Against the Heathen

The knowledge of true religion and of the truth of all things does not need teaching from human beings so much as it has its own evidence in itself; for it all but cries out daily through its works, and shows itself brighter than the sun through the teaching of Christ. Yet since you desire to hear about it, come, blessed one, let us set out, as far as we are able, a few points of the faith in Christ. You could find it for yourself from the divine Oracles, but you love to hear it from others as well. For the holy and God-inspired Scriptures are sufficient for proclaiming the truth; and there are also many treatises composed on these matters by our blessed teachers, and whoever reads them will understand something of the interpretation of the Scriptures and will be able to attain the knowledge he longs for. But since we do not now have the treatises of the teachers in hand, it is necessary to tell and write to you what we learned from them, I mean the faith in Christ the Savior, so that no one may think the teaching of our doctrine cheap, or suppose faith in Christ to be irrational. This is what the Greeks slander and scoff at, laughing loudly at us and holding up nothing but the cross of Christ. For this especially one would pity their insensibility: in slandering the cross they do not see that its power has filled the whole world, and that through it the works of the knowledge of God have been made manifest to all. For if they too had truly turned their minds to his divinity, they would not have mocked so great a thing; rather they too would have recognized him as the Savior of the universe, and the cross as having become not a harm but a healing of creation. For if, since the cross took place, all idolatry has been overthrown, and every apparition of demons is driven away by this sign, and Christ alone is worshiped, and through him the Father is known; and if those who speak against it are put to shame, while he daily wins over the souls of those who speak against it without their seeing it, how (one might reasonably say to them) can the matter still be thought human, and not rather confessed that the one who mounted the cross is the Word of God and the Savior of the universe? These people seem to me to suffer something like a man who slanders the sun when it is covered by clouds, yet admires its light, seeing that the whole creation is lit up by it. For as the light is beautiful, and the sun, the source of the light, more beautiful still, so, since it is a divine thing that the whole world has been filled with the knowledge of him, the author and leader of such an achievement must be God and the Word of God. We speak, then, as far as we can, first refuting the ignorance of the unbelievers, so that, once the falsehoods have been refuted, the truth may thereafter shine forth by itself, and you too, my friend, may take courage that you have believed the truth and that in knowing Christ you have not been deceived. And I think it fitting for you, a lover of Christ, to discuss the things concerning Christ, since I am persuaded that you hold the knowledge of him and faith in him more precious than all things.

In the beginning there was no evil; for not even now does it exist among the saints, nor does it exist at all as far as they are concerned. Human beings later began to conceive it and to shape it to their own hurt; and from this they also invented for themselves the idea of idols, reckoning things that are not as though they were. For God, the maker and king of all, who is beyond all being and all human thought, since he is good and surpassingly beautiful, made the human race after his own image through his own Word, our Savior Jesus Christ. Through its likeness to him he made man a beholder and knower of the things that are, giving him also a notion and knowledge of his own eternity, so that, keeping this sameness, he might never depart from his conception of God nor leap away from the company of the saints, but, having the grace of the giver, and having also the power that is his own from the Father’s Word, might rejoice and converse with the Divine, living the untroubled and truly blessed, immortal life. For having nothing to hinder his knowledge of the Divine, he always beholds through his purity the image of the Father, God the Word, after whose image he himself was made; and he is filled with wonder as he contemplates the providence that is exercised through him over the universe, rising above sensible things and every bodily image, and joined by the power of the mind to the divine and intelligible things in the heavens. For when the human mind does not keep company with bodies, and has nothing of the desire for them mixed into it from outside, but is wholly on high, at home with itself as it was made in the beginning, then, passing beyond sensible things and everything human, it is lifted up on high, and seeing the Word, sees in him also the Father of the Word, delighting in the contemplation of him and being renewed by its longing for him. So the sacred Scriptures say that the first man to come into being, who in the Hebrew tongue was named Adam, had his mind directed to God at the beginning with unashamed boldness, and lived with the saints in the contemplation of intelligible things, which he enjoyed in that place which holy Moses figuratively called paradise. For the purity of the soul is able to behold God reflected in itself as in a mirror, as the Lord also says: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Thus, then, the Creator, as has been said, fashioned the human race, and willed that it should remain so. But human beings, neglecting the better things and growing slack in grasping them, sought rather what was nearer to themselves. Nearer to them were the body and its senses. So they withdrew their minds from intelligible things and began to consider themselves; and in considering themselves, and taking hold of the body and the other sensible things, and being deceived as though these were their own, they fell into desire for themselves, preferring their own things to the contemplation of divine things. Lingering among these and unwilling to withdraw from what was nearer, they shut up their soul in the pleasures of the body, confused and defiled with every kind of desire, and they altogether forgot the power they had from God in the beginning. One may see that this is true from the first-formed man as well, as the sacred Scriptures tell of him. For he too, as long as he kept his mind on God and the contemplation of him, turned away from contemplation of the body; but when, at the serpent’s counsel, he departed from his thought of God and began to consider himself, then they fell into bodily desire, and “knew that they were naked,” and knowing it they were ashamed. They knew themselves naked not so much of clothing as that they had become naked of the contemplation of divine things and had turned their thought to the opposite. For having departed from the consideration of the One who is, I mean God, and from longing for him, they then entered into various and particular desires of the body. Then, as tends to happen, having conceived a desire for each thing and for many things, they began to cling to them, so that they even feared to let them go. From this came cowardice and fears and pleasures and mortal thoughts upon the soul. For being unwilling to depart from its desires, it fears death and its separation from the body. And again, when it desires and does not obtain what it desires, it learns to murder and to do wrong. How it does these things it is reasonable to show as far as we can.

Having departed from the contemplation of intelligible things, misusing the particular activities of the body, taking delight in the contemplation of the body, and seeing that pleasure was good for it, the soul went astray and misused the name of the good, and thought that pleasure was the truly good itself; as if a man deranged in mind, demanding a sword against those he meets, were to think this to be sound sense. Having fallen in love with pleasure, it began to pursue it in various ways. For being by nature easily moved, even if it has turned away from good things, it does not cease to move. It moves, then, no longer according to virtue, nor so as to see God; but, reasoning about things that are not, it perverts the capacity it has, misusing it for the desires it has invented, since it was also made with free will. For as it can incline toward good things, so it can also turn away from them; and when it turns away from the good, it necessarily reasons about the opposite; for it cannot cease from moving altogether, being, as I said before, by nature easily moved. And knowing its own free will, it sees that it can use the members of the body in both directions, toward the things that are and the things that are not. The things that are are the good; the things that are not are the evil. I call good things “things that are” because they have their patterns from God who is; and I call evil things “things that are not” because, not being, they have been fashioned by human imaginings. For the body has eyes for seeing the creation and knowing the Creator through its all-harmonious order; it has hearing for listening to the divine oracles and the laws of God; it has hands both for doing necessary work and for stretching out in prayer to God. But the soul, having departed from the contemplation of good things and from moving among them, now wanders and moves toward the opposite. Then, seeing, as I said, what it is capable of, and misusing it, it perceived that it can also move the members of the body to the opposite; and so, instead of looking at the creation, it turns the eye to lusts, showing that it can do this too; and it thinks that as long as it is moving at all it keeps its own dignity and does not sin in doing what it is able to do, not knowing that it was made not simply to move but to move toward what it ought. That is why the apostolic voice also charges: “All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.”

But human daring, looking not to what is profitable and fitting but to what is possible, began to do the opposite. So, moving the hands to the opposite, it made them murder; it led the hearing into disobedience, and the other members into adultery instead of lawful childbearing; the tongue, instead of good speech, into blasphemy, abuse, and perjury; the hands again into stealing and striking fellow human beings; the sense of smell into all kinds of erotic perfumes; the feet into swiftness to shed blood; and the belly into drunkenness and insatiable gluttony. All these are the vice and sin of the soul. And their cause is nothing else but the turning away from the better things. Think of a charioteer who has mounted his horses in a stadium: he ignores the goal toward which he ought to drive and, turning away from it, simply drives the horse as he can (and he can as he wishes); often he charges at those he meets, and often he drives over precipices, carried wherever the speed of the horses bears him, and he thinks that by running like this he has not missed the goal, for he looks only at the running and does not see that he has gone outside the goal. So also the soul, turning away from the road toward God, and driving the members of the body beyond what is fitting, or rather being driven along with them by itself, sins and fashions evil for itself, not seeing that it has strayed from the road and gone outside the goal of truth. To this goal the Christ-bearing man, blessed Paul, looked when he said: “I press on toward the goal, for the prize of the upward call of Jesus Christ.” Looking toward the good, the saint never did evil.

Some of the Greeks, then, having strayed from the road and not having known Christ, declared that evil has a real existence of its own. They err in one of two ways. Either they deprive the Creator of being the maker of the things that are; for he would not be Lord of the things that are if, as they say, evil has its own subsistence and being. Or else, wishing him to be the maker of all things, they must of necessity make him the maker of evil too; for according to them evil too is among the things that are. But this would be seen to be absurd and impossible; for evil does not come from the good, nor is it in it, nor through it; otherwise the good would no longer be good, since it would have a mixed nature or be the cause of evil. Those of the heresies, too, having fallen from the church’s teaching and made shipwreck concerning the faith, also madly hold that evil has a real existence; and they invent for themselves, besides the true Father of Christ, another god, unbegotten, maker of evil and author of wickedness, who is also the fashioner of creation. These one could easily refute both from the divine Scriptures and from the very understanding that is in human beings, from which they invent these things in their madness. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, confirming the words of Moses, says in his own Gospels: “The Lord God is one”; and: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” If God is one, and he is Lord of heaven and earth, how could there be another God besides him? And where will their God even be, when the only and true God fills all things within the compass of heaven and earth? And how could there be another maker of the things of which God, the Father of Christ, is himself Lord, according to the Savior’s word? Unless perhaps they say that, the two being equally matched, the evil one is able to become lord of what belongs to the good God. But if they say this, see into what impiety they fall; for among those of equal power, the superior and better could not be found. For if the one exists against the will of the other, the power and the weakness of both are equal: equal, in that by existing they overcome each other’s will; and weakness in both, in that things turn out for them against their will and wishes. For the good exists against the will of the evil one, and the evil one exists against the will of the good.

Moreover, one might say this to them too: if the visible works belong to the evil one, what is the work of the good? For nothing appears except the creation of the Creator alone. And what evidence is there that the good one exists, if there are no works of his by which he might be known? For a maker is known from his works. And how at all could there be two principles opposed to each other, or what is it that divides them so that they exist apart from each other? For they cannot exist together, since they destroy one another; nor could one be in the other, because their natures are unmixed and unlike. So the divider will turn out to be a third thing, and itself God. But of what nature would this third be? Of the good, or of the evil? That will be unclear; for it cannot be of both. Since, then, such reasoning of theirs proves unsound, the truth of the church’s knowledge must shine out: that evil did not come from God nor exist in God, neither from the beginning, nor is it any kind of being. Rather, human beings, through the absence of the conception of the good, began to imagine for themselves and to fashion things that are not, whatever they wish. As someone, when the sun is shining and the whole earth is lit by its light, might shut his eyes and imagine darkness for himself when there is no darkness, and then walk about wandering as though in darkness, often falling and going down over precipices, thinking there is no light but darkness (for while he thinks he sees, he does not see at all), so also the soul of human beings, shutting the eye by which it is able to see God, has imagined evils for itself. Moving among them, it does not know that, though it thinks it is doing something, it is doing nothing; for it is fashioning things that are not. And it did not remain such as it was made, but appears such as it has defiled itself. For it was made to see God and to be enlightened by him; but instead of God it sought corruptible things and darkness, as the Spirit somewhere says in writing: “God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices.” In this way, then, the discovery and invention of evil came about for human beings from the beginning and took shape. How they also descended into the madness of idols must now be told, so that you may know that the invention of idols came wholly not from good but from evil. And what has an evil beginning can never be judged good in anything, since it is wholly bad.

Not content with inventing evil, the soul of human beings gradually began to lead itself on into worse things. Having learned the differences between pleasures, girded itself with forgetfulness of divine things, and taken pleasure in the passions of the body and in present things alone and in opinions about them, it thought that nothing existed beyond what is seen, and that only temporary and bodily things are good. Turning away and forgetting that it was made after the image of the good God, it no longer sees through the power within it God the Word, after whom it was made; but having gone outside itself, it reasons about and fashions things that are not. For having hidden by the entanglements of bodily desires the mirror, as it were, that is in it, through which alone it could see the image of the Father, it no longer sees what a soul ought to perceive; it is carried about in every direction and sees only what strikes the senses. Hence, full of every fleshly desire and confused by its opinions about these things, it at last fashions the God whom it has forgotten in its understanding in bodily and sensible things, giving the name of God to visible things and glorifying only these, whatever it wishes and sees as pleasant. Evil, then, is the cause that goes before idolatry. For human beings, having learned to invent for themselves evil, which does not exist, in the same way invented for themselves gods that do not exist. Suppose someone plunged into the depths no longer saw the light or what appears in the light, because his eyes were turned downward and the water was poured over him, and, perceiving only what is in the depths, thought that nothing existed beyond these things, but that what he saw were the real things that exist. So the senseless people of old, plunging into fleshly desires and imaginings, and forgetting the thought and glory of God, using a dim reasoning, or rather unreason, fashioned visible things into gods, glorifying the creature rather than the Creator and deifying the works rather than their cause and maker, God the Master. And as, in the example given, those who plunge into the depths rush into darker and deeper places the further they go down, so it has happened to the human race. For they did not keep their idolatry simple, nor did they stay with what they began with; but the longer they lingered in the first things, the more novel superstitions they devised for themselves; and not being satisfied with the first, they filled themselves again with other evils, advancing in the most shameful things and stretching their impiety still further. The divine Scripture testifies to this too, saying: “When the ungodly man comes into the depth of evils, he despises.”

For as soon as the thought of human beings leapt away from God, and they went down in their notions and reasonings, they first gave the honor due to God to the heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars, thinking them not only gods but also the causes of the things that come after them. Then, sinking further in their dark reasonings, they called the ether and the air and the things in the air gods. Advancing in evils, they celebrated as gods the elements and the principles of the composition of bodies, the hot and the cold, the dry and the wet substance. And as those who have fallen completely crawl on the ground like land snails, so the most impious of human beings, having fallen and sunk down from the conception of God, then set up human beings and the forms of human beings as gods, some while still living, others after death. Planning and reasoning still worse things, they transferred the divine and supramundane name of God to stones and wood and creeping things, of water and of land, and to the wild beasts without reason, assigning to them every honor due to God and turning away from the true and really existing God, the Father of Christ. Would that the daring of the senseless had stopped even at these, and that they had not gone further and defiled themselves with impieties! For some have sunk so low in thought and been so darkened in mind that they have even invented and deified things that do not exist at all anywhere, nor appear among created things. Mixing the rational with the irrational, and joining together things unlike in nature, they worship them as gods: such are the dog-headed, snake-headed, and ass-headed gods among the Egyptians, and the ram-headed Ammon among the Libyans. Others, dividing up the parts of bodies, head, shoulder, hand, and foot, each by itself, set each up among the gods and deified it, as if they were not content to direct their worship to the whole body entire. Others, increasing their impiety, have deified and worship the very pretext for inventing these things and for their own wickedness, pleasure and desire: such is their Eros, and the Aphrodite at Paros. And some of them, as if competing in the worse things, dared to set their own rulers or their rulers’ children among the gods, either out of honor for those who had ruled or from fear of their tyranny: like Zeus, famous among them in Crete, Hermes in Arcadia, Dionysus among the Indians, Isis, Osiris, and Horus among the Egyptians, and now Antinous, the favorite of Hadrian, emperor of the Romans. Although they know he was a man, and not a respectable man but one full of licentiousness, they worship him through fear of the one who commanded it. For Hadrian, when he stayed in the land of the Egyptians, ordered that Antinous, the servant of his pleasure, be worshiped after his death; he loved the boy even after his death, yet he provided a proof against himself and evidence against all idolatry, that it was invented among human beings in no other way than through the lust of those who fashioned it, as the Wisdom of God also testifies beforehand, saying: “The invention of idols is the beginning of sexual immorality.” And do not wonder, or think what is said far from credible, since not long ago, or perhaps even until now, the Roman senate decrees that the emperors who have ruled them from the beginning, either all of them or whichever they wish and decide, are among the gods, and writes that they are to be worshiped as gods. Those whom they hate they acknowledge as enemies and call men by nature; those whom they favor they command to be worshiped for their good deeds, as if they had the power to make gods, though they themselves are men and do not deny that they are mortal. Yet if they make gods, they ought rather to be gods themselves; for the maker must be better than what is made, and the judge necessarily rules over the one judged, and the giver surely bestows what he has; just as every king bestows what he has and is better and greater than those who receive it. If, then, they decree as gods whomever they wish, they themselves ought first to be gods. But the remarkable thing is this: by dying like men themselves, they prove that their verdict about those they have deified is false.

This custom is not new, nor did it begin with the Roman senate; it had been practiced long before as a preparation for the idea of idols. For the gods celebrated of old among the Greeks, Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Hephaestus, and Hermes, and among the females Hera, Demeter, Athena, and Artemis, were decreed to be called gods by the ordinances of Theseus, of whom the Greeks tell; and those who made the ordinances are mourned as men who died, while those for whom they made them are worshiped as gods. What contradiction and madness! Knowing the one who made the ordinances, they give the preference to those for whom he made them. Would that this idol-madness had stopped at males, and that they had not brought the divine name down upon females! For women, with whom it is not safe even to take common counsel about affairs, they worship and revere with the honor due to God: such as those ordained by Theseus, whom we have mentioned, and among the Egyptians Isis, Kore, and Neotera, and among others Aphrodite. The names of the others I think it not even decent to mention, for they are full of every kind of ridicule. For many, not only in ancient times but in our own days too, having lost those dearest to them, brothers, relatives, and wives, and many women, having lost husbands, all of whom nature proved to be human beings and mortal, painted portraits of them because of their great grief, devised sacrifices, and set them up; and those who came after, on account of the image and the artist’s skill, worshiped them as gods, suffering a thing contrary to nature. For those whom their parents mourned as not gods (had they known them to be gods, they would not have lamented them as perished; indeed it was because they thought them not only not gods but not existing at all that they had them portrayed in an image, so that, seeing a semblance of them through the image, they might console themselves for their no longer existing), to these, nevertheless, the senseless pray as to gods and invest them with the honor of the true God. In Egypt, at any rate, even now the lament for the loss of Osiris, Horus, Typhon, and the others is performed; and the bronze vessels at Dodona and the Corybantes in Crete prove that Zeus is not a god but a man, and one born of a father who devoured flesh raw. And the remarkable thing is that even Plato, the one deemed most wise among the Greeks, who boasted much of having thought about God, goes down to the Piraeus with Socrates to worship Artemis, fashioned by human art.

These and similar inventions of idol-madness Scripture taught long beforehand, saying: “The devising of idols is the beginning of sexual immorality, and the invention of them the corruption of life. For they did not exist from the beginning, nor will they exist forever. For through the vainglory of human beings they came into the world, and therefore their speedy end was planned. For a father, worn down by untimely grief, made an image of the child quickly taken from him, and honored as living the one who was then a dead man, and handed on mysteries and rites to his dependents. Then in time the impious custom, grown strong, was kept as law. And by the commands of tyrants carved images were worshiped: when people could not honor rulers in their presence because they lived far off, they imagined the distant appearance and made a visible image of the honored king, so that by their zeal they might flatter the absent one as though he were present. And the ambition of the craftsman urged on even those who did not know him to intensify their worship; for he, perhaps wishing to please the ruler, forced the likeness by his art into something finer; and the multitude, drawn by the charm of the work, now reckoned as an object of worship the one who shortly before had been honored as a man. And this became a snare to life, because people, enslaved to misfortune or to tyranny, bestowed on stones and wood the name that cannot be shared.” Since, then, the invention of idols began and was fashioned among human beings in this way, as Scripture testifies, it is now time to show you the refutation of it as well, taking the proofs not so much from outside as from what these people themselves think about their gods. For if one were to take up the deeds of those they call gods (to begin first with these, the lowest), one will find not only that they are not gods but that they were the most shameful of human beings. What a thing it is to see the loves and the licentiousness of Zeus in the poets! What a thing to hear of him carrying off Ganymede and committing stealthy adulteries, yet afraid and fearful lest the walls of the Trojans be destroyed against his will! What a thing to see him grieved at the death of his son Sarpedon, wishing to help him and unable; plotted against by the other so-called gods, I mean Athena, Hera, and Poseidon, and helped by Thetis, a woman, and by the hundred-handed Aegaeon; overcome by pleasures, a slave to women, and for their sake running risks in the guise of irrational animals, four-footed and winged; and again, himself hidden because of his father’s plot, and Cronus bound by him, and him in turn mutilating his father! Is it right, then, to suppose this one a god, who has done such things and is charged with things that even the common laws of the Romans do not permit mere human beings to do?

To mention only a few of many, because of their number: who, seeing his lawless dealings with and corruption of Semele, Leda, Alcmene, Artemis, Leto, Maia, Europa, Danae, and Antiope; or who, seeing his attempt and daring against his own sister, in that he had the same woman as sister and wife, would not mock him and judge him worthy of death? For he not only committed adultery, but also deified and set up as gods the children born to him from adultery, contriving the appearance of deification as a cover for his lawlessness; among them are Dionysus, Heracles, the Dioscuri, Hermes, Perseus, and Soteira. Who, seeing the irreconcilable strife of the so-called gods among themselves at Ilium for the sake of the Greeks and the Trojans, will not condemn their weakness, since through their rivalry with one another they also stirred up human beings? Who, seeing Ares and Aphrodite wounded by Diomedes, Hera and Aidoneus, whom they call the god of the underworld, by Heracles, Dionysus by Perseus, Athena by the Arcadian, and Hephaestus thrown down and lamed, will not condemn their nature and turn away from calling them gods any longer; and, hearing that they are corruptible and subject to suffering, will not recognize them as nothing but human beings, and weak ones at that, and admire those who wounded them rather than those who were wounded? Or who, seeing the adultery of Ares with Aphrodite, and the trap that Hephaestus set for both, and the other so-called gods called by Hephaestus to view the adultery, coming and looking at their licentiousness, would not laugh and condemn their baseness? Or who would not laugh at seeing the drunken madness and profligacy of Heracles with Omphale? Their deeds of pleasure, their unnatural loves, and the god-making in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, need no earnest refutation, since the facts carry their own loathsomeness and show by themselves the mark of error; for these things above all one would pity those who are deceived by them. For while they hate the man who violates their own wife, they are not ashamed to deify the teachers of adultery; and though they themselves would not do such things with their sisters, they worship those who have done this; and while they confess that the corruption of boys is evil, they worship those accused of it; and what the laws do not permit even among human beings, they do not blush to attribute to those whom they name gods.

Then, while worshiping stones and wood, they do not see that they tread underfoot and burn things just like them, while calling parts of these gods; and what shortly before they had for use, they carve in their madness and revere, not seeing or reckoning at all that what they worship is not gods but the art of the carver. For as long as the stone is unhewn and the material unworked, they tread on them and often use them for their own service, even the less honorable kinds; but when the craftsman applies to them the proportions of his own skill and stamps on the material the form of a man or a woman, then, giving thanks to the craftsman, they worship them as gods, having bought them from the carver for a price. Often the image-maker himself, as if forgetting what he made, prays to his own works; and what shortly before he was scraping and cutting, after his art he calls gods. Yet if these things deserved admiration, they ought to approve the art of the skilled man, and not prefer what he fashioned to the one who made it. For it was not the material that adorned and deified the art, but the art the material. It would be much more just, then, for them to worship the craftsman rather than what he made, since he existed before the gods made by art, and they came to be just as he wished. But as it is, thrusting justice aside and dishonoring the skill and the art, they worship what was made by skill and art; and while the man who made them dies, they honor what he produced as immortal, things which, if they do not receive daily care, will certainly perish in time because of their nature. How could one not pity them for this too, that they who see worship things that do not see, and they who hear pray to things that do not hear; that human beings, by nature living and rational, call gods things that do not move at all but are lifeless; and, most remarkable of all, that those whom they themselves guard and keep under their power they serve as masters? And do not think that I say these things … is possible for those who wish to see such things.

Better testimony on these matters comes from the divine Scripture, which teaches beforehand from of old and says: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the works of human hands. They have eyes and will not see; they have a mouth and will not speak; they have ears and will not hear; they have noses and will not smell; they have hands and will not handle; they have feet and will not walk; they will not cry out with their throat. May those who make them become like them.” Nor is prophetic blame of them lacking; there too is the refutation of them, as the Spirit says: “Those who fashion a god and carve vain things shall all be put to shame, and all from whom they came are dried up; and let the deaf from among human beings all be gathered and stand together, and be confounded and put to shame together. For the craftsman sharpened iron and worked it with an adze, and shaped it with a borer, and set it up with the arm of his strength; and he will hunger and grow weak and will not drink water. For a carpenter chose wood, set it up by measure, and shaped it with glue, and made it like the form of a man and like the beauty of a human being, to set it up in a house: wood that he cut from the forest, which the Lord planted and the rain made grow, so that it might be for people to burn. And taking some of it he warmed himself, and they burned it and baked loaves on it, and the rest they made into gods and worshiped them; half of it they burned in the fire. And on half of it he roasted meat and ate and was filled; and having warmed himself he said, ‘How pleasant for me, for I am warm and have seen the fire.’ And the rest he worshiped, saying, ‘Deliver me, for you are my god.’ They did not know how to understand, for they have been blinded so as not to see with their eyes and to understand with their heart; and he did not reason in his heart, nor reckon in his soul, nor know with understanding that he burned half of it in the fire, and baked loaves on its coals, and roasted meat and ate it, and made the rest of it an abomination, and they worship it. Know that their heart is ashes, and they go astray, and no one can deliver their soul. See, and you will not say, ‘There is a lie in my right hand.’” How then would they not be judged godless by all, those who even by the divine …

Would that the craftsman had fashioned their gods for them without any shape, so that they might have a plain proof of their senselessness! For the idols might have stolen the belief of the simple that they have sense, if they did not have the symbols of the senses, eyes, noses, ears, hands, and mouth, lying motionless as regards the use of sense and the perception of sensible things. But as it is, having they do not have, standing they do not stand, and sitting they do not sit. For they do not have the activity of these, but remain lying as the one who fashioned them wished, giving no evidence of God, but appearing wholly lifeless, set up by human art alone. And would that the heralds and seers of such false gods, I mean the poets and writers, had simply written that they are gods, and had not also recorded their deeds, convicting them of godlessness and a shameful way of life! For by the mere name of deity they could have stolen the truth away, or rather led the many astray from the truth. But as it is, by narrating the loves and licentiousness of Zeus, the corruption of boys by the others, their jealousies over the pleasure of females, their fears and cowardice and their other vices, they convict themselves of nothing else than that they are telling not of gods, nor even of respectable human beings, but are telling myths of shameful beings, far from the good.

But perhaps on this point the impious will take refuge in the license peculiar to poets, saying that it is the poets’ particular character to invent things that are not and to tell lies in myths for the pleasure of their hearers; and that, they will say, is why they composed the tales about the gods. But this pretext, more than any, will be shown to be stale by the opinion that they themselves hold and put forward about these beings. For if what is in the poets is fiction and falsehood, then the very naming of Zeus, Cronus, Hera, Ares, and the others would be false too. For perhaps, as they say, the names too are invented, and there is no Zeus at all, nor Cronus, nor Ares, but the poets fashion them as existing in order to deceive their hearers. But if the poets fashion things that do not exist, how do they worship them as existing? Or perhaps they will say, on the other hand, that the poets do not invent the names but tell lies about their deeds? But this too is no less unsafe as a defense. For if they lied about the deeds, they certainly lied about the names of those whose deeds they narrated; or if they tell the truth about the names, they necessarily tell the truth about the deeds as well. Besides, those who told in their myths that these are gods surely knew what gods ought to do, and would never have attached the notions of human beings to gods, just as no one would attribute the work of fire to water; for the one burns, while the other, on the contrary, has a cold nature. If, then, the deeds are worthy of gods, their doers would be gods; but if committing adultery and the deeds mentioned before belong to human beings, and to human beings who are not good, those who did them would be human beings and not gods. For deeds must correspond to natures, so that the doer may be attested by his activity and the deed may be known from the nature. Someone discussing water and fire and reporting their activities would not say that water burns and fire chills; nor, if someone were telling of the sun and the earth, would he say that the earth gives light and the sun makes plants and fruits sprout; and if he did say so, he would exceed all madness. So their writers, and above all the most eminent poet of all, if they had known that Zeus and the others were gods, would not have attached to them such deeds as prove that they are not gods but rather human beings, and human beings without self-control. Or if they lied as poets, and you are wronging them, why did they not lie about the courage of the heroes as well, and invent weakness instead of courage and courage instead of weakness? As with Zeus and Hera, so they should have falsely charged Achilles with cowardice and admired the strength of Thersites, slandered Odysseus as witless and invented folly for Nestor, and told myths of womanish deeds of Diomedes and Hector and of the courage of Hecuba. For in every case, as they themselves say, the poets ought to have invented and lied. But as it is, they kept the truth for human beings, yet were not afraid to tell lies against those called gods. One might also say this to them: “They lie in the deeds of the gods’ licentiousness; but in their praises, when they call Zeus father of the gods, the Most High, the Olympian, reigning in heaven, they do not invent but speak the truth.” Not I alone, but anyone would show that this argument tells against them. For again, by the first demonstrations, the truth will appear against them. The deeds prove that they are human beings, while the praises are beyond human nature; and the two are incompatible with each other: it is not proper to those in heaven to do such things, nor can anyone suppose that those who do such things are gods.

What remains to think, then, except that the praises are false and flattering, while the deeds are told truly against them? One may recognize that this is true from common practice. For no one who praises someone also accuses his way of life; rather, those whose deeds are shameful are the ones they exalt with praises, because of the blame those deeds bring, so that by deceiving the hearers with excessive praise they may hide their lawlessness. Suppose someone set out to praise a person, and because of the shame attaching to them could find no occasion for praise in his conduct or in the virtue of his soul, but exalted him in some other way, granting him things beyond him. So their admired poets, embarrassed at the shameful deeds of those they call gods, attached to them the name that is beyond human beings, not knowing that they will not overshadow the human things in them with superhuman notions, but will rather prove by their human defects that the notions of God do not fit them. And for my part I think that the passions and deeds of these gods were told even against the poets’ will. For since they were eager to bestow the name and honor of God, which, as Scripture said, cannot be shared, on those who are not gods but mortal men, and what they dared was great and impious, for this reason they were compelled by the truth, even against their will, to set forth their passions, so that to those who came after, these passions, lying in the writings about them as proof that they are not gods, might be plain to all.

What defense, then, what proof that these are gods, could those who are superstitious about them offer? From what was said a little before, the argument has shown that they are human beings, and not respectable ones. But perhaps they will turn to this and pride themselves on the things useful for life discovered by these beings, saying that they consider them gods for this reason, because they have been useful to human beings. For Zeus is said to have had the art of modeling, Poseidon that of the helmsman, Hephaestus smithing, Athena weaving, Apollo music, Artemis hunting, Hera dress, Demeter agriculture, and others other arts, as those who tell of them have explained. But these and similar sciences people ought to ascribe not to them alone but to the common nature of human beings, by looking at which human beings discover the arts. For even most people say that art is an imitation of nature. If, then, they became skilled in the arts they pursued, this is no reason to think them gods, but rather human beings. For the arts did not come from them; in these they too imitated nature. Since human beings are by nature capable of knowledge, according to the definition laid down for them, it is no wonder if they too, by human understanding, looked to their own nature, gained knowledge of it, and devised the arts. Or if they say that these deserve to be proclaimed gods because they discovered the arts, it is time to proclaim as gods the discoverers of the other arts as well, by the same reasoning by which those were thought worthy of such a name. For the Phoenicians discovered letters, Homer heroic poetry, Zeno of Elea dialectic, Corax of Syracuse the art of rhetoric, Aristaeus the produce of bees, Triptolemus the sowing of grain, Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens laws; Palamedes discovered the arrangement of letters, numbers, measures, and weights; and others made known other and various things useful to human life, according to the testimony of the historians. If, then, sciences make gods, and because of them carved images are gods, then those who discovered other things after them must also be gods, by their reckoning. Or if they do not think these worthy of the honor of God but acknowledge them to be human beings, it follows that Zeus too … prove that they are human beings.

For what other form do they give them when they carve them than that of men and women, and of creatures lower still than these and irrational by nature, birds of every kind, four-footed beasts tame and wild, and creeping things, all that land and sea and the whole realm of the waters produce? For human beings, having fallen into the irrationality of passions and pleasures, and seeing nothing beyond pleasures and the desires of the flesh, since they keep their minds among these irrational things, fashioned the Divine too in irrational things according to the variety of their own passions, and carved so many gods. For images of four-footed beasts, creeping things, and birds are found among them, as the interpreter of the divine and true religion says: “They became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened; claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things; therefore God also gave them up to dishonorable passions.” For having first had their souls affected by the irrationalities of pleasures, as I said before, they fell into this kind of god-making; and having fallen, as though given up because they turned away from God, they now wallow in these things, and liken God, the Father of the Word, to irrational creatures. Concerning these, those among the Greeks who are called philosophers and learned men, when refuted, do not deny that their visible gods are the forms and figures of men and of irrational creatures; but in their defense they say that they have them for this purpose, that through them the Divine may answer them and appear; for, they say, they could not otherwise know the invisible one except through such statues and rites. Others, still more philosophical than these and thinking that they say something deeper, say that these things were prepared and shaped for the invocation and appearing of divine angels and powers, so that, appearing through them, these may teach them about the knowledge of God; and that the images are like letters for human beings, by reading which they can learn to apprehend God from the appearing of the divine angels that takes place through them. So these people tell their myths; for they certainly do not do theology, far from it! But if anyone examines the argument carefully, he will find that the opinion of these too, no less than of those shown before, is false.

For one might come forward and say to them, with truth as judge: How does God answer, or become known, through these things? Is it through the material that surrounds them, or through the form in them? If through the material, what need is there of the form, and why did God not simply appear through all material before these were fashioned? And they have walled round their temples in vain, enclosing one stone or piece of wood or portion of gold, when the whole earth is full of the substance of these things. But if the form put upon them is the cause of the divine appearing, what need is there of the material of gold and the rest, and why does God not rather appear through the animals themselves that live by nature, of which the carvings are the forms? For by the same reasoning the opinion about God would have been nobler if he appeared through living animals, rational and irrational, and were not awaited in lifeless and motionless things. In this above all they commit impiety against themselves. For though they loathe and turn away from the living four-footed beasts, birds, and creeping things, either for their savagery or for their filth, they nevertheless carve their figures in stone, wood, and gold and make them gods. They ought rather to worship the living creatures themselves than to have their figures worshiped in these materials. Or perhaps neither of these, neither the form nor the material, is the cause of God’s presence, but only art joined with skill calls forth the Divine, since art is an imitation of nature. But if the Divine visits the carvings because of the skill, what need is there again of the material, since the skill is in human beings? For if God appears at all because of the art, and for this reason the carvings are worshiped as gods, then human beings, being the source of the art, ought to be worshiped and venerated, inasmuch as they are rational and have the skill in themselves.

Concerning their second and supposedly deeper defense, one might fittingly say this too: If these things have been made by you, Greeks, not for the appearing of God himself but for the presence of angels there, why do you make the statues through which you invoke the powers better than, and superior to, the very powers invoked? For while you carve the forms, as you say, for the sake of apprehending God, you bestow the honor and the name of God himself on the carvings themselves, and so do an impious thing. For while you confess that God’s power exceeds the smallness of the statues, and for this reason do not dare to invoke God through them but only the lesser powers, you yourselves pass beyond these powers and have bestowed on stones and wood the name of him whose presence you feared; and you name and worship as gods what are stones and human art. For even if these things are for you, as you falsely say, like letters leading to the contemplation of God, it is not right to prefer the signs to what they signify. Nor, if someone writes the king’s name, would he be safe if he preferred the writing to the king; rather, such a person suffers death as his penalty, while the writing is shaped by the skill of the one who wrote it. So you too, if you had sound reasoning, would not have brought down so great a mark of deity to matter, nor would you have preferred the carving to the man who carved it. For even if they do signify the appearing of God, like letters, and for this reason, as signifying God, deserve deification, then surely the one who carved and engraved them, I mean again the craftsman, ought much more to have been deified, as being more powerful and more divine than they, inasmuch as they were carved and shaped according to his will. If, then, the letters deserve wonder, much more does the writer surpass them in wonder, because of his art and the skill of his soul. If, then, it is not right to think them gods for this reason, one might question them again about their madness for idols, asking to learn from them the reason for the form they give them.

If it is because the Divine has human form that it has been shaped this way, why do they also give it the figures of irrational creatures? And if its figure is that of irrational animals, why do they also give it the carvings of rational ones? And if it is both, and they have conceived of God from both, as having the figures of both irrational and rational creatures, why do they divide what is joined, separating the carving of irrational creatures from that of men, and not always carve him from both, like the fictions in the myths, Scylla, Charybdis, the Hippocentaur, and the dog-headed Anubis of the Egyptians? For either these alone should be represented with a double nature, or, if the gods have one form, the other should not also be fashioned for them. And again, if their forms are male, why do they give them female figures? And if they are female, why do they falsely give them male forms? And if again they are both, the two should not be divided but joined, and they should be made like the so-called hermaphrodites, so that their superstition may offer onlookers not only impiety and slander but laughter as well. And in general, if they suppose the Divine to be bodily, so that they conceive and fashion for it belly, hands, and feet, and again neck and breasts and the other members for human generation, see into what impiety and godlessness their mind has fallen, to suppose such things about the Divine! For it follows that it must also undergo all the other things that a body undergoes, so as to be cut, divided, and again destroyed altogether. But these and similar things are not proper to God, but rather to bodies on earth. For God is incorporeal, incorruptible, and immortal, in need of nothing for anything; while these are corruptible, figures of bodies, and in need of service from human beings, as was said before. For we often see old ones renewed, and those that time or rain or some creature on earth has destroyed being fashioned again. In this one might condemn their folly: they proclaim as gods those of whom they themselves are the makers; they ask salvation from those that they themselves adorn with their arts so that they may not perish; they expect their own needs to be supplied by those whom they know to need their care; and they are not ashamed to call lords of heaven and of the whole earth those whom they shut up in little shrines.

Not only from these things can one learn their godlessness, but also from their disagreement in opinion about the idols themselves. For if these are gods, as they say and philosophize about them, to which of them should one attach oneself, and which of them would one judge to be the more sovereign, so as either to worship God with confidence or, as they say, to recognize the Divine in them without hesitation? For the same beings are not called gods among all; rather, as many nations as there are, roughly so many gods are fashioned. In some places even a single country and a single city are at strife within themselves over the superstition of idols. The Phoenicians, for instance, do not know those called gods among the Egyptians, nor do the Egyptians worship the same idols as the Phoenicians. The Scythians do not accept the gods of the Persians, nor the Persians those of the Syrians. The Pelasgians disparage the gods in Thrace, while the Thracians do not know those of the Thebans. The Indians differ from the Arabs, the Arabs from the Ethiopians, and the Ethiopians from them, in their idols. The Syrians do not revere those of the Cilicians, while the Cappadocian nation names other gods besides these. The Bithynians have fashioned some for themselves, the Armenians others. And why should I say more? Mainlanders worship other gods than those of the islanders, and islanders serve other gods than those of the mainlands. In short, every city and village, not knowing the gods of its neighbors, prefers its own and thinks that these alone are gods. As for the abominations in Egypt, there is no need even to speak of them, since they are before everyone’s eyes: the cities have religions opposed to and at war with one another, and neighbors always take care to revere the opposite of what those near them revere. The crocodile, worshiped as a god by some, is thought an abomination by their neighbors; the lion, worshiped as a god by others, their fellow townsmen not only do not worship but kill as a wild beast when they find it; and the fish consecrated among some is caught for food in another place. From this come wars and riots and every occasion of bloodshed, and every indulgence of the passions among them. And remarkably, as the historians relate, the Pelasgians, who learned the names of the gods from the Egyptians, do not know the gods of the Egyptians but worship others besides. In short, among all the nations maddened with idols, opinion and worship differ, and the same things are not found even among the same people. And naturally they suffer this. For having fallen from the consideration of the one God, they have sunk into many and various things; and having turned away from the true Word of the Father, Christ the Savior of all, they naturally have their thought wandering in many directions. As those who have turned away from the sun and come into dark places wander round by many pathless ways, and do not see those who are present but imagine those who are not as present, and seeing do not see; in the same way those who have turned away from God and are darkened …

These things are no small proof of their real godlessness. For since there are different and many gods from city to city and country to country, and one destroys the other’s god, all are destroyed by all. For those thought to be gods among some become sacrifices and libations to those called gods among others; and the sacrifices of some are, conversely, the gods of others. The Egyptians revere the ox, and Apis, which is a calf; and others sacrifice these to Zeus. For even if they do not sacrifice the very ones the Egyptians have consecrated, by sacrificing their like they are thought to offer the same. The Libyans have as a god the sheep, which they call Ammon; and among many others this animal is slaughtered as a sacrifice. The Indians worship Dionysus, symbolically calling him wine; and others pour this out as a libation to the other gods. Others have honored rivers and springs, and above all the Egyptians have honored water, and proclaim these gods; and yet others, and even the very Egyptians who worship them, wash off with the waters the dirt of others and their own, and throw away what is left with dishonor. Nearly all the idol-making of the Egyptians is a sacrifice to the gods of others; so that they are mocked even by those others, because what they deify are not gods but things that for others, and even among themselves, are objects to be averted and sacrifices.

Some have been carried away into such impiety and madness as to slaughter and sacrifice to their false gods the very human beings of whom those gods are figures and forms. And the wretches do not see that the victims they slaughter are the originals of the gods they have fashioned and worship, to whom they offer the human beings. For they offer like to like, or rather the better to the lesser; they sacrifice living things to lifeless ones and offer rational beings to things without motion. For the Scythians called Taurians offer as sacrifices to the one they call the Virgin the shipwrecked and any Greeks they capture, so impious are they toward human beings of their own race; and so they prove the cruelty of their gods. For those whom Providence has saved out of dangers from the sea they slaughter, all but setting themselves against Providence, since they cover over its kindness with their own beastly souls. Others, when they return from wars and bring home victories, divide the captives into hundreds, take one from each hundred, and slaughter to Ares as many as they have chosen, one from each hundred. Nor is it only the Scythians who do such abominations, because of the savagery innate in them as barbarians; this act is proper to the wickedness of idols and demons. For the Egyptians too formerly offered such victims to Hera; the Phoenicians and Cretans propitiated Cronus with the sacrifice of their children; the Romans of old worshiped the so-called Latiarian Zeus with human sacrifices; and others in other ways, and all simply defiled and were defiled: they were defiled by doing the murders themselves, and they defiled their own temples by filling them with the smoke of such sacrifices. From these things evils came upon human beings in abundance. For seeing the demons among them delighting in these things, they at once imitated their own gods by similar offenses, thinking imitation of what they regard as their betters an achievement of their own. Hence human beings were overcome by the murder of men and of children and by every licentiousness. For almost every city is full of every licentiousness, having become like the ways of their gods; and among the idols there is none chaste except the one that is attested among them for licentiousness.

Women in Phoenicia, at any rate, used formerly to sit before the idol-temples, offering to the gods there as first-fruits the hire of their own bodies, thinking that by their sexual immorality they propitiated their goddess and brought her to favor by these means. And men, denying their nature and no longer wishing to be male, take on the nature of women, as though by this they were doing what pleases and honors the mother of their so-called gods. All alike live in the most shameful ways and vie with one another in what is worse; and as the holy minister of Christ, Paul, said: “For their females exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature; and likewise the males too, leaving the natural use of the female, were inflamed in their desire toward one another, males committing shamelessness with males.” Doing these and similar things, they confess and prove that their so-called gods too lived such a life. For from Zeus they have learned the corruption of boys and adultery, from Aphrodite sexual immorality, from Rhea licentiousness, from Ares murders, and from others other such things, which the laws punish and every self-controlled man turns away from. Is it right, then, still to think that these who do such things are gods, and not rather to consider them more irrational than the irrational animals because of the licentiousness of their ways? Is it right to think their worshipers human beings, and not rather to pity them as more irrational than the irrational and more lifeless than the lifeless? For if …

But perhaps those who have risen above these things, and who are struck with awe at creation, being put to shame by the refutation of these abominations, will not deny that these things are easily condemned and refuted by all; but they will think that their own view is safe and beyond dispute, namely the worship of the world and of the parts of the world. For they will boast that they revere and worship not merely stones and wood and the forms of men and of irrational birds, creeping things, and four-footed beasts, but the sun and the moon and the whole ordered world of heaven, and again the earth and the whole nature of the moist element; and they will say that no one can show that these, at least, are not gods by nature, since it is plain to all that they are neither lifeless nor irrational, but even surpass human nature, in that some dwell in the heavens and others on the earth. It is right, then, to look into these too and examine them; for in these too the argument will certainly find the refutation of them true. But before we look and begin the demonstration, it is enough that creation itself all but cries out against them and points to its maker and fashioner, God, who reigns over it and over the universe, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who are wise in their own conceit turn away from him, while they worship and deify the creation made by him; and yet creation itself worships and confesses the Lord whom they deny on its account. For the need of its parts for one another would rightly put to shame those who gape at its parts and think them gods; and creation makes known and points to the one who is their Lord and Maker, the Father of the Word, by its undisputed obedience to his command, as the divine law also says: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of his hands.” The proof of these things is not obscure but very clear to those whose eye of understanding is not wholly maimed. For if one were to take the parts of creation by themselves and consider each separately, the sun alone by itself, the moon apart, and again earth and air, and the hot and cold, dry and wet substance, separating them from their union with one another, taking each by itself and contemplating it alone, he will certainly find none sufficient for itself, but all needing one another’s service and subsisting by one another’s help. For the sun is carried round with the whole heaven and contained in it, and could never go outside its revolution; the moon and the other stars testify to the help that comes to them from the sun; the earth again plainly does not yield its fruits without rains; the rains would not come down on the earth without the service of the clouds; and the clouds would never appear or form by themselves without the air. And the air is heated not by itself but by the ether, and is lit up and made bright by the sun. Springs and rivers will never exist without the earth; and the earth is not supported by itself but is set upon the substance of the waters, while it too is contained, bound fast in the middle of the universe. The sea and the great ocean that flows round the whole earth from outside are moved by winds and borne wherever the force of the winds dashes them. And the winds themselves do not arise in themselves but, according to those who have written about them, arise in the air itself from the heating and warmth of the ether upon the air, and through the air they blow everywhere. As for the four elements of which the nature of bodies consists, I mean the hot and the cold, the dry and the wet substance, who is so perverted in mind as not to know that they subsist when joined together, but when divided and existing by themselves they destroy one another …

How, then, could these be gods, when they need help from others? Or how is it fitting to ask anything of them, when they themselves demand from one another what they need? For if it is the account of God that he lacks nothing, but is self-sufficient and full of himself, and that in him all things consist, and that he rather gives to all, how is it right to proclaim as gods the sun and the moon and the other parts of creation, which are not like this, but even lack one another’s service? But perhaps they too will agree that, divided and taken by themselves, they are in need, since the proof is before their eyes; but joining all together and making them as one great body, they will say that the whole is God. For when the whole is put together, there will no longer be any need from outside, but the whole will be sufficient for itself and self-sufficient in all things: so those wise in their own conceit will say, so that they may be refuted on this ground too. This argument will show their impiety, along with great ignorance, no less than the former ones. For if each thing, when joined to the rest, fills up the whole, and the whole consists of the single things, then the whole is composed of parts, and each thing is a part of the whole. But this stands very far from the notions of God. For God is a whole and not parts, and does not consist of different things, but is himself the maker of the composition of all things. See what impiety against the Divine they express in saying these things. For if he is composed of parts, he will certainly appear unlike himself, having his completion from unlike things. For if he is the sun, he is not the moon; and if he is the moon, he is not the earth; and if he is the earth, he would not be the sea; and taking each in this way one will find the absurdity of this argument of theirs. One might also condemn them by looking at our own human body. For as the eye is not hearing, nor hearing a hand, nor is the belly the chest, nor again the neck a foot, but each of these has its own activity, and from these different parts one body is composed, having its parts joined for use, but divided when the time comes, when nature, which brought them together, separates them as God who ordained it wills; so (may the argument be pardoned by the Most High himself) if they join the parts of creation into one body and proclaim it God, it must be that he is unlike himself in himself, as was shown, and again that he is divided, according to the nature of the parts, which is to be divided.

One might refute their godlessness in another way too, according to the contemplation of the truth. If God is incorporeal, invisible, and intangible by nature, how do they conceive of God as a body, and worship with the honor due to God things that are seen by the eyes and that we touch with the hand? And again, if the account of God holds, that he is powerful in all things, and that nothing has power over him but he has power over all and is master of all, how do those who deify creation not see that it falls outside such a definition of God? For when the sun goes below the earth, the earth overshadows its light so that it is not seen; and by day the sun hides the moon by the brilliance of its light. Hail often damages the fruits of the earth; fire is quenched if a flood of waters comes. Spring thrusts winter aside, summer does not allow spring to pass its bounds, and summer in turn is prevented by autumn from going beyond its own seasons. If, then, they were gods, they ought not to be defeated and hidden by one another, but always to be together and to carry out their activities in common. Sun and moon and the rest of the choir of stars should have equal light by day and by night, shining for all and lighting up all things; summer, winter, spring, and autumn should exist together without change and in the same way; the sea should mingle with the springs and provide a common drink for human beings; calms and blasts of wind should occur at the same time; fire and water together should provide one common use for human beings. For no one would suffer any harm from them if, as these people say, they were gods and did nothing for harm, but everything rather for benefit. But if these things cannot happen because of their opposition to one another, how can one still call these things gods, opposed and at war with one another and unable to coexist, or worship them with the honors due to God? How could things whose nature is discordant with itself give peace to others who pray to them, and become for them presidents of concord? It is reasonable, then, that neither the sun, nor the moon, nor any other part of creation, much less the statues in stone and gold and the other materials, nor the Zeus and Apollo and the rest of the poets’ myths, are truly gods, as the argument has shown; but some of them are parts of creation, some are lifeless, and some were only mortal men. Therefore the worship and deification of these things is the introduction not of piety but of godlessness and of all impiety, and the proof of a great straying from the knowledge of the one and only true God, I mean the Father of Christ. Since, then, these things have been refuted in this way, and the idolatry among the Greeks has been shown to be full of all godlessness, and to have been introduced into human life not for its benefit but for its destruction, come now, as our argument promised at the beginning, now that error has been refuted, let us travel the road of truth and contemplate the leader and maker of the universe, the Word of the Father, so that through him we may come to know God his Father as well, and the Greeks may know how far they have cut themselves off from the truth.

What has been said before has been proved to be nothing but error in human life; but the road of truth will have as its goal the God who truly is. For the knowledge and exact apprehension of this road we need no one else but ourselves. Nor, as God himself is above all things, is the road to him far off and outside us; it is in us, and it is possible to find its beginning from ourselves, as Moses also taught, saying: “The word of faith is within your heart.” The Savior, indicating and confirming this, said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” For since we have faith and the kingdom of God within ourselves, we can quickly contemplate and perceive the King of the universe, the saving Word of the Father. And let not the Greeks who worship idols make excuses, nor let anyone else simply deceive himself, as though he did not have such a road and so found an excuse for his godlessness. For we have all set foot on it and have it, even if not all are willing to travel it, but rather wish to turn aside and pass it by, because of the pleasures of life that draw them from outside. And if anyone should ask what this road is, I say that it is each person’s soul and the mind within it. For through it alone can God be contemplated and perceived, unless the impious, as they have denied God, will also refuse to admit that they have a soul; and they would be right to say this before anything else, for it is not for those who have a mind to deny God, its maker and fashioner. That each human being has a soul, and a rational one, it is necessary to show briefly for the sake of the simple, especially since some of the heretics deny even this, thinking that the human being is nothing more than the visible form of the body; so that, once this has been shown, they may be able to hold through themselves a clearer refutation of the idols.

First, then, no small mark that the human soul is rational is that it differs from the irrational animals; for this is why nature is accustomed to call them irrational, because the human race is rational. Next, this too would be no ordinary proof: that man alone reasons about things outside himself, considers things that are not present, reflects on them again, and by judgment chooses the better of his reasonings. For the irrational animals see only what is present and rush only at what is before their eyes, even if harm follows. But man does not rush at what he sees; he judges by reasoning what is seen by the eyes. Often, at any rate, after he has started forward he is restrained by reasoning, and having reasoned, he reconsiders. And everyone, if he is a friend of the truth, perceives that the human mind is something other than the bodily senses. Because it is something other, it becomes the judge of the senses themselves; what they perceive, the mind discerns, recalls, and shows them what is better. For it belongs to the eye only to see, to the ears to hear, to the mouth to taste, to the nose to perceive smells, and to the hands to touch; but what one ought to see and hear, and what one ought to touch, taste, and smell, is no longer for the senses but for the soul and its mind to discern. The hand can certainly grasp a sword, and the mouth taste poison; but they do not know that these things are harmful unless the mind discerns it. To look at this through an image, it is like a well-made lyre and the musician who holds it with skill. For the strings in the lyre each have their own note, one low, one high, one middle, one sharp, another something else; yet their harmony cannot be distinguished nor their arrangement recognized without the skilled man. Their harmony and right arrangement are shown only when the one holding the lyre strikes the strings and touches each one fittingly. In the same way, when the senses in the body are tuned like a lyre and the skilled mind directs them, then the soul discerns and knows what it does and acts. This alone is proper to human beings, and this is the rationality of the human soul, by using which it differs from the irrational animals and shows that it is truly something other than what is seen in the body. Often, at any rate, while the body lies on the earth, a man imagines and contemplates the things in the heavens; and often, while the body is still and at rest and asleep, the man moves within and contemplates things outside himself, traveling to foreign lands and walking about and meeting acquaintances, and often through these things divining and foreknowing his actions of the following day. What else would this be but a rational soul, in which man reasons and perceives things beyond himself?

This too would be an exact proof for those who are still turned toward the shamelessness of unreason. How is it that, though the body is mortal by nature, man reasons about immortality, and often calls death upon himself for the sake of virtue? Or how, though the body is temporary, does man imagine eternal things, so as to despise what lies before him and to set his longing on those? The body could not reason such things about itself, nor would it reason about things outside itself; for it is mortal and temporary. There must be something else that reasons about things contrary to and beyond the nature of the body. What else, then, would this be but a rational and immortal soul? For it is not from outside but from within that the soul sounds the better notes for the body, as the musician does on the lyre. And again, how is it that the eye, which is by nature for seeing, and the hearing, which is for hearing, turn away from some things and choose others? Who turns the eye away from seeing? Or who shuts off from hearing the hearing that is by nature fit for hearing? Who often hinders the taste, which is by nature able to taste, from its natural impulse? Who keeps the hand, which is by nature made for acting, from touching something? Who turns the sense of smell, which was made for smelling, away from perceiving? Who is it that does these things against the natural activities of the body? Or how does the body, turned away from its nature, turn to the counsels of another and let itself be steered at its nod? These things show nothing else but a rational soul directing the body. For the body is not made to drive itself, but is led and carried by another, just as a horse does not yoke itself but is driven by its master. That is why there are laws for human beings to do good and to turn away from wickedness, while for the irrational animals evil things remain unreasoned and undiscerned, since they are outside rationality and rational thought. That there is a rational soul in human beings, then, I think has been shown from what has been said.

That the soul was also made immortal is likewise necessary to know in the church’s teaching, for the refutation and overthrow of idols. The knowledge of this would come more closely from knowledge of the body, and from the soul’s difference from the body. For if the argument has shown that the soul is other than the body, and the body is mortal by nature, the soul must be immortal, because it is not like the body. And again, if the soul moves the body, as has been shown, and is not itself moved by others, it follows that the soul, being moved by itself, moves again of itself even after the body has been laid in the earth. For it is not the soul that dies; rather, the body dies because of the soul’s departure. If the soul were moved by the body, it would follow that when its mover departed it would die; but if the soul moves even the body, it must all the more move itself; and moving itself, it necessarily lives even after the death of the body. For the movement of the soul is nothing other than its life, just as we say that the body lives when it moves, and that its death comes when it ceases from movement. One might see this more clearly from its activity in the body. For even though it has entered the body and is bound to it, it is not contracted and measured to the smallness of the body. Often, when the body lies on a bed and does not move but sleeps as if in death, the soul keeps awake by its own power and goes beyond the nature of the body; and, as if traveling away from it while remaining in the body, it imagines and contemplates things above the earth, and often meets the saints and angels beyond earthly bodies and goes to them, trusting in the purity of the mind. How then will it not much more, when it has been released from the body at the time willed by God who bound it to it, have a clearer knowledge of immortality? For if even when bound to a body it lived the life that is outside the body, much more will it live after the death of the body, and it will not cease to live, because of God who made it so through his own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ. For this reason it reasons about and thinks of immortal and eternal things, since it too is immortal. And as, the body being mortal, its senses also behold mortal things, so the soul, since it contemplates and reasons about immortal things, must itself be immortal and live forever. For the conceptions and contemplations of immortality never leave it, but remain in it and are like a kindling in it, for the assurance of immortality. For this reason, too, of the contemplation of God …

We say, then, as was said before, that just as they have denied God and worship lifeless things, so, by thinking that they do not have a rational soul, they have at once the penalty of their madness, being numbered among the irrational animals; and therefore, since like soulless men they have their superstition in soulless things, they deserve pity and guidance. But if they claim to have a soul and pride themselves on their rationality, as they rightly do, why do they, as though they had no soul, dare things against reason, and not think what they ought, but make themselves superior even to the Divine? For though they have an immortal soul which is not seen by them, they liken God to things that are seen and mortal. Or why, as they departed from God, do they not flee back to him again? For they can, just as they turned away from God in their thought and fashioned things that are not into gods, likewise ascend by the mind of the soul and turn again to God. And they can turn, if they put off the filth of every desire which they have put on, and wash themselves until they have put away everything foreign that has come upon the soul, and show it alone as it was made, so that in this way they may be able to contemplate in it the Word of the Father, after whom they were made in the beginning. For the soul was made after the image of God and came to be after his likeness, as the divine Scripture also indicates, saying in the person of God: “Let us make man after our image and likeness.” Hence, when the soul puts away from itself all the filth of sin that has been poured over it and keeps pure only what is after the image, then rightly, once this has been made bright, it beholds as in a mirror the image of the Father, the Word, and in him it reasons about the Father, whose image the Savior is. Or if the soul’s own teaching is not sufficient, because of the things outside that cloud its mind and keep it from seeing what is better, it is possible again to grasp the knowledge of God from the things that appear, since creation, as if by letters, signifies and proclaims its Master and Maker by its order and harmony.

For God is good and loves humanity, and cares for the souls he has made. Since he is invisible and incomprehensible by nature, being beyond all created being, the human race was likely to fail to attain the knowledge of him, since they are from nothing while he is unoriginate. For this reason God so ordered creation by his own Word that, although he is invisible by nature, he might still be known to human beings from his works. For a craftsman is often known from his works even when he is not seen. As they say of the sculptor Phidias, that his works, by their symmetry and the proportion of their parts to one another, reveal Phidias to those who see them even when he is not present, so one must perceive from the order of the world its maker and fashioner, God, even though he is not beheld with the eyes of the body. For God did not take advantage of his invisible nature (let no one plead this as an excuse) and leave himself wholly unknown to human beings; but, as I said before, he so ordered creation that, though he is not seen in his nature, he is still known from his works. And I say this not of myself but from what I learned from men who spoke of God, one of whom is Paul. He writes thus to the Romans: “For his invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made”; and he speaks boldly to the Lycaonians, saying: “We too are men of like nature with you, preaching good news to you, that you should turn from these vain things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them; who in past generations allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways; and yet he did not leave himself without witness, doing good, giving us rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” For who, seeing the circle of heaven and the course of the sun and the moon, and the positions and revolutions of the other stars, opposite and different, yet in their difference all keeping alike the same order, does not reflect that they do not order themselves, but that there is another, the maker who orders them? Who, seeing the sun rise each day and the moon shine by night, waning and waxing without variation according to exactly the same number of days …

Who, seeing things opposite in nature joined together and keeping a concordant harmony (who, for example, seeing fire mixed with cold and dry with wet, and these not opposing one another but making one body, as if from one thing), would not reflect that the one who joined them is outside them? Who, seeing winter give way to spring, spring to summer, and summer to autumn, and that these, though opposite in nature (for one chills, another burns, another nourishes, another wastes), nevertheless all provide a balanced and harmless use for human beings, would not perceive that there is someone superior to them, who gives the balance to all and steers all things, even if he does not see him? Who, seeing the clouds held up in the air and the weight of the waters bound in the clouds, does not form a notion of the one who bound them and commanded them to be? Or who, seeing that the earth itself, though by nature the heaviest of things, is set upon the water and remains unmoved upon what is by nature in motion, will not perceive that there is someone, God, who ordered and made it? Who, seeing the seasonal fruitfulness of the earth, the rains from heaven, the flowing of rivers, the gushing of springs, the births of animals from unlike parents, and these happening not always but at fixed times; in short, who, perceiving among unlike and opposite things the equal and similar order that they accomplish, would not reflect that there is one power that ordered them and, abiding, governs them well as it pleases? For by themselves they could never subsist or appear, because of the opposition of their natures. Water is by nature heavy and flows downward, while clouds are light and among the things that rise; yet we see the heavier water carried in the clouds. And again, the earth is the heaviest of things, and water in turn is lighter than it; yet the heavier is borne up by the lighter and does not sink, but the earth stands unmoved. Male is not the same as female, yet they are brought together into one, and from both together comes one generation of a like animal. In a word, cold is opposite to hot and wet fights with dry; yet when they come together they do not quarrel with one another, but in concord produce one body and the generation of all things.

Things that are at war and opposite in nature, then, would not have brought themselves together unless the one who bound them were superior to them and their lord. To him the elements themselves, like slaves obeying a master, yield and submit; and none of them, looking only to its own nature, fights against the other; but recognizing the Lord who bound them, they are in concord with one another, opposite by nature but made friends by the will of the one who steers them. For if their single mixture had not come about by a superior command, how could the heavy have mingled and come together with the light, the dry with the wet, the circular with the straight, fire with cold, or in general the sea with the earth, the sun with the moon, the stars with the heaven, and the air with the clouds, when the nature of each is unlike that of the other? For great strife would have arisen among them, one burning and another chilling, the heavy drawing downward and the light drawing upward in the opposite direction, the sun giving light and the air darkness. Even the stars would have fought among themselves, because some have their position higher and others lower; and night would not have given way to day, but would have remained at war and strife with it. Had this happened, one would see no longer a cosmos but chaos, no longer order but disorder, no longer a system but a whole without system, no longer measures but measurelessness. For by the strife and fighting of each, all things would be destroyed, or the victor alone would appear; and this again would show the disorder of the universe. For being alone and lacking the service of the others, it would make the whole unharmonious, just as, if only a foot or only a hand were left, it would not keep the body whole. What sort of world would it be if the sun alone shone, or the moon alone went its round, or there were night alone, or always day? What harmony again would there be if the heaven were alone without the stars, or the stars without the heaven? What use would there be if there were sea alone, or if the earth lay alone without waters and the other parts of creation? How could a human being, or any animal at all, have appeared on earth, if the elements were in strife with one another and one of them were the victor, unable to suffice for the composition of bodies? For nothing in the universe would have been composed of hot alone, or cold alone, or wet or dry alone; but all things would have been without order and wholly uncompounded. Nor could the very element that seemed to prevail have subsisted without the help of the others; for that is how it subsists even now.

Since, then, there is not disorder but order in the universe, not measurelessness but symmetry, not chaos but cosmos and an all-harmonious arrangement of the cosmos, one must reason and form a notion of the Master who brought these things together, bound them fast, and made them concordant with one another. For even if he is not seen with the eyes, from the order and concord of opposites one may perceive their ruler, arranger, and king. Suppose we saw a city made up of many different people, small and great, rich and poor, old and young, male and female, governed in good order, and its people, though different, of one mind with one another, the rich not set against the poor, nor the great against the small, nor the young against the old, but all at peace in equal measure. If we saw this, we would certainly perceive that the presence of a ruler presides over the concord, even if we do not see him. For disorder is a mark of anarchy, while order shows the one who governs. So too, seeing the concord of the members in the body with one another, that the eye does not fight with the hearing nor does the hand quarrel with the foot, but each performs its own service without strife, we certainly perceive from this that there is a soul in the body governing them, even if we do not see it. In the same way, in the order and harmony of the universe one must perceive God, the governor of the universe, and him one and not many. And this order of the arrangement, and the harmony of all things in concord, shows not many but one ruler and governor of it, the Word. For if there were many rulers of creation, such an order of all things would not be preserved; but all things would again be in disorder because of the many, each drawing all things toward his own will and fighting with the other. For as we said that the belief in many gods is godlessness, so the rule of many must be no rule. For since each would destroy the other’s rule, no ruler would appear any longer, but there would be anarchy among all; and where there is no ruler, disorder certainly follows. Conversely, the single order and concord of many and different things shows that the ruler too is one. Suppose someone hears from far off a lyre composed of many different strings, and wonders at the harmony of its concord, that neither the low string alone makes the sound, nor the high alone, nor the middle alone, but all sound together in balanced counterpoise; he certainly perceives from this that the lyre does not move itself, nor is it struck by many, but that there is one musician who by his skill blends the sound of each string into harmonious concord, even if he does not see him. So, since the order in the whole cosmos is all-harmonious, and the things above are not at strife with those below, nor those below with those above, but one order of all things is accomplished, it follows that we must perceive one ruler and king of all creation, and not many, who lights up and moves all things with his own light.

Nor must one think that the rulers and makers of creation are many; for the sake of exact piety and truth it is fitting to believe that its fashioner is one, and creation itself plainly shows this. For a sure mark that the maker of the universe is one is this: that the world is not many but one. For if there were many gods, there would have to be many different worlds. It was neither fitting for the many to construct one world, nor for the one world to be made by many, because of the absurdities that follow. First, if the one world had been made by many, this would show the weakness of its makers, since one work was completed by many; and this would be no small mark of the imperfect skill of each of them for making. For if one had sufficed, the many would not have been filling up one another’s deficiency. To say that there is any deficiency in God is not only impious but beyond everything unlawful. Even among human beings no one would call a craftsman perfect, but weak, if he completed one work not alone but with many others. But if each could have completed the whole, and all worked on it in order to share in the product, such a thing would be ridiculous, if each worked for glory, so as not to be suspected of being unable. And to attribute vainglory to gods is most absurd. Further, if each was capable of fashioning the whole, what need was there of many, when one was sufficient for the universe? Besides, it would appear impious and absurd if the product is one while its makers are different and many, since it is a natural principle that what is one and perfect is better than what is various. And one must also recognize this: if the world had been made by many, it would also have had different movements, unlike one another. For looking to each of its makers, it would have had different movements; and in the difference, as was said before, there would again be chaos and disorder of the universe. For a ship steered by many will not sail straight unless one helmsman holds its rudder; nor will a lyre struck by many produce a harmonious sound unless one artist strikes it. Since, then, creation is one, and the world is one, and its order is one, one must also perceive that its King and fashioner, the Lord, is one. For this reason the fashioner himself made the whole world one, so that the makers might not be thought many because there were many worlds, but that, since the product is one, its maker too might be believed to be one. And it is not because the fashioner is one that the world is therefore one; for God could have made other worlds too. But because the world that has come into being is one, one must believe that its fashioner too is one.

Who, then, would this be? This above all must be made clear and stated, so that no one, misled by ignorance about him, may suppose another and fall again into the same godlessness as those before. But I think no one has a doubtful mind about this. For if our argument has shown that those called gods by the poets are not gods, and has convicted those who deify creation of error, and has proved in general that the idolatry of the nations is godlessness and impiety, then, these being done away with, it necessarily follows that the pious worship is ours, and that the one worshiped and proclaimed by us alone is the true God, the Lord of creation and the fashioner of all that subsists. Who, then, is this but the all-holy Father of Christ, who is beyond all created being; who, like an excellent helmsman, by his own Wisdom and his own Word, our Lord and Savior Christ, steers all things everywhere for their salvation, orders them, and does as seems good to him? And it is good as it has been made and as we see it happening, since this is what he wills; and no one would disbelieve this. For if the movement of creation were irrational and the universe moved at random, one might well disbelieve what is said; but if it subsists by reason, wisdom, and skill, and has been ordered with all order, then the one who presides over it and has ordered it must be none other than the Word of God. By “Word” I do not mean the word that is involved and inborn in each created thing, which some are accustomed to call the seminal word, which is lifeless and neither reasons nor understands, but acts only by an art from outside, according to the skill of the one who applies it; nor such a word as the rational race has, composed of syllables and expressed in the air. I mean the living and active God, the very Word of the good God of the universe, who is other than created things and all creation, and is the own and only Word of the good Father, who has ordered this universe and enlightens it by his providence. For being the good Word of a good Father, he himself ordered the arrangement of all things, joining opposites with opposites … and being the Wisdom of God, he turns the heaven round, and having suspended the earth, he set it fast by his own nod, resting on nothing. Lit by him, the sun illumines the world, and the moon has its measured light. Through him the water hangs in the clouds, the rains flood the earth, the sea is bounded, and the earth grows luxuriant and green with all kinds of plants. And if some unbeliever should inquire about what is said, whether there is a Word of God at all, such a man would be mad to doubt about the Word of God; yet he has the proof from what is seen, that all things subsist by the Word and Wisdom of God, and that nothing that has come into being would have been made firm if it had not come into being by Word, and by the divine Word, as has been said.

… likeness, as I said, composed of syllables; but he is the unchanging image of his own Father. For human beings, composed of parts and made from what did not exist, have a word that is composite and dissoluble; but God is the One who is, and is not composite; therefore his Word too is, and is not composite, but is the one and only-begotten God, who, proceeding good from the Father as from a good fountain, orders and holds together all things. The reason why the Word, the Word of God, has come upon created things is truly wonderful, and shows that it was not fitting for things to be otherwise than as they are. For the nature of created things, having come into existence from nothing, is, considered by itself, fluid, weak, and mortal; but the God of the universe is good and surpassingly beautiful by nature. Therefore he also loves humanity. For a good being could have envy toward nothing; hence he grudges existence to none, but wishes all things to exist, so that he may also show them his love. Seeing, then, that all created nature, as far as its own principles are concerned, is fluid and dissolving, so that it might not suffer this and the universe be dissolved again into non-existence, for this reason, having made all things by his own eternal Word and given creation its being, he did not leave it to be carried along and tossed about by its own nature, lest it be in danger of returning to non-existence. But, being good, he governs and establishes the whole by his Word, who is himself God, so that creation, illumined by the leadership, providence, and ordering of the Word, may be able to remain firm, since it partakes of the Word who truly is from the Father and is helped by him to exist; lest it suffer what it would have suffered if the Word had not preserved it, I mean non-existence. For he is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for through him and in him all things consist, things visible and invisible” …

The all-powerful and all-perfect holy Word of the Father himself, pervading all things and spreading forth his powers everywhere, and illumining all things visible and invisible, holds them together and binds them to himself, leaving nothing empty of his power, but giving life to and preserving all things, and through all things, each one individually and the whole together. Blending into one the principles of all sensible being, the hot, the cold, the wet, and the dry, he makes them not oppose one another but produce one concordant harmony. Through him and his power fire does not fight with cold, nor wet with dry; but things that are opposite in themselves come together like friends and brothers, give life to visible things, and become the principles of existence for bodies. Obeying this God the Word, the things on earth receive life and the things in the heavens subsist. Through him the whole sea and the great ocean keep their motion within their own bounds, and the whole dry land grows green and luxuriant with all kinds of different plants, as was said before. And not to spend time naming each obvious thing, there is nothing among the things that are and come to be that has not come to be and does not stand in him and through him, as the theologian also says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.” For as a musician, having tuned his lyre and joined by his art the low notes with the high and the middle with the rest, produces a single melody, so the Wisdom of God, holding the universe like a lyre, joining things in the air to those on earth and those in heaven to those in the air, uniting wholes with parts and moving them round by his nod and will, produces one world and its one order, beautifully and harmoniously. He himself remains unmoved with the Father, while he moves all things by his constitution of them, as seems good to his Father for each. For the marvel of his Godhead is this: by one and the same nod he moves round and orders all things together, not at intervals but all at once, the straight and the circular, things above, in the middle, and below, the wet, the cold, the hot, the visible and the invisible, according to the nature of each. For at the same time, by his one nod, the straight moves as straight, the circular moves round, the middle moves as it is, the hot is heated, the dry is dried, and all things according to their nature receive life and subsistence from him, and a wonderful and truly divine harmony is produced through him.

And so that so great a matter may be understood by an example, let what we are describing be pictured as a great choir. A choir is composed of different people, children, women too, old men, and those who are still young; and when one, the leader, gives the sign, each sings according to his own nature and power, the man as a man, the child as a child, the old man as an old man, and the young man as a young man, yet all produce one harmony. Or again, our soul at the same time moves the senses in us according to the activity of each, so that when some one object is present all are moved together: the eye sees, the hearing hears, the hand touches, the sense of smell perceives, and the taste tastes; and often the other members of the body move too, so that the feet walk. Or, to make our meaning clear by a third example, it is like a very great city that has been built and is administered in the presence of the ruler and king who built it. For when he is present, gives his commands, and turns his eye on everything, all follow: some hasten to agriculture, others to the aqueducts to draw water; another goes out to get provisions; one goes to the council, another enters the assembly; the judge sits to judge, and the magistrate to make laws; the craftsman settles at once to his work, the sailor goes down to the sea, the carpenter to his carpentry, the physician to his healing, the builder to his building; one goes to the field, another comes back from the field; some go about the city, others go out of the city and return to it again. All these things happen and are kept in being by the presence of the one ruler and by his arrangement. In the same way one must think of the whole creation too, even if the example is small, but with a greater understanding. For by …

For by the nod and the powers of the divine Word of the Father, who presides over and governs all things, the heaven revolves, the stars move, the sun shines, the moon goes her round, the air is lit by the sun, the ether is heated, and the winds blow; the mountains stand reared up on high, the sea swells with waves and the living things in it are fed, the earth remains unmoved and bears fruit, and man is formed, lives, and dies again. In short, all things are given life and movement: fire burns, water cools, springs gush forth, rivers flood, seasons and hours come round, rains fall, clouds fill, hail forms, snow and ice congeal, birds fly, creeping things go on their way, water creatures swim, the sea is sailed, the earth is sown and in its own seasons grows green, plants increase, some are young, some ripen, others grow, grow old, and wither, and some vanish while others are born and appear. All these things, and more than these, which because of their number we cannot tell, the wonder-working and marvel-making Word of God, enlightening and giving life, moves and orders by his nod, making the world one. He does not leave even the invisible powers outside himself; for these too, since he is their maker as well, he includes in the whole, and holds together and gives life to by his nod and his providence; and there could be no ground for disbelief in this. For as by his providence bodies grow, and the rational soul moves and has reasoning and life (and this needs no great proof, for we see what happens), so again the Word of God himself, by one simple nod and by his own power, moves and holds together both the visible world and the invisible powers, giving to each its own activity, so that the divine powers move in a more divine way, and visible things as they are seen. He himself, over all, being the leader and king and the constitution of all things, does all things for the glory and knowledge of his own Father, all but teaching through the …

For as, when we look up to heaven and see its order and the light of the stars, we may reflect on the Word who orders these things, so, when we perceive the Word of God, we must also perceive God his Father, from whom he proceeds and is therefore fittingly called his Father’s interpreter and messenger. One may see this from our own experience too. For if, when a word proceeds from human beings, we infer that its source is the mind, and, attending to the word, we see by reasoning the mind it signifies, much more, when we see with a greater imagination the power of the Word and its incomparable superiority, do we gain a notion also of his good Father, as the Savior himself says: “He who has seen me has seen my Father.” All God-inspired Scripture proclaims these things more clearly and more fully; relying on it we write these things to you, and you, reading the Scriptures, will be able to have faith in what is said. For an argument confirmed by higher authorities has an incontestable proof. From of old, then, the divine Word secured the Jewish people against idols, saying: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor a likeness of anything that is in heaven above or on the earth below.” And the reason for their overthrow he indicates elsewhere, saying: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the works of human hands. They have a mouth and will not speak; they have eyes and will not see; they have ears and will not hear; they have noses and will not smell; they have hands and will not handle; they have feet and will not walk.” Nor has he kept silent about the teaching concerning creation; but knowing its beauty well, he forewarns people, lest some, gazing at the beauty of these things, should worship them not as works of God but as gods, saying: “And do not, when you look up with your eyes and see the sun and the moon and all the order of heaven, be led astray and worship them, which the Lord your God has allotted to all the nations under heaven.” He allotted them not that they should be gods for them, but so that by their working those of the nations might know God the fashioner of all things, as has been said. For the Jewish people of old had fuller teaching, because they had the knowledge of God not only from the works of creation but also from the divine Scriptures. And in general, drawing people away from the error and the irrational imagination concerning idols, he says: “You shall have no other gods besides me.” He does not forbid them to have other gods as though there were such, but lest anyone, turning away from the true God, should begin to deify for himself things that are not, such as are those named by the poets and writers …

Did the inspired teaching, then, having done away with the godlessness of the nations and their idols, fall silent, and simply leave the human race to drift without any share in the knowledge of God? Not at all; it anticipates our thought, saying: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord”; and again: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength”; and again: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone you shall serve, and to him you shall cleave.” That the providence and ordering of the Word, through all things and over all things, is attested by all inspired Scripture, what is now said is enough to show, to confirm our argument, as the theologians say: “You founded the earth, and it abides; by your ordering the day abides”; and again: “Sing to our God on the lyre, who covers the heaven with clouds, who prepares rain for the earth, who brings forth grass on the mountains and green plants for the service of human beings, and gives food to the cattle.” Through whom does he give it, but through him through whom all things came to be? For through whom they came to be, through him too, consistently, is the providence over all things. Who, then, would this be but the Word of God, of whom he says in another psalm: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their host by the breath of his mouth”? For Scripture declares that all things came to be in him and through him, and by this it persuades us, saying: “He spoke, and they came to be; he commanded, and they were created”; just as the great Moses too, at the beginning of the making of the world, confirms what is said, explaining it and saying: “And God said, Let us make man after our image and likeness.” For when he was bringing into being the heaven and earth and all things, the Father said to him: “Let there be heaven,” and “Let the waters be gathered together, and let the dry land appear,” and “Let the earth bring forth plants and every living thing.” From this one might refute the Jews, as not attending faithfully to the Scriptures. To whom, one might ask them, was God speaking, so as to speak in commanding? If he was commanding and speaking to the things that were coming to be, his speech was superfluous; for they did not yet exist but were about to come to be; and no one speaks to what does not exist, nor commands and speaks to what has not yet come to be, telling it to come to be. For if God were commanding the things that were to be, he should have said: “Come to be, heaven; come to be, earth; come forth, plants; be made, man.” But he did not do this; rather he commands, saying: “Let us make man,” and “Let plants come forth”; by which God is shown to be speaking about these things to someone near him. There must, then, be someone with him, speaking to whom he made all things. Who, then, would this be but his Word? For to whom could one say that God speaks, but to his own Word? Or who was with him when he made all created being, but his Wisdom, who says: “When he was making the heaven and the earth, I was present with him”? By naming heaven and earth Scripture includes all created things in heaven and on earth. Being present as Wisdom, and as Word beholding the Father, he fashioned the universe, constituted it, and ordered it; and being the Power of the Father, he strengthened all things to exist, as the Savior says: “Whatever I see the Father doing, I also do likewise.” And his holy disciples teach that all things came to be through him and for him; and that, being a good offspring of the good, and the true Son, he is the Power of the Father, and his Wisdom and Word: not being these by participation, nor as though these were added to him from outside, as they are to those who participate in him and are made wise through him and become powerful and rational in him; but he is Wisdom itself, Word itself, the Father’s own Power itself, Light itself, Truth itself, Righteousness itself, Virtue itself, and indeed the stamp, the radiance, and the image. In a word, he is the all-perfect fruit of the Father, and is the only Son, the unchanging image of the Father.

Who, then, who could number the Father, so as also to discover the powers of his Word? For as he is the Word and Wisdom of the Father, so, condescending to created things, he becomes, for the knowledge and understanding of the One who begot him, holiness itself and life itself, and the door, the shepherd, the way, the king, the leader, and over all the Savior, the giver of life, the light, and the providence of all things. Having, then, such a good and creating Son from himself, the Father did not hide him away from created things as invisible, but daily reveals him to all, through the constitution and the life of all things through him. In him and through him he also reveals himself, as the Savior says: “I am in the Father and the Father in me”; so that the Word must necessarily be in the one who begot him, and the one begotten must exist eternally with the Father. Since these things are so, and nothing is outside him, but heaven and earth and all that is in them depend on him, senseless people have nevertheless thrust aside the knowledge of him and piety toward him and honored things that are not before things that are; and instead of the God who truly is, they have deified things that are not, serving the creature rather than the Creator, a senseless and impious thing to do. It is as if someone admired the works before the craftsman, and, astounded at the works of art in the city, trampled on their maker; or as if someone praised a musical instrument but threw out the one who built and tuned it. Senseless people, badly maimed in their sight! For how else would they have come to know a building, a ship, or a lyre, if the shipwright had not made the ship, the architect built the house, and the musician constructed the lyre? As, then, the one who reasons in this way is mad, and beyond all madness, so those do not seem to me sound in mind who do not recognize God and do not worship his Word, the Savior of all, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the Father orders all things, holds them together, and provides for the whole. Since you have faith in him and godliness, lover of Christ, rejoice and be of good hope; for the fruit of faith and piety toward him is immortality and the kingdom of heaven, provided only that the soul is adorned according to his laws. For as the prize for those who live according to him is eternal life, so for those who travel the opposite way, and not the path of virtue, there is great shame and an unpardonable danger in … the way, they did the opposite of what they knew.