but who shall remove me from the taste of that tree which is mixed and inclining to either side? For it is by no means held uncertain among those whom the grace of contemplation illumines, what is the 'every tree' whose fruit is life, and again what is this promiscuous and confused thing by whose touch death is begotten. For He who granted with copious bounty every delight, by a certain reason and providence assuredly forbade man from the partaking of common things. And it seems to me right not to take the most magnificent David and the most wise Solomon as deserters of this law. For both of them professed the living grace of this food. For that which truly is, the good, is wholly every good. David indeed says:
'Delight or take pleasure in the Lord.' And Solomon names wisdom itself, which is the Lord, the tree of life. Therefore the tree of life is the very same as that 'every tree,' all whose food the divine law granted to him who was created according to God. But on the contrary, from this tree another tree is separated off, whose food is the knowledge of good and evil, fructifying not each apart according to the signification of contrariety, but bringing forth a certain confused fruit, mixed and grown together with itself by a contrary quality; from the partaking of which the Author of life indeed forbids us. But the serpent persuades that it be eaten, that thereby he may contrive the entrance of death;
and by the very persuasion he prevailed, imparting deadly counsel and sprinkling that same fruit with a certain deceptive colour of pleasures, so that it appeared most sweet and kindled the appetite of taste. CHAPTER 21. What the life in paradise was, and what manner of thing is that tree which was forbidden. What therefore is that which contains the knowledge of good and evil, and through the pleasure of the senses seems to be most pleasing? Do you think that by conjectures pursued with zeal I depart not far from the truth, employing the understanding of knowledge, by the support of this contemplation?
For I think that this knowledge in the present cannot be understood as the discipline of those who have their senses exercised, but I find a certain difference: the custom of the divine Scriptures with regard to knowledge and discretion. For according to discipline, to discern good from evil the Apostle says belongs to the more perfect habit, of those who have their senses exercised. Therefore also he taught us to prove all things, and said it is the property of the spiritual man that he can judge and discern all things. But knowledge does not everywhere insinuate discipline and acquaintance according to its signification always, but it is spoken in a good sense according to the effect of grace, as is that: 'The Lord knoweth those who are His.' And God says to Moses:
'I know thee above all'; and concerning those who are blamed in their evils, He who knows all things testifies and says: 'I never knew you.' Therefore that tree which fructifies mixed and confused knowledge is of those things which are forbidden us by the Lord. For that fruit appears to be joined to contrary qualities, which also is proved to have the serpent as its proponent: according perhaps to this reason, that evil is not set forth naked and uncovered, so that it could be beheld through itself according to its own nature; otherwise malice itself would have remained ineffective, coloured by no semblance of good, through which he who is deceived can be drawn into desire of it.
But now the nature of evil is in some way mixed, containing destruction in its depth, as it were placing certain open snares. But in that seduction which is not apparent, it presents before itself a certain image of good; for the colour of gold, that is, of matter, seems good to the avaricious and covetous, but the root of all evils is avarice. And who would rush into the mire of most foul and most filthy lust, unless he reckoned pleasure to be something good and acceptable, allured by a certain enticement to the disease of passion? So too the rest of sins have an utterly mixed difference, which at first sight are thought most acceptable, and by the deceit of seduction are sought as goods by the inconsiderate and imprudent.
Because therefore most people think that to be good which gladdens the sense, and there is a certain kinship of name—whether of the good which truly exists, or of that which is thought good and is not—for this cause Holy Scripture calls that concupiscence which draws to evil as though to good the 'knowledge of evil and of good': while this knowledge declares a certain affection, neither absolutely evil, because it is coloured with the surface of good, nor most sincerely good, because the destruction of evil lurks in it, but promiscuous, that is, perplexed from both, it testifies to be the fruit of the forbidden tree, whose taste it said draws those who touch it to death.
Almost proclaiming this by an evident doctrine and voice, that what is truly good is simple and single, alien from the nature of all things; but evil is various and painted over, which is thought to be one thing, but by very experience is proved to be another, whose knowledge—that is, the effect of operation—is the cause of death and the beginning of corruption. And therefore the serpent, foreshowing the most wicked fruit of sin, did not evidently display evil as it stands in its nature (for man would by no means be seduced by open malice), but illuminating by a certain appearance that which was visible, and insinuating pleasure through the senses and presenting it to taste, persuaded the woman to transgression, as Scripture says:
'And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes to behold, and fair to handle; and she took of its fruit and ate.' But that food became the mother of death to men. There is not therefore a mixed fructification. For the discourse manifestly laid open the understanding, how that tree was seen to be called the knowledge of good and evil. Just as poison smeared round with honey: according to that whereby the sprinkled-in sweetness soothes the sense, it is believed to be good; but according to that whereby it cuts off and corrupts those who take it, it is made worse than every evil.
As therefore the deadly poisons prevailed against the life of man, then man—a great thing, a great name, and the figuration of the divine nature—was cast down, like vanity, as the prophet says. Therefore the image of God is properly discerned in those things which are understood to be best in us; but whatever things seem pitiable and sad in our life are proved to be utterly alien from the divine likeness. CHAPTER 22. That the resurrection ought to be maintained not so much from the preaching of the Scriptures as from the very necessity of things. But malice is not so strong as to prevail over the divine power, nor is the inconstancy of our nature better or more persevering than the wisdom of God.
For it is not possible that this mutable and convertible thing should exist more tenaciously and more firmly than that very thing which abides perpetually and endures in good without any change. The divine counsel therefore is always utterly immutable, but the mutability of our substance retains firmness not even in evil. For that which is always moved—if indeed its advance tends toward the good—because of the infinite thing which it attains by progressing, its progression into what lies before will never be terminated, since it will not be able to find any limit of that which it seeks, by the grasping of which its motion must at some time come to a stand.
But if its intention bend to the contrary, when it has run through the course of wickedness and arrived at the topmost summit of evil, then the impulse of the ever-moving thing, finding no rest of its own nature, when it has run through the determined spaces of malice, will necessarily turn its motion now to whatsoever things are best. For since malice is by no means moved indeterminately, but is enclosed by necessary bounds, consequently the limit of evil will be the succession of good; and so, as has been said, our nature, which is ever in motion, by a certain return runs thereafter the path of good, having been instructed by the memory of the evils with which it was afflicted, lest it fall away again to the like.
Again therefore our course will be in good things, because, as I have said, the nature of malice is proved to be prescribed by necessary bounds. And just as those who dispute about sublime matters say, the whole world is filled with light in the upper parts of the world, but darkness is generated from the shadow of the earthly body and from its obstruction (and this indeed according to the figure of the body gathered into the manner of a sphere, and the rays of the sun behind its back being shut out come on in the likeness of a cone);
but the sun, being of a magnitude much greater than the earth, surrounds it on every side with its rays in a circuit, sending forth the emissions of light beyond the boundary of the cone; so that if it be granted to anyone, by a certain power, to pass beyond that measure to which the shadow extends, he will assuredly be ever in the light, with no darkness meeting him. So I think it ought to be devised concerning us also: that having gone forth from the bounds of malice—so that we had been placed in the highest darkness of sins—we should again be turned in the light, after ages comprehended by no bounds, the substance of good things over-excelling, as it were, the measure of the shadow. Again therefore paradise, again all that tree which is also the good of life, again the grace of the image and the dignity of headship.
Nor does it seem to me that the hope is promised back to us of these things which are now given by God to men for the necessary uses of life, but a hope of some other thing, whose account is proved to be ineffable. But let us pursue the consequence of the things we are discussing. CHAPTER 23. Against those who say: If the resurrection of the dead is good and best, why was it not done long ago, but is held back through certain circuits of times? For perhaps someone, kindled in thought by the sweetness of so great a hope, thinks it a heavy burden and a great loss that he does not more quickly arrive at those good things which transcend human sense and knowledge, bearing with annoyance the interval of time, which by the delay of itself prolongs the things desired.
But let him not be straitened like a little child, impatiently awaiting a brief little delay of pleasure. For since all things are dispensed by reason and wisdom, it is necessary that whatever things come to be are contained not without reason and wisdom. You say therefore to me: What is this reason, by which it is not granted immediately to attain that which is desired—to come from this most troublesome life—but, predefined by fixed times, this grievous and temporal mode of life awaits the limit of the whole consummation, so that then human life, as though loosed from certain bars, may again run, quiet and free, to the blessed and impassible state of the contemplation to come? But to these things.
Whether the reasoning approaches the truth concerning these things which are sought out, the truth itself evidently knows; but that which comes under our understanding is of this kind. For I say, taking up again the first discourse in which God said: 'Let us make man to our image and likeness'; the image of God indeed has attained the measure of perfection perfect in all human nature. But Adam was not yet formed; the earthly condition, according to a certain expression of its own name, is called 'Adam,' as those assert who are skilled in the Hebrew tongue. Therefore the Apostle too, sufficiently instructed in his native speech, that is, of the Israelites, names man 'of the earth, earthy,' as it were transferring the word 'Adam' into the Greek sound.
Universal man therefore was made to the image, if his nature is most like to God; and he was made by the almighty wisdom not as a part of the whole, but as the fulness of all nature at once. And He saw that it contains all the bounds, as Scripture commemorates, that 'in His hand are all the bounds of the earth'; He saw, who knew all things before they came to be, embracing all things by divine knowledge, how great the humanity would be in each individual according to number. And because He likewise saw that the figment had its endeavours more prone to evil, and that, of its own accord flowing down from the angelic dignity, it would be most humbly knit to common nature, therefore He mingled something of the irrational creatures with His own image.
For in that divine and most blessed nature there is no difference of male and female, but He transferred to man a certain property of the irrational, as I have said, of formation, by no means establishing the multiplication of our generation according to that most sublime creation. (For it was not when He made man to the image of God) that He then commanded men to grow and multiply, but when He made the difference of male and female, then He said: 'Increase and multiply, and fill the earth'—which is not of the divine nature, but proper to the irrational, as the text of the history shows, which signifies that this was first uttered here by God concerning the irrational creatures.
But if He had first made the difference of male in us and of female, and through that word by which it was said 'Increase' had conferred on man the power of multiplication, we would by no means need this kind of generation, through which the irrational creatures are contemplated. Since therefore God by the power of His foreknowledge foresaw beforehand that the fulness of men would come into being for life through animal procreation, He who dispenses all things in order and reason established for man this kind of generation as necessary—a kind which would be more proclive to the humility of our nature, which He saw before it came to be, who beholds future things as present.
Therefore for the creation of men He also predisposed beforehand the measure of time, so that according to the sojourn of the predestined souls in this world the duration of time too should be stretched out together, and then at length the flowing motion of time itself should at some time come to a stand, when the human race could no longer arise in it. The generation of men therefore being consummated, time likewise will also fail, and so the restitution of all things shall come to pass, in which by a universal transformation the human race will be changed, passing from a corruptible and earthly state to one impassible and eternal—which it seems to me the holy Apostle too foretold to the Corinthians, the sudden cessation of time and, on the contrary, the dissolution of mutable things, in which he says:
Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
For when the fullness of human nature, as I judge, shall have come to its appointed limits according to the measure foreknown by God, so that nothing further is lacking for the increase of the number of souls, he taught that in a moment of time the change of the things that are will take place, naming as 「a moment」 and 「the twinkling of an eye」 that indivisible point of time which is its limit without any interval, so that it is by no means possible for any greater swiftness to be added at the last and uttermost instant, on account of which a large part should be left over at the extremity to possess this completed change in death; but as soon as the trumpet of the resurrection shall have sounded—the trumpet that will then awaken the dead—and when those who are found alive shall be changed after the likeness of those who rise from the dead, they shall come together to incorruption, so that they may no longer be pressed down by bodily weight, nor be held back by any earthly mass, but be borne aloft on high into the air.
For we shall be caught up, says the Apostle, in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall ever be with the Lord. Therefore we await that time, which is now of necessity extended by the increase of mankind. For Abraham too, and the patriarchs who were with him, had indeed the desire to see the good things of the Lord, yet they were not able to attain the heavenly fatherland they sought, as the same Apostle says; but at that time they were still established in the grace of hope, God providing some better thing for us, according to the words of the same blessed Paul, that they should not be made perfect without us.
If therefore those men bore this delay with equanimity, who, beholding from afar by hope and faith alone the good things of the Lord and saluting them, as the Apostle testifies, placed the sure gladness of the things to be hoped for in this one thing only—that they trusted the faithful Promiser—how much more should we esteem these many, to whom perhaps not even a hope of a better life can be supplied from the quality of their living? The soul of the prophet also failed for longing, who through his psalmody confesses the greatness of his love and says: My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord; and if it should befall him to be cast among the lowest, he requests this, as though it were something greater and more excellent, to be the last in those courts than to be first in the tents of sinners.
Nevertheless he was most patient of delay, counting that mode of life blessed and preferring even a brief share of it to thousands of days of the present time. For better, he says, is one day in your courts above thousands. Yet he did not bear with extreme distress the necessary dispensation of the things that are done. And it is established as a thing suited to the blessedness of men, that they should not cease to hope for good things; therefore the same prophet places at the end of that very psalm and says: O Lord God of hosts, blessed is the man who hopes in you. It is not fitting, then, to confine within a narrow breast a scanty care for the things that are to come; but rather, lest we fall away from the promises, we ought to expend our zeal.
For just as, if someone should forewarn me, inexperienced and untaught, that in the summer season there comes a rich gathering of fruits, and the barns will indeed be filled with crops, and the table will be heaped with the very abundance of plenty in most plentiful dishes, he will surely seem a vain man if he hastens to anticipate the coming of the season, who ought first of all to scatter the seeds and by that very diligence to prepare the fruits for himself, willing or unwilling. For the time, as it was fixed beforehand, will come, which those will not receive in like manner who provide for themselves an abundance of crops, and those who shall have been caught at that very hour empty of all preparation:
so also for us, I judge, it is expedient—since it has been made plain to all by the divine preaching which is now carried on that the future time of our change is at hand—not to scrutinize the times that are to come, since Scripture says it is not for us to know the times or the seasons, nor to search out any speculations by which the soul, weakened, should grow weary from the hope of the resurrection. But if there is in us any belief of the things that are promised, we ought, cleaving to the pursuits of the best manner of life, to await with equanimity that future and venerable antiquity of grace itself. CHAPTER XXIV. That whoever confesses the beginning of the world's establishment must of necessity concede also concerning its end.
But if anyone, beholding the course of this present world moving by a certain law of its own—by which the span of time slips away—should by no means say that the cessation of moving things which has been foretold can come to pass, it is manifest that he does not confess that in the beginning heaven and earth were made by God. For whoever believes in a beginning of motion in no way doubts about its end; but whoever does not admit an end, it follows that it received no beginning either. But just as we understand by faith that the ages were framed by the Word of God, as the Apostle says, so that out of things invisible the visible things came to be, by the same faith we shall reason concerning the Word of God, who foretold that there would be a necessary transformation of the things that are. But in what manner this happens, it is the part of an over-curious man to inquire.
For there too we perceive by faith in things invisible that the things which are seen are perfect, passing by the searching out of incomprehensible matters; nay rather, since the discourse admonishes us to be ignorant of many things, it has granted no small satisfaction concerning the ambiguity of things to be believed. For it would be permitted to the contentious by certain argumentations there too to overthrow faith consequently, lest the discourse which holy Scripture pronounces be thought true concerning the material condition, affirming that all things that are, are from God. But those who strive by the contrary reasoning say that matter is co-eternal with God, fashioning their dogma by such arguments:
If God is of a simple nature, then surely he is without matter and without quantity, and without mass, and without composition, existing as a stranger to the prescription of any figure. But all matter is discerned in the extension of spaces, by no means escaping the apprehension of the senses, being recognized in color and figure, in mass too and quality and impression or hardness, and the rest of like things—of which nothing can at all be found in the divine nature. What contrivance, then, is it, that from that which is prescribed by no interval there should proceed a nature which is contained by intervals?
For if these things are believed to exist from thence, it is certain that they must be thought to inhere in him, and, according to an ineffable manner, to have come thus into the order of generation. But if matter is in him, how is he himself not material, who contains matter in himself? And likewise too with all the things by which material nature is figured: if therefore quantity is on this account believed to be, how is God without quantity? If he is in that which is composite, how is he himself simple and without composition? Whence it is necessary either that he be material, because the very reasoning compels matter to subsist from him; or, if anyone shrinks from this, he will nonetheless reckon that matter was introduced from without for the constitution of all things.
If therefore it was something extraneous, it will be established that there existed something besides the Lord, which would be understood, according to the principle of perpetuity, to have subsisted together with the Unbegotten, so that the reasoning gathers two principles alike unbegotten—namely, of him who works the more skillfully, and of that which receives this disciplined form of his working. But if anyone, as though compelled by necessity, should suppose the matter of all created things to be everlasting, what favor and defense of his dogmas will the Manichaean then find, who strives to make the material cause equal to the unbegottenness of the good nature according to its unbegotten state?
But we, hearing that all things are from God, hold fast to it, since Scripture says so; and how they are from God, since it is above our understanding, we by no means curiously search out, believing the divine nature to be the creatrix of all things—since it both established that which reason determined, and would, by a marvelous transformation, bring the thing already established into whatever quantity it willed. Consequently, therefore, we reckon...
...that the things which are, can by the will of the divine power be brought into being toward that establishment which is not yet—if we, referring also the consummation of things to his power, in nothing assume the reasoning of our own discipline on account of that which we believe ourselves to say; although we might, by a certain invention of words, persuade those who dispute with contentions about matter, so that they would not dare easily to oppose our discourse thereafter. On the nature of heaven, that it is not composed of the four elements according to Aristotle. (The following chapter does not belong to this book, but crept in here from the book On the Elements, perhaps by reason of similarity of argument, in which place it is the fourth chapter.)
But Aristotle introduces a fifth body, the ethereal, I mean, which is borne in a circuit, being unwilling that heaven should have been generated from the four elements; and he says that this fifth body is borne in a circuit because it moves by a circular revolution—which Plato plainly argues consists of fire and earth, speaking thus: It is necessary that what is of corporeal kind, both visible and tangible, should be; but without fire nothing will ever become visible, nor anything tangible without something solid, and the solid by no means exists apart from earth. Accordingly, beginning the body of this universe from fire and earth, God made it; but two things cannot well consist without a third, for there is need of a bond joining both together;
but the best bond is that which makes both itself and the things bound together as much as possible one; and this proportion is most fittingly suited to accomplish—he calls the bond the two middle elements taken from such a proportion. But those who cultivate the doctrine of the Hebrews differ concerning heaven and earth; for these, indeed nearly all of them, say that heaven and earth were generated from no preceding matter, because Moses says: In the beginning God made heaven and earth. But Apollinarius holds that God made heaven and earth from the abyss; yet Moses, in his account of the generation of heaven, makes no mention of the abyss as having been generated. But in Job it is said that he made the abyss; from this, therefore, he reckons that all other things were generated;
yet he does not hold it to be unbegotten, but that it was produced before all bodies, and was presupposed by the Creator for the subsistence and manifestation of other things. Whence the abyss of matter (hyle)—but in whatever way this stands, it makes no difference. For thus too the God who is Creator of all is shown to have made all things from things that are not. But against those who maintain that there is one single element only—earth, fire, air, or water—what was said by Hippocrates will suffice. For if there were but one only, a man would never feel pain, for there would be nothing by which he could feel pain if one alone existed; and if he did feel pain, whence would come that which should heal? But the sick man must be changed together with sensation. But if there were one single element only, there would not exist that into which it might be changed;
and not being changed, but remaining in itself, it would by no means feel pain, even if it were capable of sensation; but that which suffers must of necessity suffer from something. If therefore there were but one element, besides the quality of that element there would be no other from which a living thing might suffer; and if it could neither be changed nor suffer, in what way would it feel pain? Showing therefore that this is impossible, he draws his conclusion from what is admitted: But if it did feel pain, whence would come that which should heal? Now, however, it is not one thing that heals, but many; least of all, therefore, is a man constituted of one element. Moreover, from the very things by which each one tries to fortify his own dogma, it is most of all shown that the elements are four;