On the Soul and the Resurrection 1 part 4/7

{Γ.} 'What then,' I said, 'is the doctrine contained in these things?' {Μ.} 'Since,' she said, 'the soul of Lazarus is wholly occupied with present things and turns itself toward none of the things left behind, while the rich man clings still after death, as if by some birdlime, to the life of the flesh — which not even in ceasing to live did he purely put off, but flesh and blood are still his concern (for inasmuch as he begs that his kinsmen by birth be delivered from evils, it is plain that he has not yet been released from fleshly attachment) — from these narratives, she said, we suppose that the Lord lays down this doctrine: that those who live in the flesh must, as far as possible, through a life lived according to virtue, somehow separate and free themselves from their relation to it, so that after death we may not again stand in need of another death to cleanse away the remnants of the fleshly glue;

but rather, as if the soul's bonds had been broken all around it, its course toward the good may become light and unhindered, with no bodily pain dragging it back toward itself.

Just as, if anyone should become wholly fleshly throughout in his mind, busying every motion and activity of the soul with the desires of the flesh, such a one, even when he has come outside the flesh, is not separated from the sufferings that belong to it — like those who have spent a long time in the more foul-smelling places, who, even if they move into fresh-breathing air, are not cleansed of the unpleasantness which they took on through their longer sojourn in it —

so too, when the change has taken place into that unpleasant and sightless life, it would not be possible for the flesh-lovers not to

draw to themselves something at all of the fleshly foul odour, through which their pain is the more heavily burdened, since the soul has become more material from such a circumstance.

And what is said by some seems somehow to harmonise with such a supposition — namely, that there are often seen, around the burial places of bodies, certain shadowy phantoms of the departed.

For if any such thing happens, the soul's attachment — now grown beyond what it ought to be toward the fleshly life — is thereby exposed: that not even when thrust out of the flesh is it willing to fly away purely, nor does it allow the complete transformation into the formless state to take place, but it still remains attached to the form even after the form has been dissolved, and, having already come outside of it, out of longing it wanders about the regions of matter and lingers around them.

{Γ.} But I, pausing a little and taking up the meaning of what had been said, replied: 'It seems to me,' I said, 'that some contradiction arises out of what has been said, against the things previously examined concerning the passions.'

For if it was supposed that, out of our kinship with the irrational creatures, such movements of the soul are at work within us — all those which the argument took up and enumerated: anger, fear, pleasure, desire, and the like —

and it was said that the good use of such things is virtue, while through their mistaken use vice comes about;

and the argument added the contribution of each of the others toward the life lived according to virtue — that through desire we are led up toward God, being drawn up to Him from below as if by some chain — then it seems somehow, I said, that the argument contradicts its own aim.

{Μ.} 'How do you mean this?' she said.

{Γ.} 'Because,' I said, 'when all irrational movement has been wholly quenched in us after the purification, neither will there be any faculty of desire at all;

and this not existing, neither would there be any longing for what is better, since no such movement is left in the soul to rouse it toward the desire of good things.'

{Μ.} 'But to this,' she said, 'we say the following: that the contemplative and discriminating faculty is proper to the godlike aspect of the soul, since it is by these very things that we apprehend the Divine.

If, then, whether through the present diligence or through the purification that follows hereafter, the soul should become free from its co-natural union with the irrational passions, it will in no way be hindered in the contemplation of the beautiful.

For the beautiful is, by its own nature, somehow attractive to everyone who looks toward it.

If, then, the soul should be purified of all vice, it will assuredly be in the beautiful.

And beautiful by its own nature is the Divine, to which, through purity, the soul will have conjunction, being joined to that which is akin to it.

If, then, this should come about, there will no longer be need of the movement of desire to lead the way toward the beautiful.

For he who has his life in darkness, this man will be in desire of the light;

but if he should come to be in the light, enjoyment takes the place of desire, and the free possession of enjoyment renders desire idle and stale.

Therefore there will be no loss whatever through these things as regards participation in the good, if the soul should become free from such movements, having returned again to itself and seen itself exactly as it is by nature, and as if in a mirror and image, through its own beauty,

looking toward the Archetype.

For truly it is in this that one may speak of the exact likeness to the Divine, namely, in our life somehow imitating that transcendent Substance.

For the nature that is above all thought, set far apart from the things contemplated in us, traverses its own life in some other manner, and not as we now are in our living.

For we human beings, because our nature is always wholly in motion, are carried in whatever direction the impulse of choice may take, the soul not being disposed in like manner toward what is, so to speak, in front of it and behind it.

For hope leads the way for the forward movement, while memory receives the movement as it advances toward hope;

but if hope should lead the soul toward what is by nature beautiful, the trace of the choice is marked as bright in the memory;

but if it should be deceived of the better, hope having deluded the soul with some phantom of the beautiful, then the memory that follows upon what has happened becomes shame.

And this war is set up as an internal one within the soul, memory fighting against hope, on the ground that choice led the way badly.

For such is the sense that the passion of shame clearly interprets, when the soul is stung at the outcome, scourged, as it were by some whip, by repentance for the unwilling impulse, and drawing forgetfulness to its aid against what grieves it.

But for us, because our nature is poor in goodness, it ever tends toward what is lacking, and this longing for what is wanting is that desiderative disposition of our nature, either failing through lack of discernment of the true good, or else attaining that which it is good to attain.

But the Nature that surpasses every good conception and is set above all power, inasmuch as it lacks nothing of the things conceived as belonging to the good, being itself the fullness of good things, neither moving in the beautiful by participation in any beautiful thing, but being itself the very nature of the beautiful — whatever the beautiful is conceived by the mind to be — neither does it receive the movement of hope within itself.

For hope is exercised only toward what is not present.

'For what a man already has, why does he still hope for?' says the Apostle.

Nor does it have any need of the activity of memory for the knowledge of the things that are;

for that which is beheld has no need of being remembered.

Since, then, the Divine nature is beyond every good, and the good is altogether dear to the good, for this reason, beholding within itself, it both wills what it has and has what it wills, receiving nothing from outside into itself, while outside of it there is nothing—except evil alone, which, strange though it be to say, has its being in not-being;

for there is no other origin of evil than the privation of that which is.

But that which properly is, is the nature of the good.

That, therefore, which is not in that which is, is altogether in that which is not.

When, then, the soul too, having put away all the manifold motions of its nature, becomes God-formed, and, having transcended desire, comes to be in that toward which it was hitherto being lifted by desire, it no longer leaves any room within itself either for hope or for memory, for it possesses that which was hoped for;

and the occupation with the enjoyment of good things drives memory out of the mind.

And thus, being conformed to the properties of the Divine nature, it imitates that surpassing life, so that nothing else is left to it save the disposition of love, which by nature cleaves to the beautiful.

For this is love: the inward relation of attachment toward that which is desired.

When, therefore, the soul, having become simple and uniform and exactly like to God, finds that truly simple and immaterial Good—that One which alone is in such wise lovable and worthy of love—it cleaves to it and is commingled with it through the loving movement and activity, ever shaping itself toward that which is being apprehended and found;

and becoming this through likeness to the Good—which is the nature of that in which it partakes—since there is no desire in that Good, because in it there is no lack of any good thing, it would follow that the soul also, coming to be in that state of no-lack, casts away from itself the desiring movement and disposition as well, which arises only then, when that which is longed for is not present.

And the divine Apostle too has guided us into this very teaching, when he foretold a certain cessation and laying aside of all the things now zealously pursued among us, even of those pursued for the better, but for love alone he found no limit.

For prophecies, he says, shall be done away, and knowledge shall cease;

but love never falls;

which is equivalent to its being ever in the same state.

But although he says that faith and hope too abide together with love, again, and rightly so, he sets love above these as well.

For hope is in motion only up to that point, so long as the enjoyment of the things hoped for is not present; and faith likewise becomes a support amid the uncertainty of the things hoped for.

For so too did he define it, saying:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for.

But when that which is hoped for comes, while all the others are quieted, the activity according to love

remains, since it finds nothing to succeed it.

Wherefore it also takes precedence over all the achievements according to virtue, and over the commandments of the law.

If, then, the soul should ever attain to this end, it will be without need of the others, inasmuch as it has laid hold of the fullness of the things that are, and it alone seems somehow to preserve within itself the very character of the divine blessedness.

For the life of the higher nature is love, since the beautiful is altogether lovable to those who know it;

and the Divine knows it;

and the knowledge becomes love.

Wherefore the beautiful is by nature that which is known, and to that which is truly beautiful the insolent satiety lays no claim;

and since satiety does not interrupt the loving relation toward the beautiful, the divine life will ever be wrought through love—a life which is beautiful by nature, and which is by nature lovingly disposed toward the beautiful, and which has no limit to the activity according to love, since no boundary of the beautiful is apprehended either, such that love should leave off together with the boundary of the beautiful;

for the beautiful is bounded only by its opposite;

but that whose nature is incapable of receiving the worse will advance toward the boundless and unlimited good.

Since, then, every nature is attractive of what is akin to it, and the human is in a manner akin to God, inasmuch as it bears within itself imitations of the Archetype, the soul is drawn by every necessity toward the Divine and the kindred.

For that which is God's own must in every way and altogether be restored to God;

but if it happens to be light and free of superfluity, with no bodily burden weighing it down, then its approach toward the One who draws it becomes for it sweet and easy.

But if it has been pinned down by the nails of attachment into a relation toward material things, it suffers something such as bodies probably suffer in the disasters of earthquakes, when they are crushed beneath the heaps of rubble;

and let it be supposed, for the sake of argument, that these bodies are not merely weighed down by the rubble, but have also been pierced through by certain spits or stakes found in the heap;

the sort of thing, then, which such bodies would probably undergo, when they are dragged out by their kinsfolk for the sake of due burial;

for they will be utterly torn apart and rent, and will suffer everything that is most grievous, as the rubble and the stakes shred them by reason of the violence of those who drag them out;

some such suffering, it seems to me, comes about also concerning the soul, when the divine power, out of love for mankind, draws what is its own out of the irrational and material disasters.

For it is not out of hatred, nor in retaliation for the evil life—at least according to my reasoning—that God brings the painful conditions upon those who have sinned; He who lays claim to, and draws toward Himself, everything that came into being for His sake;

but He draws the soul toward Himself with a view to the better goal, He who is the fountain of all blessedness;

but of necessity the painful condition befalls the one who is being drawn.

And just as those who purify by fire the dross mingled with the gold not only melt the spurious part by the fire, but of all necessity the pure also is melted down together with the base, and when the latter is consumed the former remains;

so also, when evil is consumed by the unsleeping fire, it is of all necessity that the soul too which has been united to it should be in the fire, until the spurious, material, and base which has been sown in it is burned away, being consumed by the eternal fire.

And just as if some clay of the more adhesive kind were plastered all about a cord through its depth, and then the end of the rope were brought out through some narrow opening, and someone were to draw the rope forcibly toward the inside from the tip, of all necessity the rope must follow him who pulls it, while the clay plastered upon it, by reason of the violent traction, remains outside the hole, being scraped off the rope, and becomes for it a cause of not passing through smoothly along the way, but of undergoing a violent strain from that which draws it;

some such thing, it seems to me, one should conceive concerning the soul as well, when, entangled in material and earthly attachments, it labors and is stretched taut, while God draws what is His own toward Himself;

while that which is alien to it, because it has somehow grown together with it, is violently scraped away, and brings upon it sharp and unendurable pains.

{Γ.} "Then," I said, "the divine judgment, it seems, does not as its primary purpose bring punishment upon those who have sinned, but rather, as the argument has shown, it works only the good, separating it from the evil, and drawing it toward the fellowship of blessedness;

but the tearing apart of that which had grown together becomes pain to the one being drawn."

{Μ.} "So," says the Teacher, "is my reasoning too, and that the measure of the pain is the quantity of evil in each one."

For it is not fitting that one who has fallen into such great forbidden evils, and one who has been involved in but moderate transgressions, should be afflicted equally in the judgment that purges the wicked disposition.

But in proportion to the quantity of the material, that painful flame will be kindled to a greater or lesser degree, according as there is fuel to feed it.

On him, therefore, upon whom a great load of material weighs, there must necessarily come a great and more enduring flame to consume it;

but on him in whom the fire's consumption is mingled to a lesser extent, by so much does the punishment subside from its fiercer and sharper activity, in proportion as the subject has been lessened by the measure of its evil.

For evil must altogether and by all means at some time be removed out of existence, and—as has been said in what preceded—that which truly is not must not exist at all.

For since evil has no nature to exist apart from the will, when every will comes to be in God, evil will pass into utter annihilation,

since no receptacle for it will be left.

{Γ.} "But what advantage," said I, "is there in this good hope for one who reckons how great an evil it is even to endure pain for a single year? And if that unceasing agony were to be prolonged for some everlasting interval, what consolation is left from the hope of the hereafter for him whose punishment is measured out coextensively with a whole eternity?" {Μ.} "So then," said she, "one must either take care to keep the soul wholly unmixed and unshared in the defilements of evil,

or, if this is altogether impossible because of the passible character of our nature, then to keep our failures in virtue as far as possible within certain moderate and easily-cured limits.

For the Gospel teaching knows of one who is a debtor of ten thousand talents, and of five hundred denarii, and of fifty, and of a certain farthing, which is the smallest of coins;

and that the just judgment of God passes through all things, intensifying the necessity of the demand for repayment in proportion to the weight of the debt, and overlooking not even the smallest matters.

And the Gospel said that the repayment of debts comes about not by a discharge of money, but that the debtor is delivered to the tormentors, until—it says—he should pay back all that is owed;

which is nothing other than to pay off the necessary debt through torment—the debt of participation in grievous things, into which through folly he became a debtor during life, having chosen unmixed and undiluted the pleasure of what is contrary; and so, having laid aside all that is alien to himself, namely sin, and stripped off the shame arising from his debts, he comes to be in freedom and confidence.

And freedom is the likeness to that which is masterless and self-governing—the freedom that was at the beginning granted to us by God, but was overlaid with the shame of our debts.

And all freedom is one in nature, and stands in kinship with itself.

Consequently, therefore, everything that is free will be fitted together with its like;

accordingly, everything that is free will come to be in This One, for what is free is masterless.

But indeed the divine nature is the fountain of all virtue.

In This One, then, those who have been set free from evil will come to be, so that, as the Apostle says, God may be all in all.

For this saying seems to me clearly to confirm the meaning previously examined—the saying which declares that God comes to be both in all things and in all.

For while the present life is worked out for us in varied and manifold ways, there are many things in which we partake, such as time and air and place, food and drink, and coverings, and the sun, and the lamp, and many other things needful for life, none of which is God;

but the blessedness that is awaited is in need of none of these things, and the divine nature will become for us all things, and in the place of all,

distributing itself fittingly to every need of that life.

And this is plain from the divine words, that God becomes for the worthy both place, and house, and clothing, and food, and drink, and light, and riches, and kingdom, and every thought and name that contributes to our good life.

And He who becomes all things also comes to be in all.

And in this it seems to me that the discourse lays down as a doctrine the complete annihilation of evil.

For if God will be in all things that exist, then clearly evil will not be among the things that exist.

For if anyone should suppose that it too exists, how will the proposition that God is in all be preserved? For the exception of that thing makes the embrace of all things incomplete.

But He who is to be in all things will not be in the things that are not.

{Γ.} "What then must one say," said I, "to those who are faint-hearted in their disposition toward these afflictions?" {Μ.} "Let us say to them," said the teacher, "that 'In vain, O you people, are you vexed and indignant at the chain of the necessary sequence of things, being ignorant toward what goal each of the things ordered in the universe is being brought—namely, that all things must, in a certain order and sequence, according to the skillful wisdom of the Guide, be brought into kinship with the divine nature.'"

For it was for this reason that the rational nature came into being—that the wealth of divine goods might not lie idle;

but, as it were, the souls were fashioned as certain vessels capable of choice, receptacles, by the Wisdom that constituted the whole, to the end that there might be some space able to receive good things—a space that is ever made greater by the addition of what is poured into it.

For such is the participation in the divine good, that it makes the one in whom it comes to be greater and more receptive, taking on for the recipient an addition of power and magnitude, so that the one being nourished grows and never ceases from his growth.

For since the fountain of good things flows unfailingly, the nature of the partaker—because nothing of what is received is superfluous or useless, but the whole inflow is made an addition to its own magnitude—becomes at once more capable of drawing in the better and of containing more, both contributing mutually to each other: the nourished power giving forth toward the greater in the abundance of good things, and the nourishing supply flooding in together with the increase of those who are growing.

It is therefore probable that it ascends to such a magnitude as no limit cuts short the growth.

Then, with such things set before us, are you vexed that nature is advancing by the appointed road toward its own goal? For it is not otherwise possible for our course to go beyond, unless that which weighs us down—I mean this heavy and earthly burden—be shaken off from our soul, and unless, being cleansed by a higher care from the sympathy toward it which we had in this life, we should be able in purity to be brought into kinship with our like.

And if you have some attachment also to this body, and the separation from the beloved grieves you, neither shall this be without hope for you.

For you will see this bodily covering, now dissolved by death, woven again out of the same elements—not according to this coarse and heavy structure, but with the thread spun anew into something finer and more airy—so that the beloved will both be present to you and be restored again in a better and more lovely beauty.

{Γ.} "But it seems somehow," said I, "that the doctrine of the resurrection has entered into our discourse by way of logical consequence—which appears to me to be both true and trustworthy from the teaching of the Scriptures, so that one need not doubt it;

yet since the weakness of the human understanding rather leans for support upon reasonings within our grasp toward such a faith, it would be well not to pass by even this part unexamined.

Let us therefore consider what one ought to say."

{Μ.} And the teacher said, "Those outside our philosophy, in differing suppositions, have each in his own way laid hold of some part of the doctrine concerning the resurrection, neither agreeing accurately with our views, nor altogether falling away from

such a hope. For some do violence to humanity by their levelling, defining that the same soul comes to be in turn that of a man and of an irrational beast, putting on different bodies and ever passing over to what pleases it, becoming after the man some winged or aquatic or land animal, and again returning from these to the human nature.

Others extend such nonsense even as far as the shrubs, so as to think that even the woody life is suited and proper to it.

But to others it seems only that one man always changes into another man, and that human life is always carried on through the same persons, the same souls coming to be now in these and again in others perpetually.

But we say that it is right—starting from the doctrines of the Church—to admit only so much of those who have philosophized about such matters as to show that they in a certain way agree with the doctrine of the resurrection.

For their saying that the soul, after its dissolution from this body, is again brought into other constitutions, is not very out of tune with the revival we hope for; since our own teaching says that our body is constituted out of the elements of the world, both now and hereafter, and to those outside this seems equivalent.

For you will not conceive any other nature of the body apart from the concourse of the elements.

But the difference is just so great: that by us it is said that the same body is again compacted around the soul, being fitted together out of the same elements;

while those others suppose that the soul falls down into certain other bodies—rational and irrational and even insensible. In this they confess that the constitution comes from the parts of the world; but it is at variance to suppose that it is not from the same elements that originally grew together with the soul in the life through the flesh.

Therefore, let it be attested by the philosophy outside [the Church] that for the soul to come again to be in a body is not beyond probability;

but it would now be the time to scatter abroad the incoherence of their doctrine, and through the very sequence of reasoning that rises up before us according to what is reasonable, it is readily possible to make the truth manifest.

What then is the argument concerning these things? Those who transfer the soul into different natures seem to me to confound the distinctive properties of nature;

and they make it necessary to mix together and to mingle all things with one another—the irrational, the rational, the sensitive, the insensible—

if indeed these come to be within one another, no longer separated from one another by any unchanging chain of nature into distinct ranks.

For to say that the same soul now becomes rational and intellectual through such an envelopment of body,

but again lurks in burrows with creeping things, or herds together with birds, or bears burdens, or devours flesh, or lives under water, or even falls back into the insensible—being rooted and turning into a tree, sprouting forth shoots of branches, and among these growing either a flower, or a thorn, or something nourishing, or something poisonous—this is nothing other than to hold all things to be the same, and that there is one single nature among existing things, mingled in a certain confused and undifferentiated commonality, with no distinctive property separating the one from the other.

For he who says that the same thing comes to be in everything wants nothing other than that all things be one, since the difference that appears among existing things in no way hinders the intermingling of things that have nothing in common;

so that it becomes necessary, even if he should behold something venomous and flesh-devouring, to regard what appears as of the same kind with himself and akin to him; nor will such a person see even the hemlock as foreign to his own nature,

if indeed he sees what is human even in plants;

but neither will he regard without suspicion even the very cluster of grapes that is cultivated for the need of life.

For it too is among the things that grow;

and plants for us are also the produce of the ears of grain, by which we are nourished.

How then will he bring the sickle to the cutting of the ears of grain? How will he press out the cluster of grapes, or dig up the thorn from the field, or pluck the flower, or hunt the birds, or kindle a fire from wood—when it is unclear whether the hand is being brought against kinsfolk, or ancestors, or