On Virginity 1 part 3/5

For it is no small danger that such a one, being misled in the experience of pleasure, should suppose there is no other good than what is received through the flesh with a certain attachment, and, having turned his mind entirely away from the desire of incorporeal goods, become wholly fleshly, hunting after the pleasant in these things by every means, so that he becomes a lover of pleasure rather than a lover of God.

Since, then, on account of the weakness of nature it is not for everyone to attain the due measure in such matters, and since it is dangerous, once carried beyond that measure, to be sunk, as the Psalmist says, in the mire of the deep, it would be profitable, as the argument suggests, to pass one's life without experience of such things, lest, under the pretext of what is permitted, the passions gain entrance against the soul.

Chapter 9: That habit is hard to change in every case.

For habit is a well-nigh irresistible thing in every case, possessing great power to draw and attract the soul toward itself, and to furnish some semblance of the good in that toward which one has, through familiarity, acquired a certain disposition and attachment.

And there is nothing so much to be shunned by nature that, once it has become habitual, is not also thought worthy of zeal and to be chosen.

Proof of this argument is human life, in which, although there are so many nations, not all pursue the same things; different things are, among different peoples, accounted good and honorable, the custom prevailing in each place producing the zeal and desire for some particular thing.

And such variation may be seen not only among nations, the same practices being admired by some but reviled by others, but even within the same nation, the same city, and the same family, in which much difference can be seen arising in each from habit.

Thus brothers, having come forth into being from a single womb, have become most widely divided from one another in their pursuits and manner of life;

and this is not yet remarkable, since even each individual person, for the most part, does not hold the same judgment about the same matter, but is disposed toward each thing according to habit.

...having appeared, but having made the beginning of a squalid life out of the seemingly lawful and permitted participation in pleasures.

For once they have admitted such an experience, according to the example we gave concerning the stream, they turn the whole desiring faculty toward these things, and, channeling the impulse of their mind away from the more divine things toward what is lowly and material, they open in themselves much room for the passions, so that the movement toward the things above ceases altogether, and desire dries up, having flowed entirely toward the passions.

For it is not possible for the one who has turned his mind toward this world, taken up its cares, and busied himself with pleasing men, to become a fulfiller of the great and first commandment of the Lord, which says to love God with the whole heart and strength.

For how shall one love God with the whole heart, when he divides his heart between God and the world, and, stealing the love owed to Him alone, spends it upon human passions? For the unmarried man cares for the things of the Lord, but the one who has married cares for the things of the world.

But if the struggle against pleasures seems toilsome, let everyone take courage;

for not small, in this matter too, is the power of habit to work out, through persistence, a certain pleasure even in what seems most difficult — and a pleasure of the finest and purest kind, which it is worthy that the one who has understanding should rather embrace, than be estranged, through pettiness toward lowly things, from what is in truth great and surpasses all understanding.

Chapter 10: What is truly desirable? For how great is the loss involved in falling away from the possession of that which is truly good — what argument could set it forth? With what excess of thought could one make use? How could one demonstrate and reduce to description that which is both ineffable in word and incomprehensible in thought? For if someone has purified the eye of his heart to such a degree as to be able somewhat to see what is promised by the Lord in the beatitudes, he will condemn every human utterance as having no power to represent what has been perceived;

but if someone is still seated among material passions, and, as though by some rheum of a passionate disposition, has the soul's power of vision plastered over, then likewise vain is all the strength of words.

For among those who lack perception, it comes to the same thing whether one diminishes it through argument or exalts it through wonders — just as, with regard to the ray of the sun, for one who has never from birth beheld the light, the explanation of light through words becomes idle and useless;

for it is not possible to make the brilliance of the ray shine forth through hearing.

So too, with regard to the intelligible and true light, each one has need of his own eyes, that he may behold that beauty which he who has seen it, by some divine gift and inspiration, holds as an ineffable astonishment in the unutterable secrecy of his conscience;

but he who has not seen it will not even know the loss of that of which he has been deprived.

...ineffable? We have not learned words of our own capable of signifying that beauty.

There is no example among existing things of that which is sought;

it is impossible for it to be shown by comparison.

For who compares the sun to a small spark, or sets a brief drop against the infinity of the deep? For the ratio which the small drop bears to the depths, or the tiny spark to the great ray of the sun, is the very ratio in which all things admired as beautiful among men stand to that beauty which is contemplated about the first good and that which is beyond every good.

And this is, as my argument holds, that every man who entrusts to speech the interpretation of that ineffable light is truly a liar—not out of hatred of the truth, but through the weakness of the telling.

For as to sensible beauty—so much of it as moves about below, around our life, whether appearing in lifeless matter or in ensouled bodies through some fine coloring—our perceptive faculty is sufficient both to admire it and to receive it and to make it known to another, the account of such beauty being inscribed, as it were in an image, through the writing of words;

but that whose archetype escapes comprehension—how could speech bring it before sight, finding no device of description, having no color to name, no shape, no size, no fair share of form, nor any such trifle at all? For that which is altogether formless and shapeless, alien to all measure of size, and set far off from everything that is contemplated about body and sense—how could anyone come to know it through the things apprehended by sense alone? Yet we must not on this account despair of this desire, because it appears loftier than our grasp; but the greater the object sought has been shown by our argument to be, the more must the mind be lifted up and rise together with the greatness of that which is sought, so as not to be altogether excluded from participation in the good;

for the danger is no small one, lest, because the conception concerning him is altogether too lofty and utterly ineffable, we slip away, having no familiar footing on which to ground our understanding of these things.

Our conception might come about for us in this way:

it surveys the qualities of the soul, together with those manifested in the body, and examines them both jointly and each by itself;

for it separates each of them individually by reason, and again considers their common concurrence and conspiring together with regard to the constitution of the subject.

So, then, in the search for the beautiful likewise: he whose understanding is imperfect, whenever he sees some thing over which the appearance of a certain beauty is spread, will suppose that very thing to be beautiful by its own nature—whatever draws his sense through pleasure—and inquires into nothing further beyond this;

but he who has purified the eye of his soul, and is capable of seeing such things, letting go the matter that underlies the form of beauty, will use what is seen as a kind of step toward the contemplation of intelligible beauty, by participation in which all other things become, and are called, beautiful.

And if anyone should wish to examine precisely the cause of erring and depraved suppositions, I do not think he would find any other than this: that our organs of perception have not been exactly trained for the discernment of the beautiful from what is not such.

Some have defined the beautiful in terms of honors, glories, and positions of power;

and there are some who have become infatuated with certain arts and sciences;

while those more slavish than these make the throat and the belly the criteria of the good.

But if, standing apart from material notions and from attachments to visible things, they had sought after the simple, immaterial, and formless nature of the beautiful, they would not have gone astray in the choice of their desires, nor would they have been so deceived by such delusions as, even while seeing the transience of the pleasure found in these things, not to be led thereby to a disdain of them.

This, then, would be for us the way that leads to the discovery of the beautiful:

that, transcending all the other things which draw the desires of men—things thought to be beautiful and for that reason deemed worthy of some zeal and acceptance—as base and transient, we should spend our desiring faculty on none of them, nor yet keep it shut up idle and unmoved within ourselves, but rather, having purified it from attachment to base things, lead it up to where sense does not reach, so as neither to marvel at the beauty of heaven, nor the rays of the luminaries, nor any other of the beautiful things that appear, but through the beauty contemplated in all these to be led by the hand toward the desire of that beauty of which the heavens declare the glory, and the firmament, and all creation proclaims the knowledge.

For thus the soul, ascending and leaving behind everything it apprehends as lesser than what it seeks, would come to be in contemplation of that majesty which is raised up far above the heavens.

It is customary for Scripture to call this the power of the Spirit—whether because this bird is without gall, or also because it is hostile to foul odor, as those who have observed such things report.

Therefore he who has removed himself from all bitterness and fleshly foul odor, and has been raised above all things low and grovelling—indeed, has become higher than the whole world by means of the aforementioned wing—that one will find the only thing worthy of desire, and he himself will become beautiful by drawing near to the Beautiful;

and having come to be in him, he will be established as radiant and light-formed by participation in the true light.

For just as, at night, the sudden flashes of the air, which some call shooting stars, are said by those who have philosophized about these things to be nothing other than air poured up by the force of certain winds into the aetherial region—for they say that this fiery trail is inscribed in the heaven when the wind is set aflame in the aether—so, then, just as this air around the earth, driven upward by the force of the wind, becomes light-formed, being altered by the purity of the aether, so too the human mind, having left behind this turbid and squalid life, when it has become pure in the power of the Spirit and become light-formed, and is mingled with the true and lofty purity, itself also shines forth within it and is filled with rays and becomes light, according to the promise of the Lord, who declared that the righteous would shine after the likeness of the sun.

This we also see happening on earth, in a mirror or water or something else capable of shining forth by reason of its smoothness;

for whenever any of these receives the ray of the sun, it also produces another ray of its own, which it would not do if the clean and shining quality of its surface were rendered useless by some dirt.

So whether we should go on high, leaving behind the darkness around the earth, and there become light-formed by drawing near to the true light of Christ; or whether the true light, which also shines in the darkness, should come down even to us and we should become light—as the Lord somewhere says to his disciples—unless some dirt from wickedness, plastered upon the heart, should dim the grace of our light.

Perhaps, then, our argument has gently led us, through these examples, to the conception of our alteration toward what is better, and it has been shown that it is not possible for the soul to be joined to the incorruptible God in any other way than by itself likewise becoming, so far as possible, pure through incorruption—so that like might apprehend like—setting itself, as it were, as a mirror beneath the purity of God, so that by participation in and reflection of the archetypal beauty, that beauty itself might be formed in it.

If, then, someone is of such a kind as to have already left behind all human things—whether bodies or possessions, or pursuits in the sciences or arts, or whatever is regarded as excellent in customs and laws (for it is around such things that the error in the understanding of the beautiful occurs, in which sense becomes the criterion)—such a one will hold erotically and desiringly only toward that which does not have its beauty from elsewhere, nor is ever beautiful in relation to something else, but is beautiful of itself and through itself, and is such in itself, always being beautiful and never having become beautiful, nor ever going to cease being so, but always remaining the same, beyond all addition and increase, and incapable of receiving any turning or alteration.

To one, then, who has purified all the powers of his soul from every form of vice, I make bold to say that that which alone is beautiful by nature becomes manifest.

This is the capacity for the apprehension of that light; and true virginity, and the zeal concerning incorruption, come to rest in this very goal: to be able, through it, to see God;

for that the God of all is properly, primarily, and alone beautiful, good, and pure, no one is so blind in mind as not to perceive it even of himself.

Chapter 12: That he who has purified himself will behold the divine beauty in himself;

in which also the cause of evil is discussed.

But this, perhaps, no one is ignorant of;

but it is likely that some seek to discover, if it be possible, some sort of method and course of training that will guide us by the hand toward this.

The divine books are indeed full of such guidance, and many of the saints hold forth their own life, like a lamp, before those who walk according to God.

But it is possible for each person to gather richly, from both testaments, the precepts bearing on the purpose now before us, drawn from the God-inspired Scripture;

for much is available to take without stint from the Prophets and the Law, and much too from the evangelical and apostolic traditions.

As for whatever we ourselves might also devise, following the divine utterances, it is this:

This rational and intelligent living being, man, having come to be the work and image of the divine and undefiled nature—for so it is written concerning him in the account of the world's origin, that God made him according to the image of God—this living being, then, man, did not have within himself, according to nature or as united in his very essence, the passible and perishable at his first creation—for it would not have been possible for the principle of the image to be preserved, if the represented beauty stood contrary to the archetype—but the passion was introduced into him later, after his first formation.

He was image and likeness, as has been said, of the power that reigns over all beings, and for this reason, in the self-determination of free choice too, he had likeness to him who has authority over all, being enslaved to no external necessity, but governed by his own judgment as seemed good to him, and choosing by his own authority what pleased him.

But this calamity, by which the human race is now held fast, he himself, being led astray by deceit, drew upon himself of his own will, having himself become the inventor of evil, not finding it as something already made by God;

for God did not make death, but man in a certain manner became the founder and creator of evil.

For just as participation in the light of the sun lies open in common to all who possess the power of sight, and yet someone, if he should so wish, can, by closing his eye, place himself outside the reception of the light—not because the sun withdraws elsewhere and thus brings darkness upon that person, but because the man, by the closing of his eyelids, has walled off his eye from the ray (for since the visual power is unable to be active when the eyes are closed, it is entirely necessary that the inactivity of sight becomes, as it were, an operation of darkness, brought about voluntarily in the man through his own not-seeing)—

or as if someone, building himself a house, should cut no passage at all for the light to enter within, he will necessarily live in darkness, having of his own will shut off the entrance to the rays—

so he innovated, fashioning by his own choice the experience of evil in the turning away from virtue.

For evil, considered as lying outside of choice and as beheld in its own subsistence, is nothing at all in the nature of existing things.

For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, and all things that God made are exceedingly good.

But since, in the manner described, the sequence of sinning corrupted the life of men, and, from a small occasion, evil was poured out into man without limit, and that god-formed beauty of the soul, which had come to be in imitation of the archetype, was blackened, like iron, by the rust of evil, it no longer at that point preserved the grace of the image proper and natural to it, but was transformed into the disgrace of sin.

Whence man, this great and precious being, as he was named by Scripture, having fallen from his proper dignity—just as those who, through a slip, are cast down into mire, and, having smeared their own form with clay, become unrecognizable even to their acquaintances—so he too, having fallen into the mire of sin, lost his being the image of the incorruptible God, and put on instead, through sin, a corruptible and clay-like image; which our argument counsels him to put off, washing it away, as it were, with the pure water of a virtuous manner of life, so that, once the earthly covering has been removed, the beauty of the soul may again be manifested.

And the putting off of the alien is the return to what is proper to oneself according to nature; and it is not possible to attain this otherwise than by becoming again such as one was created at the beginning;

for likeness to the divine is not our own work, nor an achievement of human power, but this belongs to the great generosity of God, who, immediately together with the first creation, granted to nature its likeness to himself.

But the task of human effort would amount only to this: to purify the filth that has come upon it from vice, and to bring to light again the beauty concealed within the soul.

I think the Lord teaches this same doctrine also in the Gospel, saying to those able to hear the wisdom spoken in mystery, that 'The kingdom of God is within you.' For this word, I think, shows that the good of God is not separated from our nature, nor removed far off from those who choose to seek him, but is always in each one, unknown indeed and hidden whenever it is choked by the cares and pleasures of life, but found again whenever we turn our mind toward it.

And if it is necessary to confirm this reasoning also by other means, I think the Lord suggests this to us also in the search for the lost coin: that there is no benefit at all from the rest of the virtues, which the word has called 'coins,' even should they all happen to be present, so long as that one coin is absent, to the soul thus bereaved of it.

then, in her own house, that is, within oneself, to seek the lost coin.

By 'dung,' I think, we must understand the filth of the flesh, which, once swept out and cleansed away through diligent attention to one's life, allows that which is sought to become manifest—whereupon it is fitting that the soul which has found it should rejoice, and take her neighbors along into fellowship of the joy.

...our hearts alone; then they will be turned toward that divine joy and gladness, gazing intently upon the ineffable beauty of what has been found.

'Rejoice with me,' she says, 'for I have found the coin which I had lost.' And the neighbors—or rather, the fellow-dwelling powers of the soul that rejoice at the finding of the divine coin: the rational faculty, the desiring faculty, and the disposition that arises through grief and anger, and whatever other powers are contemplated about the soul—these might fittingly also be reckoned as friends; and it is likely that all of these rejoice in the Lord, whenever they all look toward the beautiful and the good and work all things for the glory of God, no longer becoming weapons of sin.

If, then, this is the conception of the discovery of that which is sought—the restoration to its original state of the divine image now hidden beneath the filth of the flesh—let us become that which the first-formed man was at the beginning of life.

What, then, was he? Naked of the covering of dead skins, beholding the face of God with boldness, not yet judging the beautiful by taste and sight, but delighting only in the Lord, and making use, for this purpose, of the helper who had been given to him—just as the divine Scripture points out, that he did not know her before this, until he was exiled from paradise, and until she, in place of the sin into which she, deceived, had fallen, was condemned to the punishment of birth pangs.

What, then, was the sequence? Pleasure, having then arisen through deceit, was the beginning of the fall.

Then shame and fear followed upon the passion of pleasure, and no longer daring, thereafter, to be before the eyes of the Creator, but hiding beneath leaves and shadows.

Chapter 13: That the beginning of care for oneself is release from marriage.

If, then, we are to depart from here and come to be with Christ, it is fitting that our departure begin again from the last point—just as those who have been estranged from their own people, when they turn back to the place from which they set out, first leave behind that place which they last reached in their going forth.

Since, then, marriage is the last stage of the separation from the life in paradise, our argument suggests that this be the first thing left behind, as it were a final resting-station, by those who are departing toward Christ;

then to withdraw from the hardship connected with the earth, in which man was settled after sin;

next, beyond this, to come to be outside the coverings of the flesh, having stripped off the garments of skin, that is, the mindset of the flesh, and having renounced all the hidden things of shame, no longer to be shaded beneath the fig tree of this bitter life, but, having cast away the coverings drawn from these transient leaves of life, to come once more before the eyes of the Creator; to repel the deceit that comes through taste and sight, and to have as counselor no longer the venomous serpent, but the commandment of God alone;

which is nothing else, as my argument holds, than to be with God alone, and to have this delight unceasing and continuous, and not to mix into the enjoyment of the beautiful those things which draw one away toward the contrary.

And if one may venture to say it, perhaps in this way someone might again be caught up from this world, which lies in the evil one, into paradise, where Paul also, having come to be, both heard and saw the unspeakable and unseen things, which it is not permitted for a man to utter.

But since paradise is a dwelling place of the living, not receiving those who have been deadened through sin, while we are fleshly and mortal, sold under sin, how is it possible for one held fast by the dominion of death to come to be in the land of the living? By what manner and by what device might one discover a way to get outside this power? But the guidance of the gospel is altogether sufficient for this too.

We have heard, then, the Lord saying to Nicodemus, that 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh;'

'and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' And we know that the flesh, on account of sin, is liable to death, while the Spirit is of God, and is both incorruptible and life-giving and immortal.

Just as, then, together with birth according to the flesh there is altogether laid up also the dissolving power for that which is born, so likewise the Spirit deposits in those who are born through it the life-giving power.

What, then, arises from what has been said? That we, having stood apart from life according to the flesh — which death altogether follows — should seek out such a life as no longer draws after it the sequel of death;

and this is the life lived in virginity.

And that these things are true will become more evident once a few points are added.

For who does not know that the work of bodily union is the fashioning of mortal bodies, whereas from communion with the Spirit, life and incorruption accrue to those thus joined, in place of children? And it is fitting to apply here the apostolic saying, that the mother of such children is saved through this childbearing, rejoicing, just as the psalmist proclaimed in the divine hymns, saying:

'He who makes the barren woman to dwell in a house, a mother rejoicing over her children.' For truly the virgin mother rejoices, she who bears immortal children through the Spirit, called 'barren' by the prophet on account of her chastity.

Chapter 14: That virginity is superior to the dominion of death.

Therefore such a life is to be preferred by those who possess understanding, since it is superior to the dominion of death.

For bodily procreation — and let no one take offense at this statement — becomes for human beings an occasion not so much of life as of death;

for from generation corruption takes its beginning, and those who through virginity have ceased from this have set within themselves a boundary marking off death, having by their own act prevented it from advancing further, and having stationed themselves as a kind of frontier between death and life, have checked its onward course;

not consenting to become, in the service of a corruptible life, even an instrument of mortal succession.

For in this the continuity of the sequence of corrupting and dying was cut off, which had held sway continuously from the first-formed man up to the life of the one who lives in virginity;

for it was not possible for death ever to lie idle, so long as human generation was being effected through marriage.

But, journeying alongside all the generations that had gone before, and passing through together with those ever coming into life, death found virginity to be the boundary of its own operation, a boundary which it is impossible to pass beyond;

For just as, in the case of the God-bearing Mary, death, which had reigned from Adam even until her, since it came upon her as well, struck as against a rock upon the fruit of virginity, and was shattered against her, so also in every soul that passes through the life in the flesh by means of virginity, the might of death is in some manner shattered and dissolved, having none in whom to fix its sting.