雜記（八卷） 第 1 章 第 26/42 段

'And I, brethren, was not able to speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to fleshly ones, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food;'

'nor indeed are you able to receive it even now.'

'For you are still fleshly.'

If, then, milk has been said by the Apostle to be the food of infants, and solid food that of the perfect, milk will be understood as catechesis, as it were the first food of the soul, while solid food is the epoptic, visionary contemplation.

These are the flesh and blood of the Word — that is, the comprehension of the divine power and essence.

'Taste and see that the Lord is good,' it says.

For thus he imparts himself to those who partake of such food in a more spiritual manner, at that time when the soul already nourishes itself, according to Plato, that lover of truth.

For the eating and drinking of the divine Word is the knowledge of the divine essence.

having sacrificed not a pig, but some great and inscrutable victim — thus, it says, one must seek concerning God.

But the Apostle also writes, 'Christ our Passover has been sacrificed,' a truly inscrutable victim, the Son of God being consecrated on our behalf.

But the sacrifice acceptable to God is the unrepented separation of the body and its passions.

This is truly, in reality, genuine piety toward God.

And is it not fittingly for this reason that philosophy was called by Socrates 'a practice of death'?

For he who neither sets sight before him in his thinking nor draws upon any of the other senses, but with the mind alone, in its purity, engages with realities, pursues true philosophy.

This, then, is also the purpose of the five-year silence which Pythagoras enjoins upon his disciples, so that, having turned away from things sensible, they might contemplate the divine with the naked mind alone.

Such things did the foremost among the Greeks philosophize, having learned them from Moses.

For he commands that the whole burnt offerings, once flayed, be divided limb by limb, since it is necessary that the gnostic soul, made bare of the material hide, apart from bodily foolishness and all the passions which empty and false conceptions engender, having stripped off its fleshly desires, be consecrated to the light.

But most men, clothed in the mortal like snails, and curled up ball-like about their own intemperances like hedgehogs, hold such opinions concerning the blessed and incorruptible God as they hold concerning themselves.

It has escaped their notice, even though they happen to be near us, how countless are the gifts God has bestowed upon us, of which he himself has no share: being himself without origin, yet giving origin; being without need of nourishment, yet giving nourishment; being ever in the same equality, yet giving growth; and giving a good old age and a good death, while he himself is deathless and unaging.

Wherefore let no one suppose that hands and feet and mouth and eyes and comings-in and goings-out and wraths and threats, as spoken of among the Hebrews, are passions of God — by no means; rather, some of these names are to be allegorized more reverently, which indeed, as our discourse proceeds, we shall clarify at the fitting time.

'Truly wisdom is the all-healing remedy for everything,' Callimachus writes in his Epigrams.

'One man is wise through another, both of old and now,' says Bacchylides in his Paeans.

For it is not the easiest thing to find the gates of ineffable words.

Fittingly, then, Isocrates in the Panathenaicus, having posed the question 'Whom, then, do I call educated?', proceeds to add:

First, those who deal well with the affairs that befall them day by day, and who have a judgment that hits the mark of the occasions and is able, for the most part, to conjecture what is advantageous;

then, those who always converse fittingly and justly with those who come near them, and who bear the unpleasantness and burdensomeness of others easily and readily, while making themselves as light and as moderate as possible to those with whom they associate;

further, those who master their pleasures and are not overly overcome by misfortunes, but conduct themselves manfully within them, worthily of the nature which we happen to share;

and fourth, which is greatest of all, those who are not corrupted by prosperity, nor put beside themselves, nor made arrogant, but who remain within the rank of those who think soundly.

Then he adds the crowning point of the discourse:

'But those who have the disposition of soul well attuned not merely to one of these things, but to all of them together — these, I say, are both prudent and perfect men, and possess all the virtues.'

Do you see how even the Greeks extol the gnostic life as divine, although they do not know it in the way one ought to know it? But what knowledge itself is, they do not know even in a dream.

If, then, it has been agreed among us that knowledge is our rational food, then truly blessed, according to Scripture, are those who hunger and thirst for the truth, for they shall be filled with everlasting food.

Quite marvelously, Euripides, that philosopher of the stage, is found to be in harmony with what we have said above, hinting, somehow — I know not how — at Father and Son together, through the following lines:

'To you, ruler of all, I bring a drink-offering and a cake, whether you love to be called Zeus or Hades;'

'receive from me an inscrutable sacrifice, a libation full of the offering of all fruits.'

For Christ is the whole burnt offering on our behalf, an inscrutable victim.

And that he speaks of him, the Savior, without knowing it, he will make clear by what he adds next:

'For among the heavenly gods you wield the scepter of Zeus, and among those below you share the rule of Hades,'

'send up into the light the souls of the dead, for those who wish to learn beforehand whence their trials sprang, what is the root of evils, and to which of the blessed ones they must offer sacrifice to find rest from their toils.'

Not unreasonably, then, among the mysteries practiced by the Greeks the purifications come first, just as among the barbarians there is the washing.

After these come the lesser mysteries, which have as their basis a certain instruction and preparation for what is to come, while the greater mysteries concern the totality of things, where there is no longer anything left to learn, but only to behold and to comprehend both nature and reality.

We might take the purificatory method to be confession, and the beholding method to be analysis, advancing toward the primary conception, making our starting point through analysis from the things underlying it—first removing from body its natural qualities, then taking away the dimension of depth, then that of breadth, and after these that of length;

for what remains is a point, that is, so to speak, a unit having position; and if we take away from it its position, then unity itself is conceived.

If, then, having removed all that belongs to bodies and to what are called incorporeal things, we should cast ourselves upon the greatness of Christ, and thence advance into the immensity by holiness, we might in some way draw near to the conception of the Almighty—not knowing what he is, but having come to know what he is not.

As for shape, and motion or rest, or throne, or place, or a right hand or a left, of the Father of all things—these must not be thought of at all, although indeed such things are also written.

But what each of these expressions intends to signify will be shown in its proper place.

The first cause, then, is not in a place, but is above place and time and name and conception.

For this reason Moses too says, 'Show yourself to me,' most clearly hinting that God can neither be taught by men nor uttered in speech, but is known only by the power that comes from him.

For the search itself is formless and invisible, but the grace of knowledge comes from him through the Son.

Solomon will bear witness to us most clearly, speaking somewhat as follows:

'Man's prudence is not in me, but God gives me wisdom';

Accordingly, Moses, allegorizing divine prudence, called it the tree of life planted in paradise—which paradise may also be the world, in which have grown all the things of creation.

In this world too the Word blossomed and bore fruit, having become flesh, and gave life to those who tasted of his goodness, since not even without the tree has knowledge come to us;

for our life was hung up for our faith.

And Solomon again says:

'It is a tree of immortality to those who hold fast to it';

'Behold, I set before your face life and death: to love the Lord God, and to walk in his ways, and to hear his voice, and to trust in life';

'but if you transgress the statutes and judgments which I have given you, you shall utterly perish';

'for this is your life and the length of your days, to love the Lord your God.'

Abraham, having come to the place which God told him, on the third day, looking up, sees the place from afar;

for the first day is that of seeing beautiful things through sight, the second is the soul's desire for the best things, and on the third the mind clearly discerns spiritual things, the eyes of the understanding having been opened by the Teacher who rose again on the third day.

And the three days might also be the mystery of the seal, through which one truly comes to believe in God.

Consistently, then, he sees the place from afar;

for the region of God is hard to attain—which Plato has called the region of the Ideas, having taken from Moses the notion that it is a place, as being that which encompasses all things and the totality of things.

Abraham, because he is still within the realm of becoming, is initiated directly through an angel.

Hence the apostle says, 'We see now as through a mirror,' but then 'face to face,' referring to those pure and incorporeal apprehensions of the understanding alone.

It is possible also, in dialectic, to divine something of God, if one attempts, apart from all the senses, through reason, to press on toward what each thing really is, and not to depart from the things that exist, until, ascending to what lies above, one grasps by the very act of understanding what the Good itself is.

arriving, according to Plato, at the very limit of the intelligible realm.

Again, Moses, not permitting altars and sacred precincts to be built in many places, but establishing one single temple of God, was proclaiming the world as only-begotten (as Basilides says), and the One—though this is no longer as Basilides holds—was announcing God.

And because the Gnostic Moses does not confine the unconfinable within a place, he dedicated no image at all within the venerable temple, showing that God is invisible and uncircumscribed, yet in some way leading the Hebrews toward a conception of God through the honor paid to the Name associated with the temple.

But indeed, the Word, in forbidding both the construction of sacred buildings and all sacrifices, hints that the Almighty is not contained within anything, through the following words:

'What house will you build for me?' says the Lord;

'Heaven is my throne...' and so forth.

And likewise concerning sacrifices:

'I do not desire the blood of bulls and the fat of lambs,' and whatever else the Holy Spirit forbids through the prophet in addition to these.

Most excellently, then, Euripides too agrees with these things, writing:

'What house, fashioned by builders, could enclose the divine form within folds of walls?' And likewise concerning sacrifices he says:

'For God, if he is truly God, needs nothing';

'these are the wretched tales told by poets.'

For it was not out of need, says Plato, that God made the world, so that he might reap honors from men and from the other gods and demons, as though gaining some kind of revenue from creation—from us, the smoke of sacrifices, and from gods and demons, their own respective services.

Most instructively, then, Paul says in the Acts of the Apostles: 'The God who made the world and all things in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all life and breath and all things.'

And Zeno also, the founder of the Stoic sect, says in his book the Republic that neither temples nor images ought to be made;

for no man-made construction is worthy of the gods, and he does not fear to write, in these very words, as follows:

'There will be no need at all to build temples';

'for one must consider nothing of little worth to be holy and sacred';

'and the work of builders and artisans is nothing of much worth or holiness.'

Reasonably, then, Plato too, knowing the world to be the temple of God, designated for his citizens a specific place in the city where their images were to be set up, but forbade any private individual to possess images of the gods.

'Let no one, then,' he says, 'consecrate temples to the gods in any other way';

'for gold and silver, both privately and in temples in other cities, is a possession that provokes envy';

'ivory, coming from a body that the soul has left, is not a pure offering';

'iron and bronze are instruments of war';

'but of wood, let one dedicate whatever single piece one wishes, and likewise of stone, for the common shrines.'

Reasonably, then, in his great Epistle he says: it is by no means to be expressed in words as the other branches of learning are, but from much converse concerning the matter itself and from living together with it, suddenly, as a light kindled by a leaping fire, it is born in the soul and thereafter nourishes itself.

Are these not similar to what was said by the prophet Zephaniah? 'And a spirit took me up and carried me into the fifth heaven, and I beheld angels called lords, and their diadem was set upon them in the Holy Spirit, and the throne of each of them was seven times the light of the rising sun, dwelling in temples of salvation and hymning the ineffable, most high God.'

'For to find the father and maker of this universe is a task, and having found him, it is impossible to declare him to all.'

'For it is by no means to be expressed in words as the other branches of learning are,' says Plato, the lover of truth.

For he had heard very well that the all-wise Moses, going up the mountain—for the holy contemplation, to the summit of intelligible things—necessarily commands that the whole people should not go up together with him;

and when Scripture says, 'And Moses entered into the thick darkness where God was,' this shows to those capable of understanding that God is invisible and ineffable, while the thick darkness truly is the unbelief and ignorance of the many, which is carried as a screen before the radiance of truth.

And Orpheus, the theologian, having also profited from this, said in turn:

'He is one, self-complete; all things have been made the offspring of the One' (or 'have their nature from the One,' for it is written this way as well); he then adds:

'no mortal beholds him, but he himself beholds all';

'for a cloud is fixed about him';

'for all mortals have but small mortal pupils in their eyes, since flesh and bones have grown fast upon them.'

The apostle will bear witness to what has been said, saying that he knows a man in Christ who was caught up to the third heaven, and from there into paradise, who heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter—thus hinting at the ineffability of God: not adding the phrase 'not lawful' in the sense of a law and fear attached to some commandment, but signifying that the divine is unutterable by human power, since indeed it is only beyond the third heaven that it begins to be spoken, as is fitting, to those who there initiate into the mysteries the souls that have been chosen.

For I know also that in Plato—since Scripture, according to the promises made at the outset, is for now deferring for me, until the right time, the many examples drawn from barbarian philosophy—many heavens are conceived of.

Having raised the question in the Timaeus, then, whether one should suppose there are several worlds or just this one, he is indifferent about the names, calling it synonymously both 'world' and 'heaven.'

But the wording is as follows:

Have we, then, rightly said that there is one heaven, or would it have been more correct to say that there are many and infinite heavens? One—if indeed it is to have been fashioned according to the pattern.

But also in the Letter of the Romans to the Corinthians [it is written]: 'the ocean'

is written to be impassable to men, and the worlds that lie beyond it.

Consequently, then, the noble apostle again exclaims: 'O the depth of the riches and wisdom ... and knowledge of God!'

And was this not perhaps what the prophet was hinting at when he commanded that unleavened cakes baked in ashes be made, signifying that the truly sacred word—mystical concerning the Unbegotten and his powers—must be kept hidden?

Confirming these things, the apostle in the Letter to the Corinthians has openly said:

Yet we speak wisdom among the perfect—wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are being brought to nothing;

but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden,

unto the full knowledge of the mystery of God in Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Our Savior himself seals these things, speaking somewhat as follows:

To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven

And again the Gospel says that our Savior spoke the word to the apostles in a mystery:

For indeed the prophecy concerning him says:

He will open his mouth in parables, and will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world

And already, too, through the parable about the leaven, the Lord makes the concealment clear:

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until the whole was leavened.

For either it means that the tripartite soul is saved through obedience, by reason of the spiritual power that has been hidden within it in accordance with faith; or it means that the strength of the word given to us, being vigorous and powerful, secretly and invisibly draws to itself everyone who has received it and possessed it within himself, and gathers his whole constitution into unity.

But the hidden measure of understanding is most difficult to perceive, which alone holds the boundaries of all things.

For the divine, as the poet of Acragas says, cannot be approached so as to be within reach of our eyes, or grasped by hands, by which the greatest highway of persuasion falls upon the mind of men.

No one has ever seen God;

the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known—calling the invisible and ineffable [depth] the 'bosom' of God;

And hence some have called it 'the deep,' as though it encompassed and enfolded all things within its bosom, being unattainable and boundless.

Indeed, this discourse concerning God is the most difficult of all to handle.

For since the beginning of every matter is hard to discover, surely the first and most venerable Beginning is altogether hard to demonstrate—that Beginning which is also the cause for all other things both of coming into being and, once come to be, of continuing to be.

For how could that be expressed in words which is neither genus nor differentia nor species nor individual nor number, nor yet any accident nor that to which anything is accidental?

Nor indeed could one rightly call him 'a whole';

for 'the whole' is ranked in terms of magnitude, whereas he is the Father of all wholes.

Nor, again, may one speak of any parts belonging to him;

for the One is indivisible, and therefore also infinite—not understood as unable to be traversed, but as having no extension and no limit; and hence also without shape and without name.

And even if at times we name it, we do not properly call it 'the One,' or 'the Good,' or 'Mind,' or 'Being itself,' or 'Father,' or 'God,' or 'Demiurge,' or 'Lord'—when we speak thus, we are not uttering its name; rather, out of our perplexity we make use of these good names, so that the mind may have something on which to rest, instead of wandering aimlessly among other things.

For it is not any single [name] that indicates God, but all of them taken together that point to the power of the Almighty;

for things spoken of are expressible either from what belongs to them or from their relation to one another, but none of these can be taken with reference to God.

But neither is he apprehended by demonstrative knowledge;

for such knowledge is constituted out of things that are prior and better known, whereas nothing exists prior to the Unbegotten.

It remains, then, to apprehend the Unknown by divine grace and by the word that comes from him alone—just as Luke, too, in the Acts of the Apostles, records Paul saying:

Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious;

for as I passed through and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar on which was inscribed:

'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you.

Everything, then, that falls under a name is something generated, whether they [the philosophers] wish it or not.

Whether, then, it is the Father himself who draws to himself everyone who has lived a pure life and has arrived at a conception of the blessed and incorruptible nature, or whether it is our own free will which, having come to knowledge of the Good, leaps and bounds beyond the marked-out limits—as the trainers say—yet not apart from the special grace does the soul take wing, rise up, and lift itself above the things above it, laying aside all that weighs it down and rendering it back to its kindred [nature].

And Plato too, in the Meno, says that virtue is god-given, as the following words show:

From this reasoning, then, O Meno, virtue appears to us to come to those to whom it comes by divine dispensation.

Does it not seem to you that the gnostic disposition, which does not come to everyone, has been darkly hinted at as a divine portion? And he adds more clearly:

But if, in this whole discourse, we have inquired rightly, virtue would be neither by nature nor teachable, but comes by divine dispensation—not apart from understanding—to those to whom it comes.

God-given, then, is Wisdom, being a power of the Father; she exhorts our free will, welcomes our faith, and rewards the diligence of our choice with the highest fellowship.

And indeed I shall now set before you Plato himself, openly deeming it right to believe the children of god:

of those who know their own forebears

It is impossible, then, to disbelieve the children of the gods, even though they speak without probable or necessary proofs.

I do not think it could be more clearly attested even among the Greeks, that our Savior and those anointed unto prophecy—the latter proclaimed as children of God, the former, the Lord, being his true and genuine Son—are truthful witnesses concerning things divine;

wherefore he [Plato] also added that one must believe them, since they are inspired by god.

And even if, in rather tragic fashion, someone should declare disbelief, saying:

'It was not Zeus who proclaimed these things to me'—yet let him know that it is God himself who, through the Son, has proclaimed the Scriptures.

And trustworthy is he who declares what belongs to his own house, since, as the Lord says, no one has known the Father except the Son, and he to whomever the Son may reveal him.

One must, then, believe him even according to Plato's own principle, even if it is proclaimed and declared, both through the Old and through the New Testament, without probable and necessary proofs.

'For if you do not believe,' says the Lord, 'you will die in your sins;'

'he who believes has eternal life.'

Blessed, then, are all who have put their trust in him.

Trust is something greater than faith;

for whenever one knows that the Son of God is our teacher, he is confident that his teaching is true.

And just as, according to Empedocles, learning increases the understanding, so confidence in the Lord increases faith.

We say, at any rate, that it belongs to the same people both to disparage philosophy and to run down faith, to praise injustice, and to count blessed a life lived according to desire.

Now faith, even though it is a voluntary assent of the soul, is nevertheless a worker of good things and a foundation of righteous conduct.

And even if Aristotle should lay it down as a technical distinction—teaching that 'making' applies also to irrational animals and to inanimate things, while 'doing' belongs to men alone—let him then call to account those who speak of the God of the universe as 'Maker.'

And he [Aristotle] says that what is done is so either as good or as necessary.

To do wrong, then, is not a good (for no one does wrong except for the sake of something else), and of necessary things none is voluntary;

to do wrong, then, is voluntary; so that it is not necessary either.

But among the base, it is those who are most in earnest who differ most, both in their preferences and in their vulgar desires.

For all wickedness of soul goes together with lack of self-control, and he who acts because of passion acts because of lack of self-control and wickedness.

It occurs to me, then, on every occasion, to marvel at that divine utterance:

He who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other way, that man is a thief and a robber.

But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

Then, explaining further, the Lord says:

I am the door of the sheep.

It is necessary, then, that those who have learned the truth through Christ be saved, even if they happen to have philosophized in Greek philosophy.

For now it has been clearly shown, that which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, has now been revealed.

For the impression of one almighty God has always been naturally present among all who think rightly, and the majority — even those who have not become wholly shameless toward the truth — have laid hold of the eternal benefit that comes according to divine providence.

In general, then, Xenocrates of Chalcedon does not despair of the notion of the divine existing even in irrational animals, and Democritus, even if he does not wish to, will admit it, by the logical consequence of his own doctrines;

for he holds that the very same images, falling upon both men and irrational animals, proceed from the divine substance.

Far be it, then, that man should be devoid of a notion of the divine, seeing that he is even recorded to have partaken of the divine breath at his creation, having shared in a purer substance than the other animals.

Hence the followers of Pythagoras say that the mind comes to men by a divine allotment, just as Plato and Aristotle also acknowledge.

But we say that the Holy Spirit is additionally breathed into the one who has believed, whereas the followers of Plato hold that mind, existing in the soul as an effluence of the divine portion, and the soul in turn dwell in the body.

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

But the Spirit is not in each of us as a part of God.

But how this distribution takes place, and what exactly the Holy Spirit is, will be shown by us in the treatise On Prophecy and in the treatise On the Soul.

But, according to Heraclitus, it is a good unbelief that hides the depths of knowledge; for through unbelief they escape being known.

But the following points must be rendered in turn, and the Greek theft from the barbarian philosophy must now be demonstrated more clearly.

For the Stoics say that God is a body and, in substance, spirit, just as, of course, they also say of the soul.

All these things you will find set forth plainly in the Scriptures.

Do not, for now, take their allegories to mean what the truth handed down by knowledge (gnosis) teaches, if, while seeming to show one thing, they, like skilled wrestlers, actually signify another.

But they say that God pervades all substance, whereas we call him only Creator, and Creator by the Word.

They were misled by what is said in the book of Wisdom: 'she pervades and passes through all things because of her purity' — since they did not understand that this is said concerning the Wisdom first created by God.

'Yes,' they say, 'but the philosophers — both the Stoics and Plato and Pythagoras, and also Aristotle the Peripatetic — posit matter among their first principles, and not a single principle.'

Let them know, then, that what is called matter, said by them to be without quality and without form, has even been called, more boldly still, 'that which is not' by Plato.

And is it not the case that, knowing in a most mystical way that there is but one truly existing principle, he says in the Timaeus, in these very words:

'But for now, let what we say stand as follows:'

'concerning the principle of all things, whether it be a principle or principles, or however one may think about these matters, it is not to be stated at present, for no other reason than that it is difficult, in the present manner of exposition, to make clear my opinions.'

Besides, that prophetic saying, 'the earth was invisible and unformed,' has furnished them with the occasion for a material substance.

Indeed, for Epicurus the intrusion of chance came about from his failing to follow this saying: 'vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'

But it occurred to Aristotle to bring providence down only as far as the moon, drawing this from the following psalm:

'O Lord, your mercy is in heaven, and your truth reaches to the clouds.'

For the disclosure of the prophetic mysteries had not yet been revealed before the coming of the Lord.