Refutatio et Eversio 1 part 19/21

Where, then, did he command you—having come upon the earth and truly appeared as man while also being God—not to make a likeness of him according to his humanity, or command that those who piously and in a manner befitting God do so and venerate it be excluded, by written legislation? If, then, none of these things was set forth as an ordinance, the more pious practice is known to prevail in the church of God, one held fast for many ages past.

Then where has it been ordained for you to dig up divine altars and to tear down sacred precincts, and to consign to fire and display as reduced to ashes the precious vessels prepared for the service of the divine mysteries—all of which the faith of Christians toward God, and God-inspired longing, and zeal for holy and sacred things have provided?

These things are not God's ordinance—that divine things be destroyed and perish.

But hear what is worth your hearing:

This ordinance belongs to the evil spirit that dwells in you and speaks through you.

But for us who have received the divine and saving proclamation, an ordinance far better and stronger than any command whatsoever is the unwavering faith toward him who is proclaimed, and right confession, and true love, and divine longing, and innate desire, and fervent zeal—belonging to those who, having recognized the grace, desire to make known, also through this writing, the great and inexpressible benefaction of him who has saved us.

This is fitting, since we are rational beings and have been entrusted to make the choice of the better from God, for this too belongs to faith and to sincere and perfect love;

for it is necessary also, moved by gratitude, to contribute of ourselves what is fitting as a symbol of faith and longing.

Where, then, we have been commanded to make and venerate the Savior's cross and the other holy things, there too we make and venerate the symbols of his saving dispensation—where you have neither believed, nor do you tolerate the proclaiming of the benefaction of him who suffered for you, you who are unworthy to venerate it.

What excess of folly and wickedness, then, does he leave untried, in charging with contempt of God the one who reverently and faithfully honors divine things? But if you also seek a command, learn that the deed is far stronger and more trustworthy than the word, and that for someone himself to do a thing is more praiseworthy than to command another to do it.

If, then, you have ever heard an evangelist writing that he composed an account concerning all the things that Jesus began both to do and to teach, be persuaded by the things truly done and even now still preserved, and confessed and honored among Christians—provided you are not altogether corrupted in hearing, nor have your intelligible and sensible eyes been veiled by unbelief—believe how Christ himself, our God, while still going about among men upon the earth, having imprinted upon a bright linen cloth his all-venerable and supra-mundane likeness, sent it to him who had asked in faith—that very thing which is called the awesome image, the depiction not fashioned by human hand.

And the fact that this undertaking is ancient and apostolic, and bears the seal of the fathers, and is therefore held in reverence among Christians and is confessed and remains honored, makes all the more evident the absurdities perpetrated against it by our adversaries.

It remains, then, consistently to turn also to what follows:

in which this empty teacher enjoins, laying down the following:

"One must, therefore, venerate him, while he is living, as he said, 'in spirit and in truth.'"

His argument now proceeds concerning those things said to be venerated as something other than God;

but what else could this be than a creature? For there is nothing intermediate between God and creature.

What, then, do those who have received this empty teaching say, honoring it as though it had come from God? What, then, was it that they venerated, who formerly were sick with ignorance of God and altogether lacking in reason as we understand it? A creature, no doubt, they will say in every case.

And how will they not be caught both deceiving and being deceived, sparing themselves—in what was said above—from calling the objects venerated among them "idols," even though they are reckoned to officiate among the priests of God, and to uphold divine law, and to be entrusted with the mysteries of God—then, having given heed to the present teaching, they who have but just now emerged from idols and been delivered from Hellenic religion and superstitious error, since they are now catechized to venerate the living God in spirit and truth? If indeed they also need baptism, as having but newly received the faith, it follows that whatever else is fitting for those being illuminated and newly guided toward piety should apply to them; but as for leaping upon priestly thrones and laying hold of sacred ministrations, this would be the very last thing that should be permitted them.

For how will they have the courage to serve God as priests, they who but recently were snatched away from altars and from the reek of sacrifice? For it would be fitting for them to be downcast and to lament over the times previously squandered in their former impiety and unbelief, and to call upon God to be merciful concerning their past sins during the times of ignorance, and to choose for themselves helpers and fellow-workers in this, and to be in need of the more excellent teaching that guides toward the fear of God and points out the way of salvation.

But they all at once permit themselves ordinations and enroll themselves among the priests of God;

they even dare to gather together in councils and to proclaim themselves teachers;

and indeed they preside with a haughty and solemn air, and raise their eyebrows, and lord it over Christians who from their earliest infancy have been dedicated to God, and who from infancy have been initiated into our divine wisdom, and who have been trained and brought up in the customs of Christians;

but they teach not faith but unbelief, not reverence concerning divine things but shamelessness, not to build up but to overthrow and tear down;

they proclaim not peace but a sword, and hatred instead of love;

and they have stirred up son against father, and father against child, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law, and have set brother at war with brother and neighbor with neighbor; they have thrown house against house and field against field into confusion—not in the manner of the gospel but in the manner of brigands—not that they might make a believer out of an unbeliever, but that they might call believers away into unbelief.

From this beginning arose the commotion that assailed the common lot of mankind, and the storm of persecutions, and the clouds of torments;

for they have become the cause of every wickedness and ruin of both souls and bodies, having devoted themselves to their innovations, and having cast the fear of God from before their eyes, and having forgotten the customs handed down and observed among Christians, since every canonical discipline and good order has been trampled underfoot by them and scattered.

Are these, then, the practices of those who venerate the living God in spirit and truth? Are these the offshoots of right faith and the fruits of pious initiation? Is this how Christ came proclaiming upon earth? Is this what the gospels teach? Are these the doctrines of the church's leaders? And who would dare to say so? No—they have transferred from faith to unbelief, and having fallen away from hope in Christ, they have looked to what is human, and from right opinion and apostolic disposition they have transposed themselves onto the crooked path and the apostate delusion.

Alas, how much shrewdness and sobriety abounds in them!

How great was the achievement!

For what has befallen them? As though grown sated with the ancestral and most correct faith, and cutting it off as something grown old, they have chosen and embraced instead the faith now newly flourishing and proclaimed to them—doing something quite like the more diligent among gardeners:

uprooting by the root the old, decayed trunks, they cultivate newly-sprouting shoots.

For they have come as though for hire, having sold out their very souls, so as to gain present advantages, having exchanged the fleeting and unstable glory for the divine and abiding glory, and having submitted themselves to men bound to flesh and matter, who place their hope only in what is seen, and who choose to foresee nothing of the future with the eyes of the heart, and who have been permitted to rule to the destruction and ruin of the whole community—or rather, who pursue with all zeal their own destruction and extraordinary downfall.

Since, then, they are deserving of being instructed and initiated in those matters, they shall hear what it is just for them to hear:

that in truth, being without understanding, they did not understand, nor did these deranged men, who had lost their right mind, perceive what was fitting—namely, that this teacher of theirs, being full of darkness and unbelief, was altogether uninitiated into the mystery of Christian divine wisdom, and did not know at all how to judge between the holy and the profane, nor did he even wish to discern the difference of veneration.

For just as he supposed that the worshippers of idols conceived of nothing more than the pollution venerated among them, so also he has slanderously represented the worshippers of the Trinity as doing the same;

for, suffering from a maiming of the intelligible eyes, he has been unable to look up toward the light of truth.

Nor did the wretched man recognize that the true veneration of us Christians, offered in worship, is presented purely and sincerely and blamelessly to the one living and true God alone, while to the symbols of the saving dispensation the fitting honor is allotted—an honor which is itself referred up to the archetype through the image;

which indeed is recognized and proclaimed without error by farmers and merchants and craftsmen, and by all men, both small and great, at least by those who have truly been entrusted with the word of God and whose heart's sight is not dimmed.

Let not, then, the gangrene have further spread.

For God, throughout the whole Old and New Testament, precisely abolishes these things, saying:

'You shall render homage to the Lord your God, and to him alone shall you offer worship,' saying:

'As I live, says the Lord, to me every knee shall bow.'

We cannot therefore serve two lords, one living and one dead;

for cursed, it says, is he who venerates a creature in place of the Creator;

for he himself contains all these things, and is not contained by anything.

Now if his argument were simply concerning idols, every Christian would join in advocating and speaking with him;

but since he babbles nonsense against the sacred symbols of the divine economy, through which every idol has been made to vanish and all the power and worship of the devil who once prevailed has been abolished, and in his view everything is confounded together and there is no distinction between what is holy and what is defiled in the eyes of the senseless man — we, judging these to be like the meaningless and inarticulate sounds of drunkards, of the mad, of the raving, of Bacchic revelers, of those beside themselves and possessed by demons, shall refrain from saying anything more about it.

For where has it ever been heard, or written, in the Old and New Testament, that the icon of Christ or of the saints should be abolished? Moreover, the distinction concerning veneration has also been unknown to this senseless man.

Come now, let us further survey the blasphemies and follies that follow upon these.

For there follows a citation from the so-called letter of Epiphanius to the emperor Theodosius.

But it seems fitting to us, again, first to set forth in order the passages which they omitted from that part of this letter where his argument against idols begins, and from which the blasphemy of this fighter against Christ has been transferred to what is sacred among us — so that those who claim that they wholly refrain from calling the holy things 'idols' may here too be exposed, and it may become clear from where, and from what blasphemous doctrines, they have set out and proceeded; and then to address directly, as far as possible, the points they themselves have chosen.

For thus, in some such manner, that letter begins:

'The devil, by his own evil craft, contrived idolatry in the world;'

'and he sowed this in the world and established it, and turned men away from God;'

'but now again, after the heresies, he sowed the idols also;'

'he has dragged the faithful down into ancient idolatry and deceived them.'

'For your piety will understand, and the wisdom given to you by God will search out in the depth of its thoughts, whether it is fitting that we have God painted in colors.'

Who has ever heard such a thing? I think it worthwhile first, from the persons and matters at hand — from whom and to whom the letter is written, and for what purpose — to determine also whether the argument holds the truth for those who employ it.

The holy Epiphanius, who was allotted to lead the priesthood of the Cypriots, was a high priest, and the most distinguished and most honored among high priests, deemed worthy of boldness before God by the splendor of his life and the purity of his soul, and distinguished in his life by very many and very great signs;

and Theodosius had been allotted to guide the scepters of the Romans, who won no small glory among emperors, being adorned with piety and right faith, and displaying most vigorously his zeal for divine things.

And what is set forth in the writing? The matter of idolatry, and the accusation against men who practice idolatry, and a request signifying the destruction and abolition of idols, so that men might be freed from the defilement of idols and from error, and be liberated from idolatrous worship and godlessness.

What then is higher and more glorious than the priesthood and the kingship? Nothing, one might say;

and what is worse than idolatry, no argument could ever attain to describe its wickedness — because it leads men away from God who has authority over all, and brings them to defiled and accursed demons, and destroys the souls of men, sending them off to Gehenna and eternal punishment; what is more harmful or more wretched than these? Was it fitting, then, that an argument set in motion by so great a high priest should remain unfulfilled, and that, on account of so evil and destructive a matter, or though sounded forth by so great an emperor, it should be handed over to remain in silence and rest? By no means!

nor should he have accounted the onslaught of evil as of no consequence, to the ruin and harm of those under his hand.

For how could he, who has been sufficiently attested by the writer to have contended most vigorously against the former idolatry, have remained still even for the briefest moment, until their memory perished with a resounding cry and the report of the destruction of that evil went forth throughout the whole earth? How then ought these things to have been accomplished and completed? It is plain to everyone, surely, that it was carried out through very many tumults and labors, with the inquiry and testing concerning this matter traversing and running throughout the entire empire.

Where then are the imperial edicts and proclamations? Where are the public decrees and pronouncements which threaten and are issued against those who slip into this error and impiety? Where are those who ran ahead and gave escort? Where are the civic and military assemblies and musterings? Where are all the laws — divine, and again civic and human — some dealing gently and prudently, others threatening severity and harshness? Where are those entrusted with the laws, some admonishing and converting the guilty, others rebuking and justly punishing them? And where are the prisons, and what are the courts and places of interrogation? Who are the accusers? Who are the advocates, and who are those held liable for the charges brought? Or perhaps the argument means that not one of the accusations was ever seen to be without someone charged, so that both the judges and the judged were themselves liable to punishment, and that either the judge was lacking or there was no one to be judged, since godlessness had been poured out equally upon all? And where are the demolitions of the precincts dedicated to idols, in which libations and sacrifices were performed, and the fat-smoke and smoke that, rising up, polluted the air, and the blood-gore upon the altars, in which the evil demon rejoiced, being served by the rites of the attending temple-keepers? Where are the purifications from these defilements, and the expiations of the rites, and the other things that Christians ought to have done, establishing the purity of our faith while driving away the abomination of the loathsome idols? So great a matter demanded so great a zeal, measured to the magnitude of the evil, with labors and cares in due proportion, so as to halt the onrush of that terrible thing, and to check the pestilential disease that had crept into such a realm and had seized the whole commonwealth, devouring the souls of wretched men and spreading more forcefully and swiftly than fire, and to restore the rights of religion and grant freedom to mankind;

for everywhere on earth, the holy things that were being insulted and destroyed among them existed as honored and venerated among Christians.

How then, and from where, would all these things be made evident to us — only if we were to see every writing and history overflowing with them? For indeed so great an evil could not possibly pass into oblivion, but would be sung of down to this day in the assemblies, marketplaces, cities and countryside, by every age, occupation and rank.

How then, although such things happened, are they unremembered and passed over in silence, and none of them has ever yet been brought to memory? Empty of these things are the books of writers and historians; the undertaking lies idle; the laws were at rest and the tribunals are quiet, and nothing appears of what would have been prepared to deal with such an impiety.

Where on land or sea, or over the whole earth that the sun beholds, has this ever been heard of? For let him too, in turn, be asked whether it has been shown to be practiced among Christians.

But the accursed man has neither heard nor seen it.

Therefore it is deceit and error, and in truth a contrivance of diabolical scheming;

all of it full of phantasms and replete with deceptive opinion.

Therefore it was not written by Epiphanius the God-bearer, nor did it ever come to Theodosius, even so much as fashioned in a dream;

much more, Christians were never at any time captured by idolatry;

but indeed, what would they not have done — those who, through the words they themselves fabricated concerning the Incomprehensible and Uncircumscribable One, have not shuddered to declare that the great mystery of our salvation occurred in phantasm and mere appearance, and to inscribe idolatry upon Christian men? For their eagerness was to do away with the sacred proclamation of the Gospel from their midst, and that their own most abominable doctrine of docetic appearance might find a way to creep in — being refuted, as it were, by the facts of this history even more than by the words written in the sacred books of the Gospel.

Now the prophets, men inspired by God, proclaimed beforehand from above the communion and manifestation of the divine Word to mankind, and that from this all idolatrous error would be overthrown and made to vanish, and that men, having received the divine Word and the saving proclamation, would be redeemed from it.

For one prophet had cried out beforehand that all, from the least to the greatest, would know the Lord;

and another, that even the names of the idols, together with their memory, would be blotted out from the earth;

and the Savior himself, having become man, promised his disciples that the gates of Hades would not prevail against the Church, while the herald of the Gospel affirmed strongly that the Savior would present the Church to himself without blemish, without spot, and without wrinkle.

and very many others cry out things similar to these;

yet not so that the proclamation should be seen to be in vain, nor that the Word's becoming man was futile; nor that idolatry would once more take up dwelling in the world and demons be venerated; nor again that Christians, overfilled with faith and imagining themselves burdened, would cast it off as an unbearable weight and long for another religion, and return to the deaf and senseless idols — so as even to require another Christ, more divine and more benevolent than the one who had come before and been reckoned weak, and another economy, passion, cross, and proclamation.

But if we must give heed to what was written by Epiphanius the God-bearer to Theodosius, let us set aside the fraudulent contrivances, and, gathering from the records concerning his life, we shall know the truth.

For indeed, on account of the heresies that had sprung up on the island of Cyprus, he requested Theodosius by letter that, having enacted this by imperial decrees, he should drive them out from there as quickly as possible.

And indeed, Theodosius, straightway yielding, fulfilled what had been requested;

and there were heresies of the Simonians and of the Valentinians, again of the Sabellians and Nicolaitans, of the Ophites and Basilideans, and of the Carpocratians.

How then will these agree with what is in the letter falsely ascribed to Epiphanius? For there one would find none of these heresies recorded, except only that of the Valentinians;

for those enumerated by him as being on the island of Cyprus he says are of the Manichaeans and Valentinians, of the Ebionites and Marcionites and Apollinarians — but here, among those requested to be expelled in the letter, it is not so.

For not even is any mention made on account of idols, although it should have been included much more, and indeed before all the others.

For what would be more absurd or more godless than this, if idolatry had truly mattered to Epiphanius? And by what reasoning, showing himself so vigorous against the lesser evils, would he have neglected the greater? This would be no ordinary charge against Epiphanius;

for it would bring upon him a charge of folly and want of understanding.

But what most refutes this error must also be stated at present.

First, as we have learned, it was Valentinus, hated of God, who introduced Docetism and phantasm-doctrine for the overthrow of the incarnation of God the Word;

who, having maliciously twisted a few sayings of the Apostle, constructed his own impious doctrine, saying that the Lord had assumed 'the form of a servant' — not the servant himself — and had been 'found in the fashion of a man' — not having assumed the man himself — adding 'in the likeness of flesh,' not 'of flesh of sin.'

and what is worse than this:

he supposed the very Godhead to be passible, and attributed the sufferings to it.

from which this unlawful, soul-destroying passion, as it were, fell upon the godless followers of Marcion and Mani and the most impious Arius.

being filled with this error, they dreamed up the notion that Christ ought not to be depicted in icons, since they did not acknowledge that the complete human nature had been preserved in him.

That these things, then, are incompatible with the opinion which Epiphanius held concerning the Lord's body is not unclear from his own words spoken earlier;

and to what degree, more than the others, the impiety of Valentinus proved especially odious to Epiphanius will be recognized at greater length in his writings against the heresies.

Nevertheless, let the writer of his Life once more fully assure us on this point, having written that when he once encountered a bishop of the Valentinian heresy who set counter-doctrines against the correct teachings of truth (his name was Aetius), having rebuked him, he condemned him to a bitter death;

for his tongue, bound by fetters imposed by the holy man, and seized with muteness for six whole days, on the seventh day he died a wretched death.

Therefore, from this too, the empty talk and villainy of those who forge documents and attribute those things to Epiphanius is exposed and condemned;

and one would not be so astonished at the unholiness of these forgers as at the senselessness of those who have gathered up their forgeries and brought them forward in their own defense;

whom not even the piety of Theodosius has abashed, nor all that he zealously accomplished concerning the divine churches and sacred structures, in which the good order and splendor of the Gospel narrative is conspicuous;

but it is not Epiphanius who says this, but rather he who inveighs against the manifestation of the Word of God that came to men — claiming that after the idols and the heresies, Satan again dragged men down into idolatry.

O the blasphemy and absurdity!

What is more absurd than this godlessness, and more lawless as an outrage against the condescension of the Only-Begotten? What Hades uttered these things, what tomb belched them forth? It was the shield-bearers of the very worst of all heresies, whom the devil has truly dragged down into the pit of destruction.

The memory and name of Christ, at which even demons tremble, is by them received in exchange for the ill repute of idols;

And this is the source from which the evil increases: since clarity (ἐνάργεια) is opposed to mere semblance, which through the sacred images sets forth the truthfulness of the incarnation of the Word, so that, considering it something to be shunned, they might satisfy their hatred toward it, and at the same time might seem to avoid blasphemy, they insult it by the change of its name, and, raving, defile their most execrable tongues with the abomination of idols.

It is this appellation of “undepicted and incomprehensible” that has caused them to slide down into this depth of impiety.

This term, which they reject with reference to the embodiment of the Word—thinking that the visible depiction of him according to the human form which he assumed has in no way any resemblance or likeness to him, nor preserves any reference or relation to him whatsoever, but is something alien to him—fighting against Christ, they babble and have dared to name it “idol,” according to the opinion held among the Greeks.

From this they impiously attach idol-worship to the holy Church of God, and thus they make it their struggle to persuade those subjected to their impiety, so that they may obscure the illumination and radiance of our preaching and give free voice to the darkness of their delusion.

It is therefore nothing to wonder at that those so unholily disposed both teach and write such things.

But let the maniacal and deranged one hear again from us that he has been darkened in his reasonings, and has not judged fit to distinguish between the holy and the profane, and between the clean and the unclean.

For in him our gospel is veiled on account of his unbelief, and his thoughts have been blinded by the god of this age, so that the illumination of the gospel might not shine upon him.

For truly babbling and playing the fool, the champion of this wickedness is not afraid to pronounce weakness against Christ, and he insists that Christ’s inheritance has been snatched away and stolen by the devil, and that a second idolatry has been introduced into the Church of Christ—

…of the dispensation—indeed also calling by this name the honor and veneration offered by pious Christians to the likenesses of the saints.

This practice indeed Theodosius embraced in a special way, being adorned with love of God and most upright faith.

For he built not a few churches, as became known to many.

In raising these up to God and adorning them, he knew that he himself was being adorned.

For he also had sacred vestments and treasures prepared for their adornment, and these are believed to have been made and to appear throughout both the East and the West.

On these he wove the venerable narrative of the Gospel, having impressed upon them the precious forms of the saints, embellishing them lavishly and most excellently with colors and with silken and gold-woven fabrics.

Against him someone might thus object and indeed say:

“What are you doing, O Theodosius? Do you now again renew what you formerly destroyed with all your might? And do you build up what you overthrew? And do you procure honor and glory for what you once considered an abomination?”—“And who,” he says, “of those who have sense and are not out of their mind, would think such a thing? For I have not come to such a degree of madness and derangement that, with regard to what I formerly deliberated and did well and auspiciously, I should now be disposed and act thoughtlessly and disastrously.”