You ask of me, most reverend of priests, how the Arians are to be answered, who with blasphemous mouth attempt to assert: 'It cannot be,' they say, 'but that the begotten be younger than the unbegotten.' In accordance with which, as though commanded to break my whole silence, I shall presume to do so not so much for the instruction of the matter as for the confession of the faith, observing this first of all: that I do not enwrap matters obscure in themselves with the labour of polished speech, but bring forth certain indications of a poor understanding, which may seem to serve not so much for adornment as for comprehension. I answer, therefore, as disciples are wont to answer their masters when they question. And so I speak at the bidding of your blessedness, that you may sift out my inexperience; I bear witness that you may teach.
For in the presence of one most learned, if I keep silence, I can scarcely know what I do not know. About the unbegotten, when we are to speak, we ought to know that the substances of things are one thing, and the names of things another; just as, for example, when you say 'gold' and 'silver,' you have not at once brought forth the metal itself, but the words for the metal. For gold is one thing in the property of its kind, another in the appellation of speech; it is one thing when we name it, another when we hold it. 'Begotten' and 'unbegotten' is a signification of the deity, not the deity itself; it is an appellation of the nature, not the nature. The naming of unbegotten and begotten avails for this: that you may understand who subsists from whom, and may recognize not the Father to be from the Son, but the Son to be from the Father.
Principle from Principle is both one and lacks a beginning; just as if you should say 'God from God,' yet not two gods, but one is spoken of. The begotten, therefore, the unbegotten, and that which proceeds from both, designate persons, not natures. For the majesty—which to the Father is undistinguished from the Son and the Holy Spirit—can be distinguished by names, but cannot be ordered by degrees. At this point you must, with foreknowledge, apply the intention of the mind. You say perhaps: 'Because He is from Him, He is later than Him.' Come, let us nourish our understanding for these things with certain comparisons. Let us see whether any thing arises from another, which nevertheless is not later in age than that from which it arises.
For example, this very name 'son' is believed to be derived from the name 'father,' nor yet is it found to be later, because unless the one were born, the other would not be called 'father.' Behold a name which is absolutely coeval with that from which it is; and since the son is from the father, the son makes the name for the father: the person of the one being born acquires for the begetter the appellation of fatherhood. Since this is from that, neither is this proved later nor the other more ancient; and since the son is named 'arm' from the powers of his works, behold the arm proceeds from the body, and yet the age of the arm does not precede that of the body. The word is brought forth from the voice, and yet, since it is born from the mouth, it is not proved to be later than the voice. The undivided fellowship of fire and heat:
but although heat is undoubtedly understood to be from fire, yet fire is by no means discerned to be prior to its own heat. Behold a thing which seems to arise from another, and yet is conjoined to that from which it arises without any interval of time. But when we come to God, the begotten is this: as just and justice, wise and wisdom, merciful and mercy. Absolutely we understand, according to the Apostle, that from God who is just and wise arise justice and wisdom; and just as the just one never was without justice, the wise one never without wisdom, so the Son is from the Father, but the Father could never be without the Son.
Without doubt the Arians do not dare to deny our Saviour, but while they call Him lesser, they cannot assert Him to be God. For God by nature subsists in the dignity of fullness, and their impiety testifies by its first confession that it worships one God. But because they make Him younger, through Him who is thought to be elder they make two, and cut through the solidity of unity. For the very name 'lesser' shows another who is greater than He. Who is more ancient than He, who Himself pronounces of Himself: 'I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,' who, when asked by the Jews who He was, answered thus: 'the Beginning, who also speak to you,' who confirms with truthful voice through the prophet: 'Before me there was no God, and after me there shall be none'?
If the Father says this, He confirms that no inferior began after Him; if the Son, He pronounces that none at all existed before Him. Concerning this the prophetic word plainly intimates: 'This is our God, and no other shall be reckoned beside Him,' and after this: 'He was seen among men and conversed with men.' According to these things, therefore, between the begotten and the unbegotten there is no order, because He is one; nor does time intervene, because He is first; nor is He to be placed after, because He is alone; nor is He to be called lesser, because He is full. Therefore He is said to be perfect and of a simple nature, inestimable and impassible, even though we truthfully and savingly confess that He suffered for us according to the flesh.
After these things, in the next place, you ask of me how, concerning the substance of God, it has been written in a certain letter: 'He felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but felt with the affection of one suffering-together (compassionate).' First, this—which not even the philosophers failed to grasp—is most ready to know: that in man the diverse affections, that is, justice, mercy, holiness, benevolence, piety, are things that come to him, and therefore are called affections. But God is not affected by these in a passible manner, since they are discerned to be in Him continually and naturally. Therefore what in man is affection and grace, in God is virtue and nature. For as to what was said, 'He felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but felt with the affection of one suffering-together,' why should anyone not presume to say it in that sense which the prophetic word also recalls:
'O Lord, rebuke me not in Thy anger, neither chasten me in Thy wrath,' and: 'The Lord hath sworn, and He will not repent,' and again: 'The Lord was angry with His people and abhorred His inheritance,' and likewise He is described as by a diverse affection to have loved Jacob and to have held Esau in hatred. He is said to be saddened over our sins and to rejoice in His works, and, as one subject to affections, He says of Himself: 'It repenteth me that I made man,' and from the highest seat of heaven He proclaims: 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' Now also He seems to show the affection of one suffering-together, when He says: 'I hungered and ye gave me to eat, I thirsted and ye gave me to drink,' and the rest of this kind, which occur abundantly to the memory.
In what way, therefore—just as if some priest, endowed with a manifold knowledge of tongues and set in the midst of diverse peoples, about to instruct the Hebrew with Hebrew speech, the Greek with Greek, the Roman with Roman, should fashion his words according to the understanding of each, and adapt the address of his own mouth to the sense of each individual, and dispense the discordant voices of one heart and breast into various hearings—so also God, about to speak with man, deigns to assume the tongue of man, and, about to take on even a human form, attests the affections of our dispositions through the sounds of our understandings. For when, describing the offices of the five human senses, He thus says: 'The eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and His ears unto their prayers,' and again:
'the mouth of the Lord hath spoken,' likewise: 'and He smelled a savour of sweetness,' and: 'my hand hath made all these things. Heaven is my throne, but the earth is the footstool of my feet'—He instils into our hearts the efficacies of things under the signification of members; whence, on account of His ineffable condescension toward the human race—which does not disdain to name and to call them servants, friends, and sons—as man in turn He converses with the same with human mouth and manner. For the rest, God's anger is justice, God's wrath is the vigour of severity, for God to have sworn is to have determined, for God to have repented is yet a sentence often changed; and when He says that He is injured by some one persecuting Him, He shows the crime of the one injuring.
The ministry of all discourse is utterly cut off from us, and every means by which God is either understood or proclaimed, if these exchanges of human speech are withdrawn. Why, therefore, may it not be said among these things: 'but He felt with the affection of one suffering-together'? If, then, a simple and open answer has satisfied the master who was sifting the matter, let us pass on to the third question, in which you bid me answer what among human things are to be deemed corporeal, and what incorporeal.
To these things I shall bring forth some matters not according to the presumption of my own perception, but according to the opinion of the holy elders, especially since these things cannot injure the mind, and can nourish it unto faith, and—up to the point at which the Son may appear equal to the Father—can avail to arm and to govern against the depravities of the Arians. Therefore, since the conference is about a loftier discourse, the perception and the mind must be prepared for a subtler understanding. Some most learned of the fathers assert that certain things are invisible, and others incorporeal. Whatever has been created, they define to be seen as matter, and to be comprehensible and corporeal to its Maker. For they assert that even the nature of souls and of angels is corporeal, on this account: that in their beginning they are circumscribed and bounded by space. For just as in a certain treatise of
Jerome we read: 'They think,' he says, 'that the globes of the stars are embodied spirits,' and likewise: 'If angels,' he says, 'and even heavenly bodies are said to be unclean in comparison with God, what dost thou think man is to be reckoned?' But among these things you, for this reason, deny the soul to be corporeal: because, according to the opinion of some, it is neither local, nor does it subsist by quality or quantity—which it is manifest ought to be believed of the majesty of God alone. For we read in a certain most approved treatise of the fathers:
'To enter into and to fill all things,' he says, 'is possible to the Trinity alone, which is so made the penetrator of all intellectual nature, that it can not only embrace and encompass it, but also glide into it and, as it were incorporeal, be poured into a body.' For although we may pronounce that some natures are spiritual—as are the angels, the archangels, and the other powers, our very soul too, or at least this subtle air—nevertheless they are by no means to be deemed incorporeal. For they have, according to themselves, a body in which they subsist, although much and incomparably thinner than our bodies are, according to the sentence of the Apostle who says: 'both celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies.'
By which it is manifestly gathered that nothing is incorporeal save God alone, and therefore that He alone can be penetrable to all spiritual and intellectual substances. Since these things are so, you object to me that the soul is not corporeal for this reason: because, as has been said, it is neither local, nor does it subsist by quality or quantity. Of what peril it is so to believe will be shown in what follows: but now, at this stage of our treatise, when the discussion has been had, it will hang in the balance thus—that if it is neither local nor subject to quantity, we shall without doubt concede it to be incorporeal; but if we shall have demonstrated it to be determined by quantity or enclosed by place, you yourself will accordingly no longer doubt that it is also contained by a body.
In what way is that not local, which, inserted into the members and bound into the inward parts, is held enclosed by motions alone, by the wandering condition of its substance? But if you think the soul ought to be asserted not to be local because it wanders abroad through the senses by diverse things and is dispersed by its thoughts, first it must be understood that the soul's state is one thing, and another is that affection of thought which is born from the soul. Wherefore this rather must be reckoned: that if it ever imagines anything to itself, it is rather occupied with its own motions within itself, and if there is something else which it seems to behold, it is rather described to it in the mirror of recollection. For when it thinks of an absent loved one, has it then satisfied its longing as if by beholding him himself?
or when, for example, it depicts the likeness of Peter or Paul within the secret places of the mind, has it at once penetrated the innermost seats of paradise, where we know them to be? Or when, from a reading, it sets before itself the flames of that rich man in the heart, has it now descended to the places of his torments and to the depths of hell inaccessible to the living? All these things, beyond doubt, either it fashions with itself within the secret places of the breast through various similitudes, or certainly, if outside the seat of the soul the unstable thought, agitated with slippery motion, runs to and fro—this very thing it does locally; and whether it thinks of a city or of whatsoever region, it is fixed there only, with the perception dwelling there, whither it is snatched away by the mind's intention. It can imagine some things to itself; it cannot embrace all things at once.
When, therefore, the soul has thought of Alexandria or Jerusalem, if it has truly been present there in its whole self, as you suppose, let it report to us the situations of the places, the faces of the men, the movements and acts of the peoples. But this very thing, that now between us we mingle the mutual exchanges of speech by the action of the spirit—I perceive that I am speaking with you, yet in my own consciousness; but that I have come to you, I do not perceive. For if the soul is truly believed to be carried with its senses, it is presented by its own thoughts to those very things which it recollects. Behold, through these moments of present time I think of you, and with recollecting mind I see you, but I am wholly ignorant of what you are doing, and whether you are at rest or are free for reading or for prayer.
But this happens for this reason: because I come to you by the affection of the heart, not by the very truth of my substance. For neither in its motions—which we perceive to be now best, now worst—does the nature of our soul consist. For if it is to be believed to consist through its thoughts, why, when these sometimes vanish away and perish, does it itself endure in its own vigour and alacrity? How many, therefore, are the most frequent thoughts and cares in us that even savingly die away and work rather for the freedom of the inner life! If the soul consisted in these very things, without doubt, when they perish, it could not survive.
Whence reason rather speaks this to our consciences: that each soul either brings to birth manifold thoughts conceived within itself from the causes of things, or disperses its own senses, as it were certain offices or ministries, to be occupied with diverse necessities, while it itself rests in the chamber of its own body, destined once to go forth from it. Wherefore, that it is itself local—so that we may once more produce a sufficient example—was not the soul of Lazarus within the body while life remained, but, with life withdrawing, did it not go into exile from the dwelling of the body, and, again poured back within the lifeless body, did it not return, called back, to that whence it had been absent?
Then you see it as it were both driven from the dwelling of its lodging and again restored within the lodging whence it had been absent—and do you contend that it is not local? But why do I say these things about corruptible man, when He whose flesh saw no corruption possessed indeed an immaculate soul, yet a local one, which assuredly He had within Himself when He was affixed to the gibbet, and beyond doubt sent forth from Himself when He lay in the sepulchre? In what way is that not local, which the flesh contains, life conjoins, death separates? But if, as you say, the nature of souls does not admit of local necessity, then there are not lacking even those of the region of paradise—those souls which are shut up in the prison of hell?
Tell me, I pray, if they are not bound to place, how does that vast chaos divide sinners from the assemblies and fellowships of the just by a grim gulf between, so that they can neither pass from here to there nor cross from there to here? Already this is most evident: that things contained within spaces are bounded by quantity. If you have acknowledged the soul to be local, grant that it is corporeal. Tell me, did the very soul of our glorious Redeemer leave the world, when He rose up to heaven?
As for me, I would not even doubt that the angels are local, since it is certain that they are now held in the heavens, now borne through the empty spaces of the air, now sent down to earthly things—those whom the divine word describes as ascending and descending in the patriarch's vision; who, indeed, if they were not local but were everywhere, could not be present and depart by ascent and descent. The most blessed Gabriel himself, who testifies that he stands before God, when he announced to Mary that the Lord of heaven was to be infused into her womb, and when at the bidding of the Lord's ordinance he stood before the eyes of the Mother, was without doubt absent from heaven, did not occupy all of Mary, did not fill the empty and diffused expanses of the vast air, but occupied only that place in which he was.
Since these things are so, whatever occupies a place is a body; and I know not in what way one would not be held by the law of place who is sent from place to place, and like a body is carried by motion and approach, descends by mass, runs about by mobility, goes, returns, absents itself, ascends. Or that one too, I believe, is local, who from the moment he was cast out of heaven is no longer in heaven; nor did he reveal himself alone to be local, who, hurled down from on high, drew away with himself a third part of the stars. Tell me, if he has no body, in that fall what was it that came down? Why do you deny him a corporeal nature, whose ruin you dare not deny? And if, as you say, he has no body, he will not burn:
But where, except in a body, will he feel that fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels? Now I think it superfluous to say that he has drawn a certain thickness from his dwelling in this air, from the condensation of the elements. Tell me, if he had no body, where in the air was the condensation, where could this very thickness—I know not what it is—gather itself together, if he carried nothing corporeal down with himself from that heavenly citadel? He will carry, as I see, an alien body to his torments. Recognize therefore, even from your own assertion, that it is a body. A body is that which is stained, which is defiled, which is altered by any addition coming upon it.
This one, therefore, once the firstborn of the angels, has now been made the prince of darkness, and as it were corporeal—beautiful before, now degenerate; once conspicuous with heavenly splendor, now defiled with the foul horror of infernal sin. A body, I say, is that which has place, is driven by action, is bounded by quantity, is changed by quality, is wasted by pain. Since these things are so, see into what deep crime those plunge themselves who call the soul incorporeal.
Now first, since God the author of the universe is said to have made all things in number and weight, the soul is therefore believed to have been taken out of the matter of the whole creation, which is neither corporeal nor local; and if it is not contained by place, then it is diffused everywhere, and is said to enter into all things, to fill them, and to be everywhere present—as if the creature were made the partner of its Creator, and frailty joined to its Author so as to be reckoned no longer a thing of God but a part of God. See whither the deep slip of error leads its champions. Indeed, to us those things which are above us are invisible:
But to Him all things, just as they are comprehensible, so also are corporeal—to Him who made all things out of nothing, which, as He established them in work, so also He incorporated in matter; and to all things, among which the soul too is counted, just as He distributed weight, number, and measure, so also He set their quantity. Among these matters, if perchance, as has been said, someone should think it must be asserted that, on account of the subtlety of the angelic nature, a certain contagion of this air, gathered by admixture, is found liable to the flames—then in the air alone (as he says, if it is something airy that will burn), not in that one, but outside him, the punishment will rage. But beyond doubt it is nothing other than the substance of a body, where the force of pain will be able to hold sway.
See whither an imprudent and unskilled persuasion tends: he who, when he speaks of the incorporeal, also confesses it to be incomprehensible, and thus ascribes to the created work what belongs to the Creator alone, and shares with created things the privileges of majesty, and extends the power not owed to a creature even to the injury of its Maker. If we inquire well to what outcome of things you would refer the soul, this belief above all things rolled the devil down from that station of the blessed seat, and on this account destroyed the dignity of an angel, while he presumes to possess the nature of God. One God therefore is incorporeal, because He is both incomprehensible and diffused everywhere:
For He took the beginning of His material from the matter of no corporeal creation; and therefore the Son is coeternal with the Father, because, founded by no work and bounded by no beginnings, above all things which He has wrought comprehensible and corporeal within the body of the world for His own Potter, He is diffused in incorporeal majesty—begotten of the Unbegotten, that is, of the Father, yet ever with the Father, He rules over those things which He raised up out of nothing, in the undivided fellowship of the Holy Spirit. PREFACE. To His prefect, the patrician Sollius Sidonius, most learned and excellent man, Claudianus. You commanded the publication of the little books which I composed concerning the state of the soul—you, a cautious arbiter of keeping silent and a weigher of speaking.
It was right that I should yield to the skill, or trust to the friendship, of one most learned and most loving. But as you yourself know excellently well, many very great men gave me this same task, and you yourself along with me—a task which I would not rashly have undertaken, had I not judged that to scorn it was more dangerous than to perform it laborious; although, according to my measure of strength, it was also my part to assert the truth, even unbidden, in so far as the ability is at hand. I have therefore written these few things as it were certain seeds of reasonings, from which any studious person, if he takes them up not idly, will, as I judge, be able to derive much; which, though flowing out through narrow little channels, will nevertheless, by a longer course, overflow into great rivers.
But I, both cheated of time and preoccupied in mind, was content—so far as concerns the eminence of the business—to mark out, briefly and as it were with the finger, what was to be avoided, or to point out what was to be followed. Indeed, as to that little work brought forth without an author and everywhere proclaimed, whether, drawn out in its whole battle-line into the field and grappling with us hand to hand, it has conquered or yielded—do you, most powerful of the eloquent, deliver the verdict. But that whoever is about to read may grasp from the preface the sequence of our style: the first book, at its very outset, briefly establishes that the impassible Godhead is subject to no affection whatever. After that it alternates in varied wrestling with the adversary concerning the state of the soul.
From this point likewise, in order to instruct the reader in those things which are more obscure, it has, modestly and moderately and as sparingly as it could, given a foretaste of something drawn from geometry and arithmetic, and also from dialectic and certain rules of the philosophers, in so far as it served the purpose—having repeatedly engaged with the opposing party; and so, with some of our own additions, without any interpolation of others' matter, the book has reached its end.
The second book, after the introduction, discourses not idly—and, as I declare, not unfruitfully—concerning measure, number, and weight; where, if an attentive examiner is at hand, under the support of piety, through the grades of differing creatures, he will arrive even at some firmness, if not now of contemplating, at least of more robustly believing, the Trinity that creates all things. After this the whole book, right up to its goal, makes use of witnesses. The third book argues a little at its outset, then pursues the wounded who stray from the opposing line; finally, indeed, it neither spurns peace nor fears the conflict of an unknown adversary. Behold, you have read, most learned of men, what you will read again and again:
Only do you see to it that you remember it ought not to be brought forth without care for yourself—that which you command to be published. Nor would I be doubtful about the weight of the business, but about the lightness of the treatment. Therefore assert and defend your counsel; since, if anything in these things turns out amiss, I shall be put at risk for the composition, but you for the publication. Farewell and flourish in good strength, restorer of ancient eloquence. I. ON THE OPINIONS OF THE UNSKILLED AND THEIR STUBBORNNESS IN DEFENDING PRIDE. Great in the human race, Sollius Sidonius, most loving brother, is the vice of many—an arrogant lack of skill, and a stubborn pertinacity in defending opinions wrongly presumed.
For most mortals are either deluded in the gaze of the mind by images of corporeal things drawn in through the senses of the body, as it were by certain shadows of things; or, still clinging to the tender persuasions of their bygone infancy, they grow childish in old age. If they have any flow of speaking, neglecting the causes of things, they spurn the soul of reason and love the bodies of words; and although the truth is reached by a twofold way—either that we submit by credulity to a prejudged authority, or that we tend by reasoning toward knowledge—saying that nothing is of chief account which either authority commands or reason persuades, scorning the fewness of the learned, they make sport of the unskilled, who are the greatest crowd. But they themselves are also deceived by those whom they deceive, by a reciprocal illusion.
For they are praised, and falsely praised, and believe it—whereby the soundness of the mind is most endangered. There is added to this also the bent of an ever-souring envy, the crime and punishment of a grudging soul. For if anything true be brought forth for the public benefit by those whom they assail with unjust hatred, they at once set up the contrary, even if they think the same; and thus, with unspent and confirmed hatred toward those whom they have resolved to hate, they in no way fear to have made shipwreck of the truth. They hate therefore their neighbor, they hate also God. And in these two, the fullness of all the precepts and of the whole law being scorned, it is no wonder if they have no right thought either of God or of man, who put both far from themselves by intervening hatred.
But by this fault of theirs, blameworthy though it be, I am moved more slightly, because, even though they forge the darts of malevolence against others, they themselves, rather pierced by their own blows, receive the wounds which they attempt to inflict; for the authors of hatreds are first punished by the goads of those same hatreds. That is by far the greatest and far more dangerous crime—that they foolishly conceive opinions hostile to catholic soundness, vainly bring them forth, proudly assert them, write them down with rashness, defend them with intent; and because they have slipped humanly through imprudence, they choose to defend the fault of their audacity by their stubborn obstinacy, lest they seem to have been able to sin.