Miscellanies 1.26.167–2.3.11

Hence the law is fittingly said to have been given through Moses, being a rule of just and unjust things. And this we might properly call an ordinance, handed down by God through Moses. At any rate it leads to the divine. And Paul says: “The law was added because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” Then, as if explaining his meaning, he adds: “Before faith came we were guarded under the law, shut up,” by fear, clearly, from sins, “for the faith that was to be revealed. So the law became our schoolmaster to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” The lawgiver is one who assigns what is fitting to each part of the soul and to their works; and Moses, in short, was a living law, governed by good reason.

At any rate he served a good constitution; and a constitution is a good rearing of human beings in community. Thus he practiced the judicial art, which is a knowledge corrective of wrongdoing for the sake of justice. Coordinate with it is the punitive art, a knowledge of the measure of punishments. And punishment, when it is just, is a correction of the soul. In a word, the whole training of Moses is educative of those able to become noble and good men, and a hunting for those like them, which would be generalship. And the wisdom that uses properly, by reason, those who have been caught would be legislative; for to acquire and to use it belongs to this, which is the most kingly. At any rate the philosophers proclaim only the wise man king, lawgiver, general, just, holy, and dear to God. If we find these in Moses, as is shown from the Scriptures themselves, we would say with great conviction that Moses was truly wise.

As we say, then, that shepherding is providing for sheep (for so the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep), so we shall say that legislation is forming the virtue of human beings, rekindling the human good as far as possible, being a guardian and protector of the flock of human beings. And if the flock allegorized by the Lord is nothing other than a herd of human beings, the same will be the good shepherd and lawgiver of the one flock of his sheep who listen, the one guardian, who seeks and finds the lost by law and word, if indeed the law is spiritual and leads to happiness; for the one who has come to be in the Holy Spirit is spiritual. And this is the true lawgiver, who not only proclaims good and noble things, but also knows them. Of him who has knowledge the law is the saving command; or rather the law is a command of knowledge, for the Word of God is power and wisdom. And he himself is the interpreter of the laws, through whom the law was given, the first interpreter of the divine commands, the only-begotten Son who explains the bosom of the Father.

Then those who obey the law, through having some knowledge of it, can neither disbelieve nor be ignorant of the truth; but those who disbelieve and do not wish to be engaged in its works, these, if any, admittedly do not know the truth. What, then, is the unbelief of the Greeks? Not wishing to trust the truth that says the law was given by God through Moses, when they themselves, from their own accounts, honor Moses. They relate that Minos received the laws from Zeus every ninth year, going to the cave of Zeus; and Plato, Aristotle, and Ephorus write that Lycurgus was taught his legislation by continually going to Apollo at Delphi; and Chamaeleon of Heraclea in his work On Drunkenness, and Aristotle in his Constitution of the Locrians, record that Zaleucus the Locrian received his laws from Athena. Those who, as far as they can, raise the authority of Greek legislation to the divine, in imitation of the prophecy of Moses, are ungrateful, not admitting outright the truth and the archetype of what is related among them.

Let no one, then, attack the law because of its punishments as not noble and good. For if the one who removes a disease of the body will be thought a benefactor, will not the one who tries to free the soul from injustice be even more a protector, by as much as the soul is more precious than the body? For the sake of the body's health we submit to cuttings, burnings, and the drinking of medicines, and the one who applies these is called savior and physician, not out of envy or hostility toward the patient, but as the principle of the art dictates, even cutting off some parts, so that the healthy parts may not be destroyed with them; and no one would accuse the physician's art of wickedness. Shall we not in the same way, for the sake of the soul, submit to exile, fines, or bonds, if only one may at some time acquire righteousness in place of injustice? For the law, caring for its subjects, educates them in piety, dictates what must be done, and restrains each from sins, imposing penalties on the lesser of them; but when it sees someone in such a state as to seem incurable, driven to the extreme of injustice, then, caring for the others, so that they may not be corrupted by him, it puts such a person to death, as if cutting off a part from the whole body, and so most healthfully.

“But when we are judged by the Lord,” says the apostle, “we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned with the world.” For the prophet said earlier: “The Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death.” “For in order to teach you his righteousness he disciplined you,” it says, “and tested you, and let you hunger and made you thirst in a desert land, so that all his ordinances and judgments might be known in your heart, all that I command you today; and you will know in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord our God will discipline you.”

That example brings to self-control it says at once: “A cunning man, seeing a wicked man punished, is himself strongly instructed,” since “the fear of the Lord is the source of wisdom.” The greatest and most perfect good is when one can bring someone from doing evil to virtue and well-being, which the law accomplishes. So even when someone falls into an incurable evil, seized by injustice and greed, the one who is put to death would be benefited; for the law is a benefactor, able to make some just from unjust, if only they are willing to listen to it, and to release others from present evils. For it promises immortality to those who choose to live temperately and justly. To know the law belongs to a good mind. And again: “Evil men do not understand the law, but those who seek the Lord will understand in every good thing.” The providence that governs must be both sovereign and good. For the power of both arranges salvation, the one bringing to self-control by punishment as sovereign, the other showing kindness by good deeds as benefactor. It is possible not to be a son of disobedience, but to pass from darkness into life, and, lending one's ear to wisdom, to be lawful: at first a servant of God, then to become a faithful attendant, fearing the Lord God; and if one rises further, to be enrolled among the sons; and when love covers a multitude of sins, growing in love, to await the completion of blessed hope, as one ranked in the chosen adoption called the friendship of God, singing already the prayer and saying, “Let the Lord be my God.”

The apostle has shown the beneficence of the law through the passage addressed to the Jews, writing somewhat thus: “But if you call yourself a Jew and rest on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, being instructed from the law, and are confident that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, having in the law the form of knowledge and of truth.” For it is acknowledged that the law can do these things, even if those who do not live according to the law boast as though living in the law. “Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and the mortal who has seen understanding”; and “from her mouth,” that is, wisdom's, “righteousness proceeds, and she bears law and mercy on her tongue.” For the law and the gospel are the working of one Lord, who is “the power and wisdom of God”; and the fear that the law begot is merciful for salvation. “Let not almsgiving and faith and truth forsake you, but bind them about your neck.”

Likewise with Paul, the prophecy reproaches the people as not understanding the law: “Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” “And we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully”; but “those who wish to be teachers of the law do not understand,” says the apostle, “either what they say or the things about which they make confident assertions”; “but the aim of the commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith.”

The philosophy according to Moses, then, is divided into four parts: the historical and the properly legislative, which would belong to ethics; the third, the priestly, which already belongs to natural contemplation; and fourth, above all, the theological kind, the vision, which Plato says belongs to the truly great mysteries, and which Aristotle calls metaphysics. And dialectic according to Plato, as he says in the Statesman, is a knowledge that discovers the explanation of the things that are; and it is to be acquired by the self-controlled not for speaking and doing any of the things that concern human beings, as the present dialecticians do, busy with sophistries, but in order to be able to say what is pleasing to God and to do what is pleasing, everything as far as possible.

True dialectic, being mixed with true philosophy, examines things, tests powers and authorities, and rises step by step to the best essence of all, and dares beyond, to the God of the universe, professing not experience of mortal things but knowledge of divine and heavenly things; and the proper use of human matters in words and deeds follows from it. Fittingly, then, Scripture, wishing us to become such dialecticians, exhorts: “Become approved money-changers, rejecting some things and holding fast what is good.” For this truly is dialectic: prudence that divides intelligible things, showing each of the things that are purely and unmixed as it is in its substrate; or a power that divides the genera of things, descending to the most specific, presenting each of the things that are to appear pure as it is.

That is why this alone leads by the hand to true wisdom, which is a divine power, knowing the things that are as they are, having the perfect, freed from every passion; not without the Savior, who by the divine Word removed from the soul's power of sight the misty ignorance poured over it by evil conduct, and gave back the best, “so that we may know well both God and man.” He it is who truly showed how we should know ourselves; he reveals the Father of the universe to whom he wishes, and as far as human nature can understand. “For no one knows the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son and he to whom the Son reveals him.”

Fittingly, then, the apostle says that he knew the mystery by revelation: “as I wrote before briefly, by which, when you read, you can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ.” He said “you can,” since he knew that some had received only milk, and not yet solid food, and not simply milk. We must take the meaning of the law in three ways: as showing a sign, as establishing a commandment for right living, or as foretelling as prophecy. And I know well that it belongs to men to distinguish and speak of such things; for the whole of Scripture is not, as the proverb-makers say, “one Myconos” to understanding; but one must approach it as dialectically as possible, hunting the sequence of the divine teaching.

Hence very finely did the Egyptian priest in Plato say: “O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children, having in your souls no ancient opinion from ancient tradition; and there is no old man among the Greeks.” By “old men” he meant, I think, those who know the more ancient things, that is, ours; and conversely by “young” those who relate as old and ancient the newer things practiced by the Greeks, things of yesterday and the day before. He added, then, “learning gray with time,” we using the metaphor in a barbarian way, unaffected and not precise. Indeed the right-minded approach the whole fiction of the interpretation simply. Of the Greeks he says that their conceit differs little from children's myths; for we must not understand children's myths, nor myths made for children; but he called the myths themselves children, as the Greeks who think themselves wise see little, hinting at the “learning gray with time,” the most ancient truth among the barbarians; to which word he opposed the “child myth,” exposing the mythical character of the attempts of the moderns as, like children, having nothing older, and showing that both their myths and their reasonings are alike childish.

Divinely, then, the power that spoke to Hermas by revelation says: “The visions and revelations are for the double-minded, who reason in their hearts whether these things are or are not.” Likewise the demonstrations from abundant learning strengthen, confirm, and establish the demonstrative arguments, as long as the minds of such people, like those of the young, are fluttering. “The commandment is a lamp,” according to Scripture, “and the law a light for the way; for instruction reproves the ways of life.” “Law, king of all, mortals and immortals,” says Pindar. I understand by these words the one who gave the law, and I take Hesiod's saying too as said of the God of all, even if the poet said it by guesswork and not with understanding: “For this law the son of Cronus ordained for men: fish, beasts, and winged birds should eat one another, since there is no justice among them; but to men he gave justice, which is by far the best.”

Whether, then, he means the law given together with birth or the one given later, both the law of nature and the law of learning are from God, being one; as Plato too says in the Statesman that the lawgiver is one, and in the Laws that the one who understands music is one, teaching by these words that the Word is one and God is one. And Moses appears to call the Lord a covenant, saying, “Behold, I, my covenant is with you”; since he said “covenant” earlier too, … not to seek it in writing. For a covenant is what God, the cause of all, sets; and God (θεός) is so called from setting (θέσις) and order, the arrangement of the world. And in the Preaching of Peter you would find the Lord called Law and Word. But let the first Stromateus of our gnostic notes according to the true philosophy end here.

Next it would be fitting to discuss how it will be shown briefly, since Scripture has called the Greeks thieves of the barbarian philosophy. For we shall show not only that they wrote imitating the marvels recorded among us, but we shall also prove that they falsified and counterfeited the most important of the doctrines, since our Scriptures are older, as we have shown: concerning faith, wisdom, knowledge and understanding, hope and faith, repentance and self-control, and indeed the fear of God (simply a swarm of the virtues of truth, of which as many will be included as the sketch of the present subject requires); and that those who philosophized in earnest about the teachings of the ancients especially emulated the hidden element of the barbarian philosophy, this symbolic and enigmatic form, which is most useful, or rather most necessary, for the knowledge of the truth.

After this I think it follows to defend ourselves, using a few Scriptures, against the charges the Greeks bring against us, in case the Jew too, listening quietly, might be able to turn from what he has believed to him in whom he has not believed. A loving refutation of the life of the noble philosophers and of their invention of new doctrines will fittingly follow, not to take revenge on our accusers (far from it; we have learned to bless those who curse, even if they hurl empty blasphemous words at us), but for their own conversion, if perhaps these all-wise men, brought to their senses by a barbarian refutation, might feel shame, so as at least late to see what kind of studies those are for which they undertake journeys across the sea. What they have stolen must be shown, their self-love being stripped away; and what they boast of having discovered by searching themselves must be refuted. Following on this, we must also run through the so-called encyclical education, for what it is useful, and astrology, mathematics, magic, and sorcery. For the Pan-Hellenes boast of these too as the greatest sciences. “But he who rebukes boldly makes peace.”

We have often said that we have neither practiced nor pursue writing good Greek; for this is enough to lead the many away from the truth, while the truly philosophical work will benefit the hearers not in their tongue but in their mind. The one who cares for truth, I think, should not compose his phrasing with design and effort, but try only to name, as well as he can, what he means; for things escape those who cling to words and busy themselves about them. It is the farmer's task to pick without harm the rose growing among thorns, and the craftsman's to find the pearl buried in the flesh of the oyster; and they say that birds have the sweetest flesh when, not being given abundant food, they scratch with their feet and pick out their food with labor. If, then, someone who contemplates the same thing … longs for the truth, which has escaped notice among many plausible Greek things, like the true face under masks, he will hunt it out with much searching. For the power that appeared to Hermas in the vision says: “Whatever can be revealed to you will be revealed.”

“Do not be elated at your own wisdom,” Proverbs says, “but in all your ways know it, that it may make your ways straight; and your foot will not stumble.” By this he wishes to show that deeds must follow speech, and also to indicate that we must choose and keep what is useful from all education. The ways of wisdom are various, making straight toward the way of truth, and the way is faith. “And let your foot not stumble,” he says, about some things that seem to oppose the one divine providential government. Hence he adds: “Do not be wise in your own eyes,” according to the godless reasonings that rebel against God's plan, “but fear” the only powerful God; from which it follows that nothing opposes God. Moreover the sequel teaches clearly that divine fear is turning away from evil; for he says, “and turn away from every evil.” This is the instruction of wisdom; “for whom the Lord loves he disciplines,” causing pain for understanding, but restoring to peace and incorruption.

The barbarian philosophy, then, which we follow, is truly perfect and true. At any rate it says in Wisdom: “For he himself has given me unerring knowledge of the things that are, to know the constitution of the world,” and so on, up to “and the powers of roots.” In all these he has included the natural contemplation of all things that have come into being in the sensible world. And next he hints also at intelligible things, by what he adds: “All things hidden and manifest I knew; for wisdom, the artisan of all, taught me.” You have in brief the profession of our philosophy. The learning of these things, practiced with right living, leads up through wisdom, the artisan of all, to the ruler of the universe, a thing hard to grasp and hard to hunt, always withdrawing and standing far off from the one who pursues it. But the same, being far away, has come very near, an unspeakable wonder: “I am a God who draws near,” says the Lord. Far off in essence (for how could the begotten ever come near the unbegotten?), but very near in power, by which all things are held in his bosom. “If someone does something in secret,” he says, “shall I not see him?” And indeed the power of God is always present, touching us with its power of watching, of doing good, and of instructing.

Hence Moses, persuaded that God would never be known by human wisdom, says, “Show yourself to me,” and forces himself to enter into the darkness where the voice of God was, that is, into the inaccessible and formless conceptions about Being. For God is not in darkness or in place, but above both place and time and the character of created things. That is why he is never found in a part, neither containing nor contained, either by definition or by division. “For what house will you build for me?” says the Lord. But he has not built one even for himself, since he cannot be contained; and though heaven is called his throne, not even so is he contained, but he rests, delighting in his creation. It is clear, then, that the truth has been hidden from us, as has already been shown by one example, and a little later we shall present it by more.

How are they not worthy of acceptance who wish to learn, and are able, according to Solomon, “to know wisdom and instruction, and to perceive words of prudence, and to receive subtleties of words, and to understand true righteousness” (as there is also another, not taught according to the truth, by the laws of the Greeks and of the other philosophers); “and to direct judgments,” he says, meaning not judicial ones, but that we must have the criterion within us sound and unerring; “that he may give shrewdness to the innocent, and to the young child perception and understanding.” “For the wise man who hears these things,” the one persuaded to obey the commandments, “will be wiser” in knowledge; “and the understanding man will acquire direction, and will understand a parable and a dark saying, the words of the wise and riddles.” For those inspired by God do not bring forth counterfeit words, nor do those who trade in them, nor snares, with which most of the sophists entangle the young, spending their time on nothing true; but those who have the Holy Spirit “search the depths of God,” that is, they attain to the hidden meaning of the prophecies. But it is forbidden to share holy things with the dogs, as long as they remain beasts. For it is never fitting to mix for envious and disturbed characters, still unbelieving, shameless in barking out inquiries, the divine and pure stream of living water.

“Let not your waters overflow outside your spring, but let your waters pass through your own streets.” “For the many do not think such things as they meet with, nor do they know them when they have learned, but they think they do,” according to the noble Heraclitus. Does he not seem to you too to blame those who do not believe? “And my righteous one will live by faith,” the prophet has said. And another prophet says: “If you do not believe, neither will you understand.” For how could a soul ever contain the transcendent contemplation of these things while unbelief about learning fights within? And faith, which the Greeks slander, thinking it empty and barbarian, is a voluntary preconception, an assent of piety, “the substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen,” according to the divine apostle; “for by it especially the elders were attested. And without faith it is impossible to please God.”

Others have defined faith as an intellectual assent to an unseen thing, just as indeed demonstration is a clear assent to a thing not known. If, then, it is choice, being desirous of something, the desire here is intellectual; and since choice is the beginning of action, faith is found to be the beginning of action, the foundation of a rational choice, when someone first shows a demonstration to himself through faith. To follow what is advantageous voluntarily is the beginning of understanding. At any rate, an undistracted choice gives a great impulse toward knowledge. Thus the practice of faith becomes knowledge, resting on a firm foundation. The children of the philosophers define knowledge as a state not shaken by reason. Is there, then, any other such true condition than that of piety itself, whose only teacher is the Word? I at least think not. Theophrastus says that sense-perception is the beginning of faith; for from it the first principles extend to the reason and the mind within us. The one, then, who has believed the divine Scriptures, having a firm judgment, receives as an irrefutable demonstration the voice of God, who has given the Scriptures. So faith is no longer something that becomes fortified by demonstration. “Blessed, then, are those who have not seen and have believed.” At any rate, the charms of the Sirens, displaying a superhuman power, astonished those who came near, preparing them, almost against their will, to accept what was said.

At this point the followers of Basilides consider faith to be natural, and so they also assign it to election, as finding the doctrines without demonstration, by an intellectual apprehension. The followers of Valentinus, assigning faith to us, the simple, and knowledge to themselves, who are saved by nature by the superiority of the superior seed, would have it that knowledge is far separated from faith, as the spiritual from the psychic. Further, the followers of Basilides say that faith and election are proper to each stage, and that, as a consequence of the supramundane election, the worldly faith of every nature follows, and that the gift of faith corresponds to each one's hope.

Faith, then, is no longer the achievement of choice, if it is an advantage of nature; nor will the one who does not believe receive a just recompense, being not responsible, nor is the one who believes responsible; and the whole distinctiveness and difference of faith and unbelief would fall neither under praise nor blame, if one reasons rightly, having as its antecedent a natural necessity coming from the one who can do all things. And if we are pulled by strings like lifeless puppets by natural forces, the voluntary and the involuntary become superfluous, and so does the impulse that leads them. I no longer understand this to be a living being, whose impulse has been allotted necessity, moved by an external cause. Where, further, is the repentance of the one who was once unbelieving, through which comes forgiveness of sins? So neither is baptism reasonable any longer, nor the blessed seal, nor the Son, nor the Father; but God, I think, turns out for them to be the distribution of natures, lacking the foundation of salvation, voluntary faith.