神學與倫理章句 第 1 章 第 6/27 段

Do you see how he says that those who have changed their way of life are gathered into the wedding feast, whereas those who come with some wickedness or evil — even if they enter — are cast out again with shame by the angels, whom he also calls servants?

Those, then, who recline at the wedding feast are the saints.

As for the one who has no wedding garment, I know that some think he refers only to those who have defiled their own bodies with fornication, adultery, and murder.

But it is not so, it is not so;

for he means everyone who is defiled by any passion or evil whatsoever.

And that this is true, hear Paul saying:

namely, that neither drunkards nor revilers — and I will add, nor those who hold hatred or envy toward any brother — will inherit the kingdom of God, nor have any part in the joy of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you see how every wickedness and sin defiles the garment of the soul and causes us to be cast out of the kingdom?

That none of the uninitiated ought to search out the hidden mysteries of the kingdom of heaven before the practice of the commandments and before progress and perfection in virtue;

and that at the Lord's second coming all the saints will know one another.

Therefore let us leave aside vain and unprofitable disputes, and let us not be eager to learn beforehand what belongs to its own proper time; rather let us be persuaded by the Master, who speaks thus:

Search, and do not meddle with things beyond you.

Search the Scriptures, and do not hold disputes outside the holy Scriptures.

Search the Scriptures, that you may be instructed concerning faith and hope and love;

concerning faith, that you may not be carried about by every wind through the cunning craftiness of unstable men, but be established through the right doctrines of the apostolic and catholic Church, and rightly divide her word of truth.

And not only this, but you will also be taught to seek out the fruit of faith and the benefit that comes from it through the practice of the commandments; and when you are able to find this, then you will also acquire an unashamed hope, and in it you will have whole and entire love toward God.

For otherwise it is impossible for any man to acquire perfect love toward God, except through unadulterated faith and firm, undoubting hope.

Why then, having abandoned the examination of ourselves concerning these things — whether indeed we have such faith toward God as he himself, who is going to judge, says he will require of us — do we meddle with matters beyond us, and this while not even knowing at all the things at our feet?

But what sort of faith is required of us toward God, and what kind we ought to have toward him, he himself made clear through the Gospels, speaking thus:

'Whoever wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me;'

'for whoever comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and brothers and sisters, and even his own soul as well, cannot be my disciple.'

'He who finds his life' — clearly, in the things just spoken — 'will lose it;'

'but whoever loses his life for my sake and for the sake of my gospel' — that is, for the fulfilling of my commandments — 'will find it unto eternal life.'

Are you satisfied with what has been said, or do you still need to be reminded of what follows?

If, then, you wish to learn that God requires of us such faith that those who believe in him should have no care at all for this present life, learn it precisely from him, as the Lord himself cries out plainly, thus:

'Do not be anxious about tomorrow, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or what you will put on.'

'If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also;'

'and to him who wishes to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak also;'

'and from him who takes what is yours, do not demand it back.'

And still further, to the utmost excess of faith, he commands us to pray for and love our enemies, and to do good to those who hate us, and to pray for those who mistreat us.

And he commands us to do many other things besides, from which our faith toward him is first clearly shown; and only then is it right to say that we are faithful;

for without these things our faith is dead, and we ourselves are clearly dead.

Examine yourself carefully, then, O man, and if you find that you have not fallen short in any of the things spoken, but have done all of them with excess, from a fervent heart and purpose, you will certainly perceive that you are in light, and have an unashamed hope — not the hope that arises from conceit among those who are perishing, whose vanity and deceit none of those who possess it can recognize, but the good and true hope in the true and unashamed light.

And in this hope, as upon a chariot of cherubim, you would behold love riding, which is God;

and if you find and behold it thus, you will from then on meddle with nothing of the things to come and unseen, but will also silence others and charge them not to meddle with anything nor dispute concerning those things there, having learned by experience itself that all things there are incomprehensible and ineffable to mind and word.

But if you have not done the things that would first make you known as faithful and a Christian, but you are faithful among the unfaithful, and condemned by conscience among the faithful as unfaithful, and you no longer have complete hope and assurance of being saved, then neither can you say, as holy Paul said:

'Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me' — why then do you meddle and ask to learn whether the saints will indeed know one another in the kingdom of heaven, when, coming to be in the contemplation of the God who is over all, they behold him?

What benefit will this be to you?

For I would like to hear and learn from you what benefit it is to you — being, as we said, condemned by your own conscience, since you have no share in the things commanded by Christ — if you should learn, being taught by us, of the enjoyments and glories and delights and restorations that are in his kingdom.

None whatsoever, in any case; rather you will bring upon yourself an even greater condemnation, because, having also learned these things, you despised them, and were unwilling to cast off conceit and acquire humility.

But besides, since I ask you gently, do you answer in peace.

If a small child, who has not even accepted to learn the rudiments of letters, seeks to have matters of grammar and rhetoric explained to him, will any man who is master of his own reasoning ever endure to deem his folly worthy even of a bare word in reply, and will he not rather repel him as senseless and childish in thought, and as foolishly asking for things beyond his own capacity?

But if this is just and fitting in such matters, how much more in matters that transcend reason and mind and understanding?

But if someone, without even learning the rudiments of letters, should hear what the Greeks have composed in other words and should understand it when spoken in his own dialect, this is nothing to marvel at, since their discourse concerns sensible things, and their accounts are vain, about vain matters.

But the things about which you ask are not of that kind; rather, of what sort and in what manner are they?

As the prophet David says:

'He bowed the heavens and came down, and thick darkness was under his feet.'

This very flesh of the Lord, concerning which John also, his great forerunner, later said:

'He whose sandal strap I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.'

'He rode upon the cherubim and flew; he flew upon the wings of the wind.'

'And he made darkness his hiding place;'

'his tabernacle was round about him.'

Do you see how your inquiry concerns not sensible matters, but things divine and incomprehensible, and not easily grasped by everyone?

For if he made thick darkness and gloom the hiding place of his mysteries, and one needs much of the light of the all-holy Spirit for the understanding of his hidden mysteries, how is it that you, who have not yet become a dwelling place of the divine light, inquire into things you will not be able to learn, being still imperfect and unillumined?

By 'tabernacle' he means what Paul calls light — for he says, 'dwelling in unapproachable light' — both of them thereby declaring the incomprehensible and unbearable nature of his divinity, not making the divine to be circumscribed, but framing their words, as it were, in this manner toward those who are overly curious, saying:

'Do not suppose, O foolish ones, that the Lord and God, having ascended, entered into darkness and was hidden;'

'rather he is in his own glory, in the divinity that fills all things and surpasses all things, in which he also was before this; but sparing us, lest we should perish utterly, he set darkness to cover, not him, but us;'

'for our God,' he says, 'is a consuming fire' — not to the righteous, but to sinners.

You have learned, in passing, the divine and awesome mysteries of our faith from us — or rather from the Holy Spirit through us;

you have learned that God came down to earth and again went up to the heavens, and made darkness his hiding place;

for it was not fitting for him to appear to us in the glory of his Father before the judgment, but for this to happen at the time which his Father has set within his own authority.

If, then, the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven are thus hidden, and it is not given to all to know them, according to the word of the Lord, why do you, having abandoned the practice of his commandments, inquire about things hidden from all men?

For behold, every day you hear the Apostle proclaiming concerning those very things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man — the good things which God has prepared for those who love him.

For before he was taken up and made darkness his hiding place, he gave us his holy commandments, having given us, as one might say, tools, and faith in him as a kind of craftsman — so that we are the vessels, faith is the craftsman, and the commandments are the tools, by which the Word, the craftsman, reshapes and refashions the workers of his commandments, so that, being purified through the practice of them, we may be illumined, according to our progress, by the Spirit, with the knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

And just as tools cannot accomplish anything without a craftsman, nor a craftsman without tools, so neither can faith, without the fulfillment of the commandments, nor the fulfillment of the commandments, without faith, renew us at all and refashion us, or make us new instead of old.

But when we have acquired both in an undoubting heart and have become a vessel useful to the Master for receiving the noetic myrrh, then he who made darkness his hiding place renews us by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and raises us up as new instead of old, and as living from among the dead, and cuts through the darkness and brings our mind across from it, and grants it to peer through as if through a certain aperture and to see, dimly in some measure, as much as the disc of the sun or of the moon.

From this, then, he is taught—or rather, he knows and is initiated, being fully assured that it is truly impossible to come to have any partial share of the ineffable goods of God in any other way, except that in lowliness of heart and undoubting faith of a wholehearted purpose such persons renounce the whole world and the things in the world, together with their own wills, in the keeping of all the commandments of God.

And not only this, but also this: unless those who believe in Christ—especially those baptized as infants, who do not perceive that they possess the gift of God's grace—pass through the labors undertaken for virtue's sake, together with the trials, not shamefacedly, but rather with exultation of heart and joy.

You, then, who have read these things, do not examine yourself in the conceit of falsely-named knowledge and the fabrication of vain reasonings, but in fear and trembling.

And if you wish to learn how you stand as regards life and condition, ask your soul and say to it:

Through the mouth of its conscience, it will surely tell you the truth.

For it will not be ashamed before you, but will reprove you, and will show you what you have laid up beforehand and possess within yourself, whether good or base.

For in its conscience you will find whether you have loved the world, or preferred God to it; whether you have sought the glory of men, or desired only that which is given by God.

By peering into yourself as into a small chest, and feeling through what lies beneath, drawing out one by one the things stored there, you will come to know all things clearly.

For suppose, for my sake, that there lie stored within you, first, a love of ambition and vainglory, a form of people-pleasing, the sweet relish of human praises, a garment of hypocrisy, a hidden seed of avarice, and, in short, many things laid up within, one concealed beneath another; and over all these let there be laid, on top, an inflation of pride—for knowledge, it says, puffs up—and together with it, conceit, and the notion, on the part of one whose reasoning has become puffed up, of being something when he is nothing.

Since, then, these things lie upon all the others we have mentioned before, tell me, how will you be able to behold them?

Tell me, then, this also, right now.

If you are not persuaded that some veil of this kind lies upon your heart, but rather disbelieve it—just as the Hebrews also, concerning whom Paul says this very thing, that they disbelieve—and if you do not remove this veil from your heart, so that you might see the passions covered by it, and take pity on your wretched soul, and hasten to cleanse it and to wash its noetic eyes and its face with hot tears, casting behind you all outward wisdom and knowledge, obeying Paul so as to become a fool in this world, that you may become wise in Christ—tell me then, since you are a fool, how shall I explain to you the things concerning God and the divine realities, seeing that they are hidden and invisible?

Would you not yourself condemn me as doing an unworthy thing, and rightly say within yourself?

'This man,' you will say, 'is truly foolish, in that he explains to me, a fool, things concerning realities invisible and incomprehensible to every breath under heaven and to every creature that is above the heavens.'

For if not even the angels of God know the things that are to happen then, just as they did not know of what kind or manner his coming upon earth would be, nor when or at what time he was to descend and become man, how much more must they of necessity be ignorant of his final coming in glory—when it will be, and how great it will be, or what things he is then going to grant to his saints?

And that these things are truly so, Paul made clear when he said:

'That the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known, through the Church, to the principalities and powers'; while the Lord, concerning his coming, said that 'even the powers of the heavens will be shaken'—meaning that they will be astonished and amazed, suddenly beholding what until then they had certainly never seen.

If, then, the powers of the heavens are ignorant, how do you, of all people, dare to say outright that the saints will surely not recognize one another in the kingdom of God, when they come to be in the vision of him?

And you, again, who take the opposite position on this, and assert:

'They must indeed see and recognize one another'—from where have you learned this?

Do you not shudder? Do you not fear?

For by your own words both of you will be condemned by the righteous and impartial Judge.

For to those who say that the saints neither see nor recognize one another, but see only Him, being wholly united, with all their senses, entirely to Him alone—he will, as it were, speak and say:

'Did you learn the workings of my Holy Spirit by experience itself, or not?' And they, I think, will not dare to answer and say:

For if they say this, he will answer them:

'How is it, then, that if you have had experience of these things, you say that those who are going to have me within themselves will not recognize one another?'

God who does not lie, the true God, the holy God, who dwells among the saints.

How, then, do I dwell in them?

Just as I said, 'I am in the Father and the Father in me,' so also are the saints in me, and I in them.

And just as the Father is in me and I again in my Father, so also I will dwell in all the saints, and all the saints will dwell in me.

And in addition to these things, he will also say this:

'If, then, I am in my saints and my saints are in me, I in my Father and my Father in me, and just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, it is quite evident that the saints too must recognize and know one another.'

But that this may become clearer, so that it will be plain even to the insensible, it is necessary to add and say again:

Christ will be dwelling in all the saints.

When, then, the books of each person's conscience are opened, in the hearts and consciences of sinners there will be found, if nothing else, conceit, or vainglory, or heresy, or envy, or jealousy, or something of this kind.

And if not that, then certainly negligence, indolence, and the failure to do the commandments of God with all one's strength, whence there will be a deficiency of love for him.

For this reason, then, their eyes will be darkened so that they cannot see, and they will be put to shame, and will hear:

'Inasmuch as you did not do one of the least of my commandments, but despised it, you did it not to me.'

'Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'

But when the books of the conscience of the saints are opened—pay attention!

Christ God, now hidden within them, will shine forth, just as he shone forth from the Father before the ages, and the saints will be like the Most High.

Hear the Savior himself saying this:

'Then shall the righteous shine forth like the sun.'

But what other 'time' or 'sun' does he mean, if not assuredly the one we have spoken of—himself, who alone is called the Sun of Righteousness, and who rises and shines forth only in the righteous?

And this the beloved disciple who leaned on Christ's breast makes even more clearly manifest, saying:

'Brothers, now we are children of God, but it has not yet been made manifest what we shall be.'

'But we know that, when it is made manifest, we shall be like him.'

If, then, the saints are like God, and will know God as fully as God has known them, and just as the Father knows the Son and the Son knows the Father, so too must the saints see and know one another; indeed, even those who never saw one another bodily in this world must then recognize one another—how, then, are you not ashamed to speak, question, and teach about matters you do not know, as though you had already grown rich, forsooth, in knowledge beyond us, and had been appointed teachers from on high?

For just as the Father will never fail to know the Son, nor the Son the Father, so too the saints, having become gods by grace through having God dwelling within them, will never fail to know one another, but will behold one another's glory and their own, just as the Son beholds the glory of the Father and the Father that of the Son.

But what, and of what kind, will the glory of the saints be?

Such as is the glory of the Son of God.

And this he himself has made abundantly clear through his own words:

'And the glory which you have given me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one.'

Do you see that the glory given by God the Father to the Son before the ages has been bestowed by the Son himself upon the saints, and that all are one?

Therefore, those who say that the saints, when they come to be in the vision of God, will surely not see nor recognize one another, truly walk in darkness, and have never come to be in participation, vision, or knowledge of God, and they speak and bear witness about things they neither understand nor have ever beheld.

Thinking, as I suppose—or rather, wrongly understanding the divine Scriptures—that the same transformation and rapture that occurs now will also be, in the future, what belongs to the saints of every age.

For when they hear that a certain saint, having come to be in the vision of God and having had his mind rapt, spent so many days and nights taking no thought whatsoever of earthly things, but forgot, along with everything else, even his own body, remaining wholly clinging, with his whole soul and with all his senses together, while he was there—they suppose that something of this sort will also be the case then, I mean in the kingdom of heaven, being utterly ignorant of the divine things of the Spirit, and of the invisible and incomprehensible mysteries of the invisible God, unknown to those who are darkened, and ignorant that this rapture of the mind belongs not to the perfect but to beginners.

For just as one who from birth has been in a dark and utterly gloomy prison, and is illumined only by the light of a small lamp, barely discerns a few small things, not knowing that there is sunlight outside, being wholly ignorant of what lies outside the prison—I mean this visible world and the indescribable works and creatures of God—so too the one who is still in the dark prison of the sense-perception of this world, and illumined by only the slightest knowledge, barely receives some small and dim knowledge concerning the mysteries of our faith, being utterly ignorant of the eternal goods of God, and of what things are to await the saints in the future.

And just as that man, who has sat for many years in that lightless prison, if it should happen that an aperture is opened in the roof of the prison and he suddenly beholds the ether of heaven, small and in proportion to the aperture made, which he had never seen before nor even suspected that such a most brilliant light existed, is immediately seized with amazement and becomes as one beside himself, keeping his eyes fixed above for a long time and marveling at the sudden thing that has happened to him—so too the one who has suddenly come to be in the vision of the noetic light, having just now, evidently, been released from the bonds of the passions and of sense-perception, is amazed, and is thought by those who do not see rightly to be beside himself, having, that is, gathered his whole mind into himself and marveling at the vision and the brilliance of what has appeared to him.

And again, just as, when that man frequently and daily looks toward that aperture, which has now been widened and illumines still more the gloomy space of the prison, and remains in the light for a considerable time, the accustoming of his sight to the light gradually removes the great amazement—just as has happened with us in the case of the sun.

For by the habit of seeing it, we come to regard it as something easily disregarded.

For if we had never yet beheld it, and it had suddenly appeared to us as it is, we would have been thrown into confusion by amazement; in the same way, the gradual progress of the soul, coming to be accustomed to the vision of the noetic light, is delivered from its great amazement, having been initiated by this into the knowledge that there is something else, more perfect and higher, than this state and vision.

And again, just as the long duration—the confinement from his birth—makes that man recognize, for the time being, that he is in an utterly gloomy prison, and, from the little light there, he suspects that there are certain marvelous things outside it, though he cannot in truth reckon or conceive what they are; but when he is cast forth outside the prison, then he beholds at once the whole light, and all the things that are in the light, and all people together—so, in the same way, understand also the one who has just now emigrated from the necessities of the body and become wholly outside the world and the visible things of lowliness.

These things are invisible and unknown to those who are still confined in this prison, unutterable and inexplicable, even though some suppose that they understand and behold them through the Scriptures.

For most people do not even know that there is anything beyond these things.

When, then, we seek with all faith and all desire—not to see the light outside this prison, nor the things that are in that light and world (for no one who has sought these has ever been deemed worthy to see them, nor will anyone ever be deemed worthy to behold them at all)—but rather, first of all, to keep the commandments of God, to repent, to mourn, to be humbled, and the other things we have mentioned before, then there is opened to us, as it were, a certain small aperture in this visible roof of heaven, and the light above it, immaterial and noetic, is disclosed.

And beholding this, the soul is utterly beside itself entirely, wholly amazed, seeing a new wonder, a paradoxical wonder, one it had never yet beheld until then; and in this it also remains, as if rapt into heaven and constraining itself to be there and to comprehend the incomprehensibility of it, especially in beholding it day and night and learning from it, each time, that it is unfading, that it is infinite and ineffable—whence it no longer wishes at all to turn back toward this prison and to look again upon the things within it.

Know, then, that this is the beginning of the introductory stages into piety, and is for those who have just now stripped for the contests of virtue.

So then, when he continues for a long time, unturning, toward that contemplation, there opens to him — I know not whether it is heaven, I know not whether it is the eye of his heart, though I should rather say the latter than the former — by that light; and within the house of his soul, I mean of this tent [the body], that wonderful and most radiant light enters, illumining him in due measure, so far as nature is evidently able to contain.

And thus continuing again for a time, as becomes customary little by little, and as though he were always present with this [light], he reasons as follows:

Wonders upon wonders, and mysteries upon mysteries, and contemplations upon contemplations — being illumined by it hour by hour, so to speak, and by seeing and understanding and being initiated, he is instructed.

And these things, even if he should wish to write them down, neither paper nor ink would suffice him; and time itself, I think, would fail him were he to expound them in detail.

But rather, how indeed could he write down things that cannot even be spoken, being altogether ineffable and utterly unutterable?

Wherefore, being then, as it were, in light — or rather, together with the light — he continues, and does not remain as in ecstasy, but he both perceives clearly himself and the things pertaining to him, and sees those near him as they truly are, and foretells and foreknows that, if he should come to be outside this prison [the body], and especially after the resurrection, and should behold that unbearable light in whatever measure it is, then also the good things within it — which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him — will be revealed to him more clearly, through the light now present within him, by which he is also illumined;

for we shall not then be deprived of knowing or seeing; but rather, as the argument demonstrated above, in proportion to the brightness and contemplation of the light, so also, correspondingly, the knowledge and contemplation of God, and the mutual recognition and knowledge of one another, will be greater and purer, in ineffable gladness and exultation, unto ages of ages.

And this both the prophets in the Old [Testament], and many of the saints in the New, demonstrated by their works, calling by name those they had never seen, and indeed also recognizing those they did not know.

Those, therefore, who say that the saints do not know or see one another, being persuaded by these things not to inquire concerning incomprehensible matters, let them rather — if indeed they are persuaded by me — attend to themselves, and not cease examining themselves.