Life of Moses 1 part 3/8

If, then, we are too weak to give the victory to the just by our own means--the worse prevailing through its arguments and thrusting away the rule of truth--we must flee hence as quickly as possible, after the likeness of the historical example, toward a greater and loftier teaching of the mysteries.

And if again it be necessary to dwell with a foreigner--that is, even if need compels us to associate with outside wisdom--let us choose this too, having scattered away the wicked shepherds from the unjust use of the wells; that is, having refuted the teachers of evils for the wicked use of education.

Thus we shall live by ourselves, no longer entangling ourselves and mediating between certain combatants, but we shall live among those who are like-minded and of one accord, shepherded by us, all the movements of the soul within us being shepherded, like sheep, according to the will of the directing reason.

And thus, as we devote ourselves to this peaceful and warless manner of life, the truth will then shine upon us, illumining the eyes of the soul round about with its own dazzling rays.

And God is the truth that then appeared to Moses through that ineffable illumination.

And if the radiance is kindled from a certain thorny bush, by which the soul of the prophet is illumined, neither will this be without contribution to us toward what is sought.

For if God is the truth, and the truth is light, and the voice of the Gospel attributes these lofty and divine names to the God who appeared to us through flesh, then accordingly such a conduct of virtue leads us to the knowledge of that light which comes down even to human nature, shining not from any of the luminaries among the stars, lest the radiance be thought to belong to underlying matter, but surpassing with its rays the luminaries of heaven from an earthly bush; through which we are taught also the mystery concerning the Virgin, from whom the light of the Godhead, shining upon human life through birth, kept incorrupt the bush that it had kindled, the sprout of virginity not being withered by the birth.

From that light we are taught what we must do in order to stand within the rays of the true light: that it is not possible to run up, with bound feet, toward that height in which the light of truth is seen, unless there be loosed from the soul's footings the dead and earthy covering of skins, which was put around our nature in the beginning, when, through disobedience to the divine will, we were stripped naked.

And thus, when these things have come to pass in us, there will follow upon us the knowledge of the truth, manifesting itself of itself;

for the knowledge of Being becomes a purgation of the supposition concerning non-being.

And this, at least according to my account, is the definition of truth: not to be deceived in the apprehension of Being.

For falsehood is a certain fantasy arising in the understanding about non-being, as though the non-existent subsisted; but truth is the sure apprehension of that which truly is.

And thus one, having philosophized over much intervening time in quietness upon lofty meditations, will scarcely understand what truly is the Being, which has its being by its own nature, and what is non-being, which is only in seeming to be, having in itself a nature without subsistence.

Which it seems to me the great Moses then, instructed in the theophany, came to know: that none of the other things, whether apprehended by sense or contemplated by the understanding, truly subsists, except the Being that transcends all and is the Cause of all, from which the universe depends.

For if the understanding sees also something else among the things that are, in none of the things that are does reason behold the not-needing of the other, by which it is possible to be apart from participation in Being.

But that which is ever in the same state, the unincreasable, the undiminishable, that which is alike unmoved toward every change, both toward the better and toward the worse (for it is estranged from the worse, and it has not the better), that which is in need of nothing else, the only thing desirable, and partaken of by all and not diminished in the participation of those who partake--this is truly that which really is, and the apprehension of this is the knowledge of the truth.

Coming to be in this, then, that man then, but now everyone who like him looses himself from the earthy covering and beholds the light from the bush--that is, toward the ray that shone upon us through the flesh of this thorny one, which is, as the Gospel says, the true light and the truth--such a one then becomes such as to suffice also for others toward salvation, and to pull down the tyranny that wickedly prevails, and to rescue toward freedom everything held under the wicked slavery, with the altered right hand and the staff transformed into a serpent leading the way of the wonders; by which it seems to me to be indicated, through an enigma, the mystery of the Lord made manifest through flesh, of the Godhead appearing to men, through which there come to be both the deposing of the tyrant and the freedom of those held under his power.

And the things that lead me up to this meaning are the prophetic and the evangelical testimony.

For the Prophet says:

'This is the change of the right hand of the Most High'--the divine nature being beheld in the unchangeable, but, by the condescension to the weakness of human nature, being changed toward our shape and form.

For there too the lawgiver's hand, drawn forth from the bosom, was changed to a colour contrary to nature;

and again, coming to be in the bosom, it returned to its own and natural grace.

And the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, this one is the right hand of the Most High; and when He appeared to us out of the bosom, He was changed to be like us;

and since, having wiped away our weaknesses, He led back again the hand that had come to be among us and been coloured like us, to His own bosom (and the bosom of the right hand is the Father), then He did not change the impassibility of the nature into passion, but transmuted the mutable and passible, through communion with the immutable, into impassibility.

And let not the change of the staff into a serpent disturb the lovers of Christ, as though we were fitting the word of the mystery to an unseemly creature.

For the truth itself, through the voice of the Gospel, does not decline such an image, in the words in which it says:

'For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man also be lifted up.'

For if the father of sin was named a serpent by the holy Scripture, and what is begotten of the serpent is altogether a serpent, then accordingly sin is synonymous with the one who begot it.

But indeed the apostolic word testifies that the Lord became sin for our sakes, He who clothed Himself with our sinful nature.

Therefore the enigma fits the Lord.

For if the serpent is sin, and the Lord became sin, then what becomes manifest through the consequence would be plain to all;

for the one who became sin became a serpent, which is nothing other than sin.

He becomes a serpent in order to devour and consume the Egyptian serpents brought to life by the sorcerers; which being done, it is again transformed into the staff, by which sinners are brought to soberness, and those ascending the upward and hard-to-travel path of virtue are given rest, supported by the staff of faith through good hopes;

for faith is the substance of things hoped for.

The one, then, who has come into the careful consideration of these things, becomes directly a god to those who stand opposed to the truth and are stricken toward this material and unsubstantial deception, to whom to hear of Being has been despised as one of vain things;

'Who is he whose voice I shall heed? I do not know the Lord.'

And only that is deemed precious which is material and fleshly, among those who turn about amid the more irrational senses.

If, then, one should be so empowered through the shining-out of the light, and should receive such great strength and authority against the opposing ranks, then, like some athlete who has sufficiently practised athletic manliness in the trainer's school, now taking courage and being confident, he strips for the contest against the enemies, holding in his hand that staff--that is, the word of faith--with which he is to fight against the Egyptian serpents.

And there will follow him also the yoke-fellow from among the foreigners;

for there is something even of outside education not to be cast away toward our union for the begetting of virtue.

For both moral and natural philosophy might at some time become to the loftier life a yoke-fellow and friend and partner of life, only if the offspring from it bring with them nothing of the foreign defilement.

For if this be not circumcised and removed, so that everything harmful and unclean be taken away, the angel who meets brings on the fear of death;

whom the consort propitiates, she who shows her own offspring pure by the removal of the peculiarity by which the foreign element is recognized.

And I think it is plain to one initiated into the historical instruction, through what has been said, what is the sequence of advancement in virtue which the discourse indicates, following consistently the chain of the historical enigmas.

For there is something in the philosophic offspring, amid its lessons, that is fleshly and uncircumcised, which being removed, what remains belongs to the Israelite nobility.

For instance, that the soul is immortal even outside philosophy affirms;

this is the pious offspring.

But that it passes from bodies into bodies and is transmuted from a rational nature into an irrational--this is the fleshly and foreign foreskin.

It says that God exists, but also supposes Him to be material.

It confesses Him to be Creator, but as needing matter for the creating.

It grants that He is good and powerful, but as yielding in many things to the necessity of fate.

And why should one recount each in detail--how the noble doctrines among outside philosophy are defiled with absurd additions;

which being removed, the angel of God becomes propitious to us, as rejoicing over the genuine offspring of such doctrines.

But we must return to the sequence of the discourse, so that to us too, when we come near the Egyptian contests, the brotherly alliance may at some time meet us.

For we remember that at the beginning of the life of virtue Moses' encounter was warlike and contentious, the Egyptian oppressing the Hebrew and again the Hebrew quarrelling against his own kinsman.

But when he had been raised toward the greater achievements of the soul, both through long diligence and through the illumination that came to be on the height, the encounter becomes friendly and peaceful, the brother having been urged on by God toward meeting him.

For if what came to pass according to history should be taken over into the more tropological contemplation, nothing of it would be found useless to us toward our aim.

For in truth, for those who succeed in virtue there is also established the alliance given by God to our nature, which

It is, indeed, prior in the order of original creation, yet it appears and is recognized only at the time when, having sufficiently devoted ourselves through attention and care to the higher life, we strip ourselves for the contest against the stronger of the adversaries.

But so that the riddles may not be solved for us by means of yet another riddle, I will set forth the meaning of this matter more plainly.

There is a teaching, holding its trustworthiness from the tradition of the fathers, which says that when our nature fell into sin, God did not leave our fall unprovided for, but set beside the life of each person, as an ally, one of the angels who have received an incorporeal nature; while on the opposing side the corrupter of nature contrives an equal counter-measure, ravaging human life through some wicked and malicious demon. Man, set in the midst of these two, makes the aim of whichever he follows prevail over the other through his own choice—the good angel showing forth to his reasonings the goods of virtue, all that the upright behold through hope, and the other showing the material pleasures, from which there is no hope of good, but whose present, partaken, and visible character enslaves the senses of the foolish.

If, then, someone becomes estranged from the things that allure him to evil, turning his reasonings toward the better, and as it were puts vice behind his back, setting his own soul face-to-face like a mirror over against the hope of good things, so that the images and reflections of the virtue shown to him from God are imprinted upon the purity of his own soul, then the alliance of the brother meets and stands together with him.

For the angel is in a certain manner a brother to the rational and intellectual part of man's soul—the one who then, as has been said, appears and stands beside us whenever we draw near to Pharaoh.

But let no one suppose that the whole exposition of the history can be made to correspond throughout to this sequence of contemplation of the mind; and if anywhere something written should be found to lie outside this meaning, let him not on that account reject the whole.

Rather, let him always remember the aim of our discourse, with a view to which we go through these things—having said at the very outset, in the prologue, that the lives of men of good repute are set before those who come after as a pattern of virtue.

Since, then, it is impossible for those who emulate them to come at the deeds themselves of those men (for how could there again be found a people multiplying from a sojourn in Egypt, and again a tyrant enslaving them, hostile to the male offspring but increasing the softer and weaker into a multitude, and all the other things the account contains?)—since, then, it has been shown impossible through the actual events to imitate the wonders of the blessed, we must take over, from the sequence of the material narrative, what is admissible toward some moral instruction, by which one may become a help to those who are zealous for virtue, toward such a life.

But if the necessity of the events should force some part of what happened in the history to fall outside the sequence of the elevated meaning, it is permissible to pass over this—as unprofitable and useless for our aim—without interrupting the guidance toward virtue.

These things I say concerning what has been understood about Aaron, forestalling beforehand the objection that follows from the sequence.

For someone will say: that the angel is akin to the soul in the intelligible and incorporeal realm, that he is prior to our constitution, and that he stands with those who grapple with the adversaries—about this there is no doubt; yet it is not fitting to understand Aaron as a figure of that angel, seeing that he led the Israelites into idolatry.

To him we will reply—having, as we said, stepped beyond the strict sequence—that what lies outside the aim must not overturn the harmony in the rest, and that the term "brother" and the term "angel" are each an equivocal thing, perhaps fitting in their meanings to either of the opposites.

For not only of God, but also of Satan, is an "angel" (messenger) spoken of;

and we call "brother" not only the good man but also the wicked one.

Scripture, in the case of the better sort, says:

"Let brothers be useful in times of necessity";

but in the case of the contrary sort, that:

"Every brother will utterly supplant with the heel."

Having set these things alongside the sequence of the discourse, and deferring the more exact contemplation concerning them to its proper place, let us now lay hold of the matters before us.

He, then, who has strengthened himself by the light that appeared, and has acquired such a brother as ally and helper, takes courage and brings to the people the words on behalf of freedom; he reminds them of their ancestral nobility, and gives counsel on how they might come out from the wretchedness of the clay and the brickmaking.

What, then, does the history teach us through these things? That he who has not, through such a discipline, prepared his word for converse with the multitude ought not to be bold in addressing his voice to the people.

For you see how, while he was still young, before he had grown so far in virtue, he was not thought trustworthy enough to become a counselor of peace to two contending men; but now he converses at once with so many myriads—the history all but crying out to you this: do not presume, in teaching, to take up the counseling of your hearers, unless through such and so great care the power for this has been brought to perfection in you.

But when the kindlier words had been spoken, and freedom set before them, and the hearers strengthened toward this desire, the enemy is provoked and intensifies the suffering for those who are obedient to the word.

Nor is this outside what happens even now.

For many of those who have received the word of the one who frees from tyranny, and have joined themselves to the proclamation, are even to this day assailed by the adversary through the onslaughts of temptations.

From these, many become more approved and more steadfast concerning the faith, being tempered by the assault of afflictions; but some of the weaker ones also collapse under such mishaps, openly uttering this—that it is more advantageous for them to remain deaf to the proclamation of freedom than, for this cause, to be subjected to such things. This indeed happened then too, when out of faint-heartedness the Israelites laid blame upon those who had promised them deliverance from slavery.

But the word will none the less cease drawing toward the good, even if, like a child, the one still infantile and imperfect in understanding shrinks back in fear before the unfamiliarity of temptations.

For this is what the harmful and destructive demon strives after against men: that the one under his power should not look toward heaven, but should stoop toward the earth and make bricks of clay within himself.

For whatever belongs to material enjoyment is altogether from earth or water—this is plain to everyone—whether it be something pursued for the belly and feasting, or whatever is seen concerning wealth.

And the mixture of these elements becomes, and is named, clay;

filling themselves with which, those who gape after the muddy pleasures never keep full the capacity receptive of pleasures, but what is always being filled becomes empty again for what flows in afterward.

For thus the brickmaker keeps throwing now this, now that, clay upon the mold that is always being emptied—which seems to me something that anyone, looking also at the desiring disposition of the soul, might easily understand as the riddle.

For he who has filled his desire in some one of the things he was eager for, if he inclines in desire toward something else, is found empty again with respect to that;

and even if he becomes full toward this, toward the other he again becomes empty and capacious.

And this does not cease being at work in us throughout, until one comes out from the material life.

But the stubble and the chaff from it, which the one who obeys the tyrant's commands is compelled to mix into the brick, are interpreted both by the divine Gospel and by the lofty voice of the Apostle—both alike having explained the chaff and the stubble as fuel for fire.

Whenever, then, one of those who excel in virtue wishes to draw away those enslaved by deceit into a philosophical and free life, he knows the one who

—by manifold methods, as the Apostle says, playing the sophist against our souls—counter-introduces against the divine law the sophistries of deceit.

These things I say with my word looking toward the Egyptian serpents—that is, toward the manifold vices of deceit—whose destruction the rod of Moses effects, concerning which the fitting things have already been moderately set forth in contemplation beforehand.

This man, then, who has acquired that invincible rod of virtue, the one that makes the sophistical rods vanish, advances by a certain way and sequence toward the greater of the wonders.

And the working of wonders does not come about with the aim of astonishing those who encounter it, but looks to the benefit of those who are being saved.

For by the same wonders of virtue the hostile is destroyed, while the kindred is increased.

First let us learn, in a more general way than the particular wonders, the aim according to the elevated sense;

then in this way it might become possible for us to fit the thought to each particular as well.

For the teaching of the truth is transformed together with the dispositions of those who receive the word.

For while the word displays the good or the evil equally to all, the one well-disposed toward what is shown has his understanding in light, but for the one set in opposition, who does not accept the looking through of his soul toward the ray of truth, the gloom of ignorance remains.

If, then, what we have understood in general in such matters is not false, neither would the particulars at all be otherwise, since the examination of the part is demonstrated together with the whole.

It is, then, no wonder that the Hebrew remains unharmed by the Egyptian evils while dwelling in the midst of the foreigners, since even now one may see the like coming to pass.

For of those in populous cities who are divided over opposing opinions, to some the stream of faith—which they draw from the divine teaching—is drinkable and translucent; but to others, who play the Egyptian through their wicked supposition, the water becomes corrupted blood.

And often the counter-sophistry of deceit attempts to turn even the Hebrews' drink into blood by the defilement of falsehood—that is, to make our word also appear to us not such as it is;

yet it would not utterly render the drink useless, even if, off-hand, it should by deceit tinge its appearance with red.

For the Hebrew drinks the true water, even if it be plausibly slandered by the adversaries, turning not at all toward the appearance of the deceit.

So too the race of frogs, that loathsome and many-voiced kind, whose life is amphibious, whose leap is creeping, whose not only sight but also the foul smell of their skin is unpleasant—which creeps into the houses and beds and storerooms of the Egyptians, but does not touch the life of the Hebrews.

For truly the destructive offspring of vice are downright kinds of frogs, brought to life out of the filthy heart of men as if out of some mire.

These frogs dwell in the houses of those who play the Egyptian according to their choice of life; they appear also on the tables and the beds, they do not keep away, and they slip into the storerooms of hidden things.

For whenever you see the filthy and licentious life, born from what is truly clay and mire, and—in imitation of the irrational, according to the form of its life—abiding accurately in neither nature, a man by nature but becoming a beast through passion, and on this account displaying that amphibious and ambiguous form of life, you will find upon him too the marks of such a disease, not on the bed only, but also on the table, and in the storerooms, and throughout the whole dwelling.

For such a one betrays his profligacy through everything, so that all easily recognize, through the things zealously pursued in the household, the life both of the licentious and of the pure—when in the one there are shown, on the plasterings of the wall, by means of art, through certain images, the kindlings of passionate pleasure, by which the nature of the disease is called to mind, the passion being poured into the soul through sight, from the dishonor of the spectacles;

but in the case of the self-controlled man, every guard and forethought that even his eye should be kept pure from passionate sights.

And the table likewise is found pure in the self-controlled man, but froggy and fleshy in the one who wallows toward the muddy life.

And if you should search out the storerooms—that is, the hidden and secret things of his very life—much more in those will you perceive a heap of frogs among the licentious.

But if the rod of virtue too is said by the history to do these things against the Egyptians, let us not be perplexed concerning the account;

for the history says also that the tyrant was hardened by God.

How then could he be condemnable, being disposed harshly and obstinately by a necessity from above? And somewhere the divine Apostle says the like, that:

—inasmuch as they did not approve of having God in their knowledge, God gave them over to passions of dishonor—speaking of those who corrupt males, and of those who behave shamefully in the dishonorable and unspeakable modes of profligacy.

But even if these things are said by divine Scripture in this way, and God thus delivers over to the passion of dishonor the one who is carried toward this, neither is Pharaoh hardened by a divine will, nor is the froggy life fashioned by virtue.

For if this were willed by the divine nature, then certainly such a purpose would have prevailed in all alike, so that no difference of virtue and vice would be seen in life; whereas in fact different people partake of life in different ways, some being set right through virtue, others flowing away into vice.

No one would reasonably reckon the differences of lives to some overriding necessities established according to the divine will, seeing that choice holds the mastery in the case of each.

Who, then, is delivered over to the passion of dishonor, it is possible to learn clearly from the Apostle:

the one who did not approve of having God in his knowledge, whom God, not avenging Himself but because He was not acknowledged by him, delivers over to the passion.

Rather, his not having acknowledged God becomes for him the cause of being dragged down into the impassioned and dishonorable life.

For just as, if someone said "the sun, not being seen, cast so-and-so into the pit," we do not reckon this—that the luminary, using anger, thrust into the pit the one who did not wish to look toward it—but rather the saying would be understood reasonably thus, that not partaking of the light is, for the one who does not see, the cause of his falling into the pit: so it would be pious to understand also the Apostle's word, that those who have not acknowledged God are given over to the passions of dishonor, and that the Egyptian tyrant was hardened by God—not as though the divine will implanted the obstinacy in Pharaoh's soul, but as though his choice, through its inclination toward vice, did not receive the word that softens the obstinacy.

So too the rod of virtue, appearing among the Egyptians, makes the Hebrew pure of the froggy life, but shows the Egyptian full of such a disease.

But there comes a time when, Moses having stretched out his hands on behalf of these too, the disappearance of the frogs takes place.

This indeed one may see coming to pass even now.

For those who have perceived the stretching out of the lawgiver's hands (and you surely understand what the riddle says to you—so that you may understand by the lawgiver the true lawgiver, and by the stretching out of the hands the One who stretched out His hands upon the cross)—those, then, who a little before were living together with these filthy and froggy reasonings, if they should look toward the One who stretched out His hands on our behalf, are set free from their wicked cohabitation, the passion being deadened and grown noisome.