A DISPUTATION CONCERNING THE LAW BETWEEN SIMON THE JEW AND THEOPHILUS THE CHRISTIAN. To my lord and brother Valerius, Evagrius sends greeting. I will relate to you a most welcome disputation that took place recently before our eyes, which you too, when you come to know it, will gladly receive. There was, then, a disputation concerning the Law between a certain Simon the Jew and Theophilus the Christian. Theophilus the Christian said: It is the most sacred voice of Christ. If you wish to know it, you must first believe; then at last you will be able to understand. For Isaiah refutes you, saying: unless you believe, you shall not understand. Without doubt, therefore, we acknowledge, know, and worship God almighty, invisible, immeasurable, incomprehensible; and thereafter we confess Christ as God and the Son of God.
And as for His saying, 'I am the first and I am the last,' it signifies the two comings of Christ. Simon the Jew said: What of this, that He says, 'Besides Me there is no God'? Theophilus the Christian said: Christ, who is God, the Son of God, spoke of Himself, because He foresaw that Antichrist would come and would call himself God. Of him the prophet Zechariah says: Behold, I raise up a shepherd in the land, and what fails he will not heed, and what is scattered he will not seek, and what is bruised he will not heal, and what is whole he will not sustain; and he will eat the flesh of the chosen and tear off their hoofs; and their sword is upon his arm and upon his right eye. His arm shall utterly wither, and his right eye shall be utterly blinded. Therefore Christ says:
I am the first and the last, and besides Me there is no God. Simon the Jew said: Then do you make two Gods? Theophilus the Christian said: God is one, from whom is Christ and in whom is God; just as three appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre, and meeting them he saluted them as one, saying: Lord, if I have found favor before You, I will fetch water, and let Your feet be washed, and refresh yourselves under the tree—though three indeed appeared—by the foreknowledge of the divinity, namely that the tree of Christ's cross would furnish a covering of refreshment to believers. So likewise the prophet says in the eighty-first psalm: God stood in the assembly of gods, and in the midst He judges among gods. Surely he speaks of Christ, who taught in your synagogues and worked great miracles.
Likewise in the forty-fourth psalm he says: Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of equity is the scepter of Your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your fellows. Which God, or which God did he name, O Jew? Surely it is God the Father concerning Christ His Son, on whose behalf and concerning whom Jeremiah, the most esteemed of the prophets, says: This is our God, and there is no other, nor shall any be reckoned beside Him; He who has found out every way of prudence and gave it to Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved. After this He was seen upon the earth and dwelt among men. Again in the forty-fifth psalm he says: Be still and see, for I am God; I shall be exalted among the nations, and I shall be exalted in the earth.
And in the sixty-seventh psalm: Sing to the Lord, sing praises to His name, make a way for Him who ascends toward the west; the Lord is His name. It would be tedious for me to pursue further examples; by these few the truth is proven. Simon the Jew said: Rightly indeed do they heap up testimonies who enjoy a united spirit, agreeing with your work. But I would have you expound this to me: where in any passage God by Himself established Christ as God. Then at last I shall consider believing Christ to be God and the Son of God. Theophilus the Christian said: Unbelieving Jew, do you now dispute even about the prophets? Yet receive an answer to your question. God speaks to Moses, saying: Behold, I have made you a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet.
Consider that this Moses was a type of Christ, a god to the unbelieving nations; how much more is Christ the God of believers! Just as Moses delivered the people from Egypt, from the most cruel servitude of Pharaoh, so also Christ delivered His people from the servitude of idols and from the power of the devil. Simon the Jew said: If, then, Christ is God and the Son of God, how is it written in Genesis: In the beginning God made heaven and earth? Surely He could have said: In the beginning God the Father and God the Son made heaven and earth. Theophilus the Christian said: You err, Jew, and you will never find the truth unless you understand the origin of truth.
For if you are willing to believe, you can also find His beginning, who is Christ, the Son of God. For thus: In the beginning, it says, God made heaven and earth—that is, in Christ's decree and according to His will and to whose image and likeness He deigned to make man. For He says: Let us make man (in our image and likeness)! And again, below, it says: God made man in the image of God; male and female He made them. Simon the Jew said: He could have said this also to the angels. Theophilus the Christian said: You err, Jew. For to which of the angels did God say: You are My Son, this day have I begotten You? And again in the psalm He says: I will set Him as prince, exalted above all the kings of the earth.
But He commands the angels to worship Christ. And again in the canticle of Deuteronomy He says: Rejoice, O nations, with Him, and let all the angels of God worship Him. Simon the Jew said: Prove to me that Christ is prince. Theophilus the Christian said: I have already said it. Now receive another proof, if even thus you can believe. For when Joshua the son of Nun stood across the Jordan, he saw a man standing, and a sword sharp on both sides in his hand. Joshua says to him: Are you ours or our adversaries'? But he answered: I am the prince of the host of the Lord's majesty. Simon the Jew said: This too I would have you expound to me: how Christ is the Son of God. For all the saints also are called sons of God.
Therefore, just as you have proved to me that He is that prince, prove to me now that He is the Son of God, born of God. For divinity is far removed from human unions and does not mingle in embrace. Theophilus the Christian said: You speak like a Jew. For Christ, who is God, the Son of God, the firstborn, was brought forth by the Word, uttered from the mouth, cast forth from an undefiled womb. For just as God in the beginning, when He made man from the clay of the earth, breathed His own breath into him—and man became a living soul—so also He begot His Word, that is, Christ, from the womb of His heart, as He says in the second book of Kingdoms: And the word of the Lord came to Nathan the prophet, saying: Go and say to My servant David:
You shall not build Me a house to dwell in; but when your days are fulfilled and you sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish his throne forever; and I will be to him a father, and he shall be to Me a son, and his house shall obtain faithfulness. Likewise in the second psalm he says: Why did the nations rage, and the peoples imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the peoples gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ: Let us break their bonds and cast their yoke from us. He who dwells in the heavens shall laugh at them, and the Lord shall mock them. Then shall He speak to them in His anger, and in His fury shall He trouble them.
But I have been appointed king by Him over Zion His holy mountain, proclaiming the decree of the Lord. The Lord said to Me: You are My Son, this day have I begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations as Your inheritance and the ends of the earth as Your possession. You shall rule them with a rod of iron, and like a potter's vessel You shall shatter them. Likewise in the forty-fourth psalm: My heart has uttered a good word; I tell my works to the King. And Isaiah says: I have heard things finished and cut short, for God will make a shortened word in all the earth. This is the Word that healed our stripes, of which it says in the one hundred and sixth psalm: He sent His Word and healed them.
Likewise in another psalm God bears witness through the prophet, saying that the heaven, of which we spoke above, He made of Christ and in Christ, who is the Word of God: By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their host by the breath of His mouth. This is the Word that swiftly ran through the world and turned the souls of the erring to the Lord by the new law, of which it says in the one hundred and forty-seventh psalm: He sends His word to the earth; His word runs swiftly. And Isaiah says: Behold, the word of the Lord has become to them a curse, and they would not have it. For if you are willing to hear our John crying out with prophetic mouth: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing. And again, the Son in like manner renders testimony to the Father and bears witness to the beginnings of His own nativity, saying in Solomon: I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, the firstborn before every creature. I in the heavens made the unfailing light to rise. I dwelt in the high places, and My throne is in a pillar of cloud. You see, therefore, Simon, that when your fathers went out of Egypt, it was Christ who went before them in the pillar of cloud. Likewise there in the Proverbs of the same Solomon: The Lord created me as the beginning of His ways, in the beginning, for His works, before He made the earth and before He set the depths in place, and before all the hills He begot me.
When He prepared the heavens, I was present with Him; and when He set apart His seat, when He laid strong the foundations of the earth, I was together with Him, ordering all things. I was the one in whom He delighted, and daily I rejoiced before His face, when He rejoiced in the world made perfect. Simon the Jew said: He may have said this concerning Wisdom. Theophilus the Christian said: You err, Jew, and your understanding is covered with a veil of ignorance. Not without reason did the most holy Moses veil his face with the covering of a veil, which veil has covered over your hearts. Therefore draw near to the Lord and believe Christ to be God and the Son of God, and the covering of ignorance will be taken away from your understanding. You suppose it was said of Wisdom; you do not know that Christ is Himself the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Indeed your kings, who reigned by succession, could not receive wisdom and power unless they were named by the title of the name of Christ. Of this matter I will give Daniel as my authority, saying: The vision and the prophet shall be sealed, everlasting righteousness shall arise, and the Holy of Holies shall be anointed. And you shall know and understand, from the going forth of the word in answering and in building Jerusalem until Christ the reigning one. When Christ came from God, the Christ of christs and the Lord of lords and the King of your kings, the anointing of Samaria ceased, and that horn from which your kings were anointed; and all the prophets were silent, because He of whom they spoke had come, as Isaiah says: I am He who was speaking, and I have come to bring good news.
Therefore, as we said, He Himself is the Christ of christs and the Lord of lords. I will give Isaiah as my authority, saying: The Lord says to my Christ, my Lord, whose right hand I have held, that the nations may obey Him: I will break the might of kings, I will open before Him the brazen gates, and cities shall not be shut, and I will open the brazen gates and shatter the iron bars and give You hidden treasures. Whose right hand, then, did the Father hold but that of Christ His Son, whom indeed all the nations have obeyed, as it says in the psalm: You are always with me; You have held my right hand? Or what city was shut against Him?
And before whom do all the brazen gates lie open—that is, the inmost hearts of individuals unlocked by faith in Christ—who by His teaching has unlocked the hearts and inmost depths of each? Or will you perhaps even dare to dispute about His nativity, when the same prophet says: The word of the Lord came to Ahaz, saying: Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height. And Ahaz says: I will not ask, nor will I tempt the Lord. And He said: Hear now, O house of David: it is no small strife for you with men, and therefore will you wage strife with God? For the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and shall bear a son, and you shall call His name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us. Simon the Jew said:
I believe the prophets, and moreover I accept Isaiah as most esteemed. But I think he said this of another virgin. For when Shalmaneser, king of the Assyrians, had sent his general to Jerusalem to revile the living God, then Isaiah prophesied against King Shalmaneser, saying: The virgin daughter of Zion has despised you and mocked you; the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head against you. When the angel struck a hundred and eighty thousand from the camp of the Assyrians, in this was 'God with us.' Theophilus the Christian said: You err, Jew, you have not yet put away unbelief. If, then, you say the daughter of Zion is the virgin, what son did she bear? Or who ate butter and honey?
Or who was the infant who, before he knew his father or mother, carried off the spoils of Samaria? Or what son did she have of the seed of David? For Isaiah says: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and shall bear a son, and His name shall be called Emmanuel. He shall eat butter and honey; and before the child knows to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians. Simon the Jew said: Expound to me, then, how these things stand, that I may be able to believe what is understood by honey or butter, or what spoils of Samaria Christ received. Theophilus the Christian said: If you put away unbelief, you shall hear the truth, lest perhaps there be fulfilled in you what is written in the psalm:
like the deaf asp that stops its ears, which will not hear the voices of charmers. Boldly too does Isaiah cry out against your unbelief, saying: The words of this book shall be to you like the words of a sealed book, which if you give to a man who knows letters to read, he says: I cannot read, for it is sealed. Or if that book be given to a man who does not know letters, and you say, Read, he says: I have not learned. First indeed Christ, according to the nativity of all infants, ate butter and honey; this we believe and so guard our faith, and that on the eighth day He was circumcised. But the butter is understood as the anointing of the Spirit; the honey is the sweetness of His teaching, which we attain, and so obtain faith.
But the spoils of Samaria He carried off in this way: that, while He was an infant, He received gifts from the magi—gold, frankincense, and myrrh; and afterward, when grown up, while He taught and showed forth all the truth of God, Samaria and Damascus, abandoning their idols, believed well, leaving behind the Assyrian, that is, the devil. Simon the Jew said: Well indeed do you lay open the mysteries through all my questions. But since you have proved Christ to be God, the Son of God, brought forth by the mouth of God, begotten by the Word, and born of a virgin, how then do you assert that He was born of the seed of David in the city of Bethlehem? Theophilus the Christian said: I will give Isaiah as my authority, saying: A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall arise from his root, and the Spirit of God shall rest upon Him.
For the rod was Mary the virgin, who came forth from the seed of David, from whom Christ, the flower of the patriarchs, is born according to the flesh. For God, who in the book of Numbers made the sign that a she-ass should speak, willed to make a far greater sign, that Christ should be born of a virgin. Or what strife would there be between me and you, unless the virgin bore a child? Simon the Jew said: I believe that the virgin, as you say, conceived of the Spirit. Be it so, if the virgin could give birth. Theophilus the Christian said: O unbeliever, God was able to split a rock and bring forth water to the full; how much more was God able to command that a virgin should bring forth offspring! And I bring you yet another testimony, if only you will believe—Baruch the son of Neriah, who prophesied in Babylon. Simon the Jew said:
Do you then think me so faithless that I would not receive Baruch the disciple of Jeremiah, who, sent so often by Jeremiah, addressed the people, and whom Jeremiah commanded to write down his prophecy? And because Jeremiah knew that he would prophesy, he thus presided over the people in captivity after Jeremiah and prophesied—but he made no mention of Christ. Theophilus the Christian said: How then, near the end of his book, did he prophesy concerning His nativity and concerning the manner of His clothing and concerning His passion and concerning His resurrection, saying: This is my anointed, my chosen, who is said to be cast forth from an undefiled womb, born and to suffer?
For he speaks of His tunic woven from above and all these things, Simon; if you so believe, when you come into the fullness of our gospels, you shall find them fulfilled. But that He was born in Bethlehem, hear Micah the prophet of God saying: And you, Bethlehem of Judah, house of Ephratha, shall not be the least, that you should be established among the thousands of Judah. For out of you shall come forth for me one who shall be prince in Israel, and his possession is from the beginning and from the days of eternity. Simon the Jew said: Many things indeed we read, but we do not so understand them. Therefore I wish, through each thing that I ask you, to learn the proven testimonies of the truth.
Moreover, since God commanded circumcision to be observed, which He first delivered to the patriarch Abraham, which circumcision you professed above that Christ had, how then do you persuade me to believe, you who forbid circumcision? Theophilus the Christian said: We forbid the circumcising of the flesh, but the circumcised we gladly hold to be believers. For Abraham, we believe, before he was circumcised, was made the friend of God through faith and obtained righteousness through faith, not through circumcision. For thus it says: For I have made you the father of many nations before the Lord, in whom you believed. Therefore it says: Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.
For this he heard before he was circumcised, and afterward he received circumcision, showing that two peoples would come to faith in Christ—one from the circumcision and one from the uncircumcision. For if Christ had not been circumcised, how would you today believe me, or the prophets, that He should come from the seed of David? For circumcision is a sign of lineage, not of salvation. Simon the Jew said: How then, when the son of Moses was in uncircumcision, did the angel seek to strangle him, until Zipporah his mother, taking a flint, circumcised the boy, and, when blood was at hand, prayed, saying: Let the blood of the boy's circumcision stand? Theophilus the Christian said: You speak against yourself, Jew.
For above I showed you how Moses was a type of Christ, and all that he did ran ahead as a figure of Christ. For Zipporah, the woman who circumcised the boy, is understood as the synagogue. And what she says, Let the blood of the boy's circumcision stand, means this: that at Christ's coming the circumcision of boys ceased. So too God says thus to Moses: Build me an altar of uncircumcised stones, and you shall lay no iron upon them—meaning, namely, that Christ at His coming would build the church from an uncircumcised people. Simon the Jew said: Prove to me that Christ circumcised no one. Theophilus the Christian said: Believe, and you yourself will prove it to yourself, when you begin to unroll the fullness of the gospels.
There you will find Matthew the apostle, one of the tax-collectors, and Zacchaeus the chief of the tax-collectors, and you will find many uncircumcised who believed together with the Jews. For just as the sacrifices and victims of bulls and goats and rams and lambs were commanded to be offered, and being forbidden were abolished, and the lesser people—that is, ours—was preferred above the greater people, and the new testament was set before the old, so also God commanded that circumcision now be observed not of the flesh but of the heart. For God says to Rebecca in Genesis: Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be divided from your belly, and people shall overcome people, and the elder shall serve the younger. And in Deuteronomy He says: You, O nations, shall be at the head, but the unbelieving people at the tail.
And Jacob, blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, switching his hand, laying his right hand upon the younger, was showing forth the changing of the creation. But for the new testament Isaiah says thus: Behold, I make new things, which now spring up, and I will set rivers in the desert—that is, the gospels in the church. And Jeremiah says: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will accomplish for the house of Israel and for the house of Judah a new testament, not such a testament as I arranged for your fathers in the day when I led them out of the land of Egypt. Hear now concerning circumcision! Moses the bearer of the law says: In the last days God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to love the Lord your God. And Jeremiah says:
You men of Judah and you who dwell in Jerusalem, renew newness among yourselves and do not sow among thorns. Be circumcised to your God and circumcise the foreskin of your heart, lest my anger go forth and burn, and there be none to quench it. To Joshua the son of Nun God said: Make for yourself knives of stone, exceedingly sharp, and sit a second time and circumcise the children of Israel. Was there then no iron? But God was speaking to Jesus our Christ, that through His apostle He would spiritually circumcise hearts. So indeed our apostle was called Simon and afterward received the name Peter. Simon the Jew said: You have indeed shown me clear proof through the Scriptures. But what can the circumcision of the heart be?
Or what foreskin is to be circumcised from the heart? Theophilus the Christian said: Every lust of desire is conceived from the heart. Therefore the circumcision of the new testament is such as God Christ, the Son of God, has shown: that we circumcise from ourselves lust, avarice, malice, covetousness, thefts, frauds, fornication, and everything which you do not wish done to yourself—do not do to another. This is the circumcision of Christians, which the first of the saints also had, namely Enoch, Noah, Job, Melchizedek, who had not the circumcision of the flesh but of the heart. Yet God could, if He had willed, have formed Adam circumcised. Simon the Jew said:
I am greatly troubled in thought that Christ could have endured so accursed and mocking a passion—if indeed what you say is true, that He was fastened to the gibbet of the cross by our fathers. We know well that Haman was cursed by our fathers and according to his desert was crucified, who had sought our race for destruction; and in his death we rejoice when the year has come round again, and we celebrate the solemnities of our vows, as we have received them handed down by our fathers. And we read that Absalom too, who was a parricide bent on his father's slaughter, hung upon a tree.
But if Christ endured this gibbet of death and hung upon the cross, why have we not received this very thing from our fathers, nor do we find Him suffering in our Scriptures, so that, if He were an enemy to our nation, we might rejoice? You will be put to shame, Theophilus, if you do not prove this saying at all. For it is written in Deuteronomy: Cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree. Theophilus the Christian said: First receive the reason of this saying; recall above the reading of Deuteronomy. Of whom was it said? For thus says Moses: If anyone has sinned to the judgment of death, he shall be punished, and you shall hang him on a tree, and cursed shall be everyone who hangs on a tree. But he said this of the sinner who has committed a mortal sin.
But Christ had no sin, as all the prophets testify. Yet He had to suffer, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. For Isaiah says: Because He did no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth, but the Lord delivered Him up for our sins. For elsewhere too we have shown that the prophet said: Behold, the word of the Lord has become to them a curse, and they would not have it. And again it says: He was reckoned among the accursed. Hear too Jeremiah, saying in the Lamentation of Jerusalem: Christ the Lord was seized in their destruction, under whose shadow we live among the nations. Now we know that the most holy David rested full of years in peace and endured no passion of death or of the cross.
Hear then in the twenty-first psalm Christ saying: They have dug through my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones. But they themselves regarded and gazed upon me, they divided my garments among themselves, and upon my vesture they cast lots. But You, O Lord, do not put far Your help; look to my defense, deliver my soul from the sword, and my only one from the hand of the dog; save me from the mouth of the lion, and my lowliness from the horns of the unicorns! I will declare Your name to my brothers; in the midst of the church I will praise You. Likewise in Isaiah: I stretched out my hands to a people not believing but contradicting me, who walked in ways not good but after their own sins. Likewise in Jeremiah:
Come, let us cast wood into his bread and root out his life from the earth. Likewise in Deuteronomy: And your life shall hang before your eyes, and you shall fear day and night and shall not trust in your life. Likewise in the one hundred and eighteenth psalm: Nail my flesh fast with nails out of fear of You. Likewise in the one hundred and fortieth psalm: Let my prayer be directed as incense in Your sight, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Likewise in Zechariah: And they shall look upon me, whom they pierced. Likewise in the eighty-seventh psalm: And I cried out to You, O Lord, all the day I stretched out my hands to You. Likewise in Numbers: Now as a man God is hung up, and like a son of man He suffers threats. And in the Song of Songs it says, from the person of the church: