Letters to Serapion 4.21–4.22

How, then, while daring such things, can they still blame the Greeks for fashioning idols and calling them gods? For their own deeds are like the madness of those; or perhaps the daring of these is even greater, because, though they had received a law about this, they dishonored God by transgressing the law. And what will they do, blaspheming in this way, when they read the prophet Isaiah and hear that the signs of Christ’s coming are sight for the blind, walking for the lame, speech for the dumb, resurrection of the dead, healing of lepers, and the opening of the hearing of the deaf? Whom will they have be the one who does these? If they say God, they will convict themselves of impiety against the Lord; for what the prophet foresaw and spoke, the Lord himself, present among them, did. But if, carried away by rashness, they dare to say that those too are done by Beelzebul, I fear that, advancing little by little in impiety, and reading, “Who gave man a mouth? And who made the deaf and dumb, the seeing and the blind?” and the like, they will in their madness say again that these words too are Beelzebul’s. For to the one to whom they ascribe the grace of seeing, they must also ascribe the cause of not seeing; for the Word said that the same one does both. And surely, saying this, they will at some time think that Beelzebul is also the creator of human nature; for it belongs to the maker to have authority over what comes to be. For Moses said, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,” and “In the image of God God made man”; and Daniel speaks boldly to Darius, saying, “I do not worship idols made with hands, but the living God, who created the heaven and the earth and has lordship over all flesh”—unless they change their ground again and say that blindness and lameness and the other afflictions come from the Creator’s punishment, while the release from these and the benefit to the afflicted is worked by Beelzebul. But even to examine this is very foolish. For such foolish talk, with impiety, belongs to those who are mad and quite out of their minds, since not even the better things …

But the wicked ought either not to have despised him as a man because of the bodily things, or else plainly to have confessed him as true God from his works. But they did everything perversely: seeing a man, they reviled him as a man; beholding divine works, they denied his Godhead and ran to the devil, thinking that by daring such things they would be able to escape being judged by the very Word whom they insulted. The enchanters and magicians and sorcerers of Pharaoh, though they attempted a great deal, nevertheless, when they saw the signs done through Moses, gave up and turned their backs, saying that the one who did them was the finger of God; but the Pharisees and the scribes, seeing the whole hand of God at work, and beholding things done through the Savior himself more and greater than those, said that Beelzebul did them—though the magicians, whose own he was, confessed that he could not do even lesser things than these. What, then, could exceed their madness? Or who, as the prophet said, could liken anything to their impieties? For they made even the Sodomites appear righteous by comparison; and they have surpassed the ignorance of the Greeks and exceed the irrationality of Pharaoh’s magicians, and bear comparison only with the Ariomaniacs, both falling into the same impiety. For the Jews, seeing the works of the Father through the Son, ascribe them to Beelzebul; and the Arians, seeing the same works, number the Lord who does them with the creatures, saying that he is from nothing and that “he was not before he came to be.” And the Pharisees, seeing the Lord in the body, murmured, saying, “Why do you, being a man, make yourself God?”; and the Christ-fighters, seeing him suffering and sleeping, blaspheme, saying, “He who endures these things cannot be true God and of the same essence as the Father.” [23] For this reason the Lord declared that the punishment for such things would be unpardonable both for those and for these, saying, “Whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.” And rightly so; for whoever denies the Son, whom will he call upon, and what propitiation can he have? Or what life or rest will he expect, who has thrust away the one who says, “I am the life,” and “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”? And since these pay such a penalty, it would be plain that those who are pious toward Christ, and worship both what is according to the flesh and what is according to the Spirit in him, neither ignorant that he is Son of God, nor denying that he also became Son of Man, but believing that “In the beginning was the Word” and “The Word became flesh,” will reign eternally in the heavens, according to the holy promises of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ himself, who says, “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” These things I have written to you briefly, from what I have learned. But take them from me not as complete teaching, but only as a starting point; and then, taking up for yourself a more exact understanding from the Gospel text and from the Psalms, bind together the sheaves of the truth, so that, as you bring them, those who say it may say: “Coming they shall come with rejoicing, bearing their sheaves,” in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom and with whom be glory to the Father together with the Holy Spirit …