heat shut up within, is boiled and digested, and passes off into the veins, being turned into blood;

and these veins, finding no exhalation, become especially full, and grow tense and throb;

for which reason the nurses also then especially become full of milk.

It has been demonstrated by us a little earlier that in pregnant women the blood passes into milk by transformation, not by change of substance—just as, no doubt, the golden hairs of the aged change into grey.

But in summer, on the contrary, the body being more porous renders the food more easily dissipated, and the milk is least abundant, since neither is the blood;

for neither is all the food retained.

If, then, the processing of food is turned into blood, and the blood is turned into milk, the blood becomes the preparation for the milk, just as the seed of man and the kernel of the vine.

Therefore with milk—the Lord's food—we are nursed as soon as we are born; and as soon as we are born again we are honoured with the hope of rest, being given the good news of the Jerusalem above, in which it is written that milk and honey rain down; and by means of this material thing we are betrothed to that holy food.

For meats are done away with, as the Apostle himself says; but the nourishment that comes through milk leads up to the heavens, having reared us to be citizens of the heavens and fellow-dancers with the angels.

And since the Word is a gushing fountain of life and has been called a river of oil, fittingly Paul, speaking allegorically and naming him milk, adds, "I gave to drink";

for the Word is drunk—the food of truth.

Indeed, even drink is called liquid food.

And it is possible for the same thing to be in a way both food and drink, regarded under one aspect and another—just as cheese is a curdling of milk, or curdled milk.

For I am not concerned now with hunting after words, except that one and the same substance serves as both kinds of nourishment.

But indeed for the babes still at the breast, the milk alone suffices to be both drink and food.

"I," says the Lord, "have food to eat which you do not know."

"My food is to do the will of him who sent me."

Behold another food allegorized in a manner similar to milk: the will of God.

But he also called the completion of his own Passion a cup, by a figure of speech, because it had only to be drunk down and fulfilled.

Thus for Christ the food was the perfecting of the Father's will, but for us infants Christ himself is the food, for those who suck the Word of the heavens;

from this, to seek is called to search out the breast, because to the infants who seek the Word the Father's nipples of loving-kindness supply the milk.

Furthermore, the Word also confesses himself to be the bread of the heavens.

"For it was not Moses," he says, "who gave you the bread out of heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread out of heaven;"

"for the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world."

"And the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world."

Here the mystical meaning of the bread is to be noted, that he calls it flesh, and as it were raised up through fire—just as wheat rises up out of corruption and sowing—and indeed compacted together through fire into the joy of the Church, like bread that has been baked.

This will be made clear in the work On the Resurrection.

But since he said, "And the bread which I will give is my flesh," and flesh is watered by blood, and blood is allegorized as wine, know then that, just as bread broken into a mixed cup soaks up the wine but leaves behind the watery part, so also the flesh of the Lord, the bread of the heavens, drinks up the blood, nourishing unto incorruption those of men who are heavenly, but leaving behind for corruption only those fleshly desires.

Thus in many ways the Word is allegorized—as meat and flesh and food and bread and blood and milk—all of which the Lord is for the enjoyment of us who have believed in him.

Let no one, then, be astonished when we say that the blood of the Lord is allegorized as milk;

for is not wine also allegorized? "He who washes," Scripture says, "his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape;"

by this he means that in his own blood he will adorn the body of the Word, just as, no doubt, by his own Spirit he will nourish those who hunger after the Word.

And that the blood is the Word, the blood of righteous Abel that pleads with God bears witness;

for blood would never of itself send forth a voice, were not the blood understood as the Word;

for the righteous one of old is a type of the new righteous one, and the old blood that pleads pleads beforehand on behalf of the new blood.

And the blood—the Word—cries out to God, since it foretold a Word that was to suffer.

But indeed the flesh itself, and the blood in it, is watered and nourished by the milk, as if in grateful return.

And indeed the forming of the conceived embryo takes place when the seed is mingled with the pure residue left over from the monthly purgation;

for the power in this seed, clotting the nature of the blood—in the way that rennet curdles milk—works the substance of the formation;

for a well-tempered blend flourishes, but excess in either direction is dangerous, tending toward childlessness.

For even of the earth itself, when it is flooded by excessive rains the seed is washed away, and through drought it is dried up for lack of moisture; but the sap, being glutinous, holds the seed together and makes it grow.

Some suppose that the seed of the animal is in its substance a froth of the blood, which, agitated by the innate heat of the male during intercourse and fanned up, foams forth and is deposited in the seminal veins;

for from this Diogenes of Apollonia would have it that the acts of love are called "aphrodisia" (foamy things).

It is therefore evident from all these things that the substance of the human body is blood.

And indeed that which is in the womb is at first a milk-like coagulation of fluid; then this coagulation, being turned into blood, is made into flesh; and being congealed in the womb by the natural and warm breath, by which the embryo is moulded, it is brought to life.

But even after birth, the child is again nourished by this same blood;

for the flowing of milk is by nature blood, and the milk is the fountain of nourishment, by which also a woman who has truly given birth is shown to be a mother, and through which she gains the love-charm of affection.

For this reason, then, mystically, the Holy Spirit in the Apostle, making use of the Lord's voice, says, "I gave you milk to drink."

For if we were born again unto Christ, he who begot us anew nourishes us with his own milk, the Word;

for everything that has begotten naturally provides nourishment at once to that which is begotten.

And just as the new birth came about, analogously so also the nourishment became spiritual for man.

In every way, then, we are wholly made akin to Christ: into kinship through his blood, by which we are redeemed; into fellow-feeling through the upbringing that comes from the Word; and into incorruption through his guidance;

"and to have nourished, among mortals, often furnishes more love-charms than to have begotten children."

The same thing, therefore—both blood and milk—is a symbol of the Lord's Passion and of his teaching.

And that milk comes from blood by transformation is now indeed plain; nevertheless it is also possible to learn this from the flocks and the herds.

For these animals, in the season of the year which we call spring, when the surrounding air has become more moist, and when the grass and pastures are at that time succulent and full of sap, are first filled with blood, as is shown by the distension of the veins, the vessels swelling out.

And from the blood the milk flows forth more abundantly.

But in summer, on the contrary, the blood, being scorched and dried up by the heat, checks the change, and on this account they yield less when milked.

Indeed, milk has a most natural affinity with water, just as assuredly the spiritual washing has with spiritual nourishment.

Those, at any rate, who drink a little cold water along with the aforementioned milk are immediately benefited.

For its fellowship with water does not allow the milk to turn sour—not through any antipathy, but rather because it is ripened by sympathetic affinity.

And the fellowship which the Word has with baptism, that same union does milk have with water.

For of liquids this alone receives mixture with water and is employed for cleansing, just as baptism is for the remission of sins.

It is also fittingly mixed with honey, and this again for cleansing, together with sweet nourishment.

For the Word, mingled with loving-kindness, at once heals the passions and purges away sins.

And the saying 'speech sweeter than honey flowed' seems to me to have been spoken concerning the Word, who is honey.

And in many places prophecy exalts him above honey and the honeycomb.

Yes, indeed, milk is also mingled with sweet wine, and the mixture is beneficial, just as suffering is blended into incorruption.

For the milk is curdled by the wine and separated, and whatever in it is spurious is drained off.

In the same way the spiritual fellowship of faith with the passible man, draining off the carnal lusts, draws the man up into eternity, immortalizing him by communion with things divine.

But the many also use the fatty part of milk, which they indeed call butter, for the lamp—thereby clearly setting forth, under a most transparent figure, the abundant oil of the Word, since this alone justly nourishes and increases and gives light to the infants.

For on this account also the Scripture says concerning the Lord: 'He fed them with the produce of the fields; they sucked honey out of the rock, and oil out of the hard rock—butter of cattle and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs—and the things added to these he gave them.'

But the prophet too, foretelling the birth of the child, says: 'He shall eat butter and honey.'

And it occurs to me to marvel how certain persons dare to call themselves perfect and gnostics, thinking themselves above the Apostle, being puffed up and giving themselves airs—when Paul himself confesses concerning himself:

'Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect; but I press on, if I may also lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ.'

'Brethren, I do not yet reckon myself to have laid hold;'

'but one thing I do: forgetting the things behind, and stretching forward to the things ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward calling in Christ Jesus.'

And he counts himself perfect in this sense, that he has been delivered from his former life and lays hold of what is better—not as one perfect in knowledge, but as one reaching out toward the perfect.

Wherefore also he adds: 'As many of us therefore as are perfect, let us be thus minded'—clearly calling perfection this: to have renounced sins and to have been regenerated into faith in the only Perfect One, forgetting the sins that lie behind.

Who the Pedagogue is, and concerning his instruction.

Since the Father of all things is perfect—for in him is the Son, and in the Son the Father—it is time for us, following the order, to tell also who our Pedagogue is.

Now there are times when he calls himself a shepherd, and says, 'I am the Good Shepherd,' he being understood, by a metaphor drawn from shepherds who lead the sheep, as the one who leads the children—the Pedagogue, the tender shepherd of the infants.

For the infants are simple, being allegorized as sheep.

'And they shall become,' he says, 'all one flock and one shepherd.'

The Word, then, is fittingly a Pedagogue, who leads us children to salvation.

Most clearly, at any rate, the Word has spoken of himself through Hosea: 'But I am your instructor.'

And godliness is instruction—being the learning of the service of God, and a training unto the knowledge of truth, and a right guidance leading up to heaven.

And 'instruction' is called by many names.

For there is that of the one led and learning, and that of the one leading and teaching; and the guidance itself is a third thing; and the things taught—such as the commandments—are a fourth.

And the instruction that is according to God is a directing of truth unto the contemplation of God, and a delineation of holy deeds in eternal continuance.

As, then, the general directs the phalanx, taking forethought for the safety of his soldiers, and as the pilot steers the ship, choosing to save those who sail in it, so also the Pedagogue leads the children unto a saving manner of life, for the sake of our own care.

And in general, whatever we might with good reason ask of God to come to us, all these things will be ours if we obey the Pedagogue.

Just as, then, the pilot does not always yield to the winds, but sometimes turns the prow against them and resists whole gales, so the Pedagogue never yields to the winds that blow in this world, nor entrusts the child to them, that, like a skiff, it should be dashed against a brutish and licentious manner of life; but, borne aloft by the wind of truth alone, he holds most stoutly to the rudders of the child—I mean his ears—until he brings the child safely to harbor in the haven of the heavens.

For the so-called ancestral custom among men is almost on the point of passing away, but the divine guidance

is a possession that abides forever.

Now they say that Phoenix was the pedagogue of Achilles, and Adrastus of the children of Croesus, and Leonides of Alexander, and Nausithous of Philip.

But the one, Phoenix, was mad after women; and the other, Adrastus, was a fugitive; and Leonides did not take away the conceit of the Macedonian; nor did Nausithous cure the drunkenness of the man from Pella.

And the Thracian Zopyrus was not able to restrain the fornication of Alcibiades—rather, Zopyrus was a purchased slave; and Sicinnus, the pedagogue of the children of Themistocles, was a lazy household servant.

They say, indeed, that he invented dancing and the sikinnis dance.

Nor have those escaped our notice who among the Persians were called the royal pedagogues, whom—four in number, chosen for their excellence out of all the Persians—the kings of the Persians set over their own children.

But the children learn only to shoot the bow; and when they come to manhood, they consort with sisters and mothers and wedded wives, and with countless concubines as well, like boars trained for copulation.

But our Pedagogue is the holy God Jesus, the Word who is the guide of all humanity; the loving God himself is our Pedagogue.

And the Holy Spirit says somewhere in the song concerning him:

'He sustained the people in the wilderness, in the thirst of heat, in a waterless land;'

'he encircled him and instructed him and guarded him as the apple of his eye.'

'As an eagle covers its nest and yearns over its young, spreading out its wings he received them and took them up upon his back;'

'the Lord alone led them, and there was no strange god with them.'

—thus recounting his guidance.

And again, when he speaks in his own person, he confesses himself a Pedagogue:

'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.'

Who, then, has authority to lead both in and out? Is it not the Pedagogue? This is he who appeared to Abraham and said to him:

And in a most pedagogic manner he prepares him to be a faithful child, saying, 'Become blameless;'

'and I will establish my covenant between me and you and your seed.'

Here there is the fellowship of a presiding friendship.

And of Jacob most clearly he appears to be a Pedagogue.

'Behold, I am with you, keeping you in every way wherever you go;'

'and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not forsake you until I have done all that I have spoken to you.'

And with this one he is even said to wrestle.

'And Jacob was left alone,' it says, 'and a man wrestled with him'—the Pedagogue—'until morning.'

This was the man who led and bore him, who exercised with him and anointed Jacob the athlete against the evil one.

And that the Word was at once the trainer of Jacob and the Pedagogue of humanity, '[Jacob] asked him,' it says, 'and said to him:'

'Tell me what is your name.'

'Why is it that you ask my name?'—for he was reserving the new name for the new, infant people;

for as yet God the Lord was unnamed, not having yet become man.

Nevertheless, Jacob called the name of that place 'Form of God,'

'for I saw,' he says, 'God face to face, and my soul was saved.'

And the face of God is the Word, by whom God is made manifest and known.

Then also was he named Israel, when he saw God the Lord.

This is the God, the Word, the Pedagogue, who said to him again later, 'Do not be afraid to go down into Egypt.'

See how the Pedagogue follows the righteous man, and how he anoints the athlete, teaching him to trip up his adversary.

This very one, then, also teaches Moses how to act as a pedagogue, saying:

“If anyone has sinned before me, I will blot him out of my book.”

“But now go, and lead this people to the place of which I have spoken to you.”

Here he is a teacher of the work of a pedagogue.

For in truth the Lord was, through Moses, the Pedagogue of the people of old, but through himself the Leader of the new people, face to face.

“Behold,” he says to Moses, “my angel goes before you” — thus establishing the good-news-bringing and guiding power of the Word.

But guarding the Lord's prerogative, he says, “on the day when I visit, I will bring upon them their sin” — that is, “on the day when I sit as judge, I will render to them what is worthy of their sins.”

For the same one who is Pedagogue and Judge passes sentence on those who have disobeyed him; yet the Word who loves humankind does not pass over their sin in silence, but reproves it, so that they may repent.

For the Lord desires the repentance of the sinner rather than his death.

And as for us, having learned of others' sins by hearing, like children, let us abstain from like transgressions out of fear of the threat, lest we suffer the same.

What, then, was it that they sinned? “That in their wrath they slew men, and in their lust they hamstrung a bull.”

“Cursed be their wrath.”

Who, then, could discipline us more lovingly toward humankind than this one? Formerly, to the older people there was an older covenant, and the Law trained the people with fear, and the Word was an angel; but to the new and young people a new and fresh covenant has been given, the Word has been born, fear has been turned into love, and that mystical angel, Jesus, is brought to birth.

For this same Pedagogue then said, “You shall fear the Lord your God,” but to us he exhorted, “You shall love the Lord your God.”

Therefore he also commands us: “Cease from your works” — the old sins — “learn to do good.”

“Turn away from evil and do good.”

“You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.”

This is my new covenant, engraved in an old letter.

The newness of the Word, then, is not to be reproached. But also in Jeremiah the Lord says:

“Do not say, ‘I am too young’;

before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you.”

This prophecy can be hinting to us at those who were known to God for faith before the foundation of the world, but who are now infants because of God's purpose so recently fulfilled, inasmuch as we have been newly born unto calling and salvation.

Wherefore he adds, “I have appointed you a prophet to the nations,” saying that he must prophesy and that the appellation of ‘young’ should not seem to be a reproach to those called infants.

Now the Law is ancient grace, given through Moses by the Word.

“The Law was given through Moses” — not by Moses, but indeed by the Word, and through Moses his servant.

Therefore it also became temporary, but the eternal grace and the truth came through Jesus Christ.

Observe the very words of the Scripture:

In the case of the Law it says only “was given”; but the truth, being the grace of the Father, is the eternal work of the Word, and it is no longer said to be “given,” but to “come to be” through Jesus, apart from whom nothing came to be.

Indeed, then, Moses, prophetically yielding place to the perfect Pedagogue, the Word, foretells both his name and his pedagogy, and presents the Pedagogue to the people, entrusting to them commandments of obedience:

“God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers,” he says — alluding through Joshua the son of Nun to Jesus the Son of God.

For the name “Jesus,” proclaimed beforehand in the Law, was a foreshadowing of the Lord.

Accordingly he adds, counseling what is profitable for the people, saying, “You shall listen to him”; and he threatens the man who will not listen to this prophet.

Such a saving name does he prophesy to us — the name of the Pedagogue.

For this reason the prophecy invests him with a rod — a rod of instruction, of rule, of authority — so that those whom the persuasive Word does not heal, the threat may heal; those whom the threat does not heal, the rod may heal; and those whom the rod does not heal, the fire consumes.

“There shall come forth,” he says, “a rod out of the root of Jesse.”

Behold, too, the care, the wisdom, and the power of the Pedagogue:

“He shall not judge according to appearance,” he says, “nor reprove according to hearsay, but he shall judge the lowly with justice, and shall reprove the sinners of the earth.”

“The Lord, chastening, has chastened me, but he has not given me over to death.”

For to be chastened and pedagogically trained by the Lord is deliverance from death.

And through the same prophet he says:

“You shall shepherd them with a rod of iron.”

Moved by this, the Apostle too in his Epistle to the Corinthians says, “What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?” But also through another prophet he says, “The Lord shall send forth a rod of power out of Zion.”

“This pedagogical rod of yours and your staff, they have comforted me,” said yet another.

This is the power of the Pedagogue — august, comforting, saving.

Against those who hold that the righteous one is not good.

At this point certain people fasten upon us, asserting that the Lord is not good because of the rod and the threat and the fear; for they have, it seems, misheard the Scripture which somewhere says, “And he who fears the Lord turns to his own heart,” and they have utterly forgotten the greatest token of his love for humankind — that for our sake he became man.

And indeed, more intimately the prophet prays to him in these words: “Remember us, for we are dust” — that is, “Have compassion on us, for you yourself in your own experience tasted the weakness of the flesh.”

Out of a surpassing love for humankind he had compassion according to his nature.

For there was nothing that the Lord hates.

For surely he does not hate something and yet will it to be, the very thing he hates; nor does he will something not to be, and yet become the cause of its being, the thing he wills not to be; nor again does he not will something to be, and yet it is.

If, then, the Word hates anything, he wills it not to be;

but there is nothing for which God does not furnish the cause of its being;

nothing, therefore, is hated by God, nor indeed by the Word.

For both are one — God — since he said, “In the beginning the Word was in God, and the Word was God.”

But if he hates none of the things made by him, it remains that he loves it.

Much more, then, will he love the human being above all others — reasonably so, for he is the fairest of the things fashioned by him, and a creature that loves God.

God, therefore, is a lover of humankind; the Word, therefore, is a lover of humankind.

Now he who loves something wills to benefit it; and that which benefits would surely be in every way better than that which does not benefit; but than the good nothing is better; therefore the good benefits.

And God is acknowledged to be good; therefore God benefits.

But the good, in so far as it is good, does nothing else than benefit.

And surely he does not benefit the human being in some way without also caring for him, nor care for him without also taking thought for him.

For that which benefits according to deliberate purpose is better than that which does not benefit by purpose; but than God nothing is better.

And to benefit according to purpose is nothing other than to take thought for the human being;

therefore God cares for and takes thought for the human being.

And this he shows in deed, acting as a pedagogue toward him by the Word, who is the genuine fellow-laborer of God's love for humankind.

But to be good is not said to be good by virtue of possessing virtue; just as righteousness too is said to be good not by possessing virtue — for it is itself virtue — but by being good in itself and for its own sake.

But the good is also spoken of in another way as the beneficial — not in that it pleases, but in that it benefits.

And righteousness is all these things: both as virtue, and as choiceworthy for its own sake, it is good, and also as not being something that merely pleases;

for it does not judge so as to gratify, but is distributive of what is according to desert to each one; and the beneficial follows upon the advantageous.

In all respects, then, in which the good is examined, righteousness too is characterized, both partaking equally of the same attributes;

and things characterized by the same attributes are equal to one another and alike.

How then, they say, if the Lord is loving to humankind and good, does he become angry and punish? It is necessary, then, to treat of this also as briefly as possible.

For such a dispensation is in some way profitable toward the right upbringing of children, having the rank of a necessary aid.

And many of the passions are healed by punishment, by the imposition of sterner precepts, and indeed also through the teaching of certain doctrines.

Reproof is, as it were, a surgery upon the passions of the soul; and the passions are a falling away from the truth, which one must thoroughly examine and reprove, dividing them by incision.

Reproof is like a medicine that dissolves the calluses of the passions and purges the filth of life and its lewdness, and moreover smooths out the excess overgrowths of vanity, restoring a person to health and truth.

Admonition, then, is as it were a regimen for the sick soul, advising what ought to be taken in and forbidding what ought not.

And all these things tend toward salvation and everlasting health.

So too the general who imposes on wrongdoers the loss of property and bodily punishments penetrating to the very body, together with imprisonment and the utmost disgrace, and who sometimes even chastises certain men with death, has the good as his aim, governing for the admonition of those under his command.

By admonishing the passions of the soul, he leads men to the sacred concord of the commonwealth and brings about peace.

Just as, then, alongside the form of advice there lie the exhortatory and consolatory kinds of discourse, so too alongside praise there lie the reviling, the reproaching, and the commendatory.

This kind is the art of censure; but to censure is a token of goodwill, not of hatred.

For both reproach—both the friend and the one who is not—but the enemy reproaches with mockery, while the friend does so out of goodwill.

It is not, then, out of hatred that the Lord reviles men—men whom He could destroy on account of their own faults, yet for our sake He even suffered.

For being a good Pedagogue, He very skillfully insinuates blame through reviling, as with a lash rousing by His rebuke the sluggishness of the mind; and again, in turn, He undertakes to exhort the very same people.

For those whom praise did not exhort, censure provoked; and those whom censure did not call to salvation as though they were dead, rebuke raises up toward the truth.

For "stripes and instruction are at every season wisdom."