Miscellanies 5.1.1–5.3.18

So much, in outline, about the one who knows; let us now go on to what follows, and consider faith again. For there are some who distinguish, saying that our faith concerns the Son, while knowledge concerns the Father. But they fail to notice that we must truly believe in the Son, that he is the Son, that he came, how and why, and about his passion; and we must know who the Son of God is. And neither is there knowledge without faith, nor faith without knowledge; nor indeed the Father without the Son; for as soon as he is Father, he is Father of the Son, and the Son is the true teacher about the Father. And for someone to believe in the Son, he must know the Father, to whom the Son also belongs. Again, in order to come to know the Father, we must believe in the Son, because the Son of God teaches; for from faith to knowledge, through the Son to the Father. And the knowledge of the Son and the Father, according to the rule of true knowledge, is the grasp and comprehension of truth through the truth. We, then, are those who are faithful in what is disbelieved, and knowers in what is unknown; that is, knowers in what is unknown and disbelieved by all, but believed and known by few; knowers not in word, recording works, but in contemplation itself.

“Blessed is he who speaks into the ears of those who hear”; and faith is the ears of the soul. The Lord hints at this faith when he says, “Let the one who has ears to hear, hear,” so that, having believed, he may understand what he says, as he says it. Homer too, the oldest of the poets, using “hearing” for perceiving, the specific for the general, writes: “And most of all they themselves heard.” For in general the harmony and concord of the faith of both comes to one end, salvation. The apostle is our unerring witness, saying: “For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you; that is, that we may be encouraged together among you through our mutual faith, both yours and mine.” And again, going on, he adds: “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.” The apostle, then, appears to proclaim a twofold faith, or rather one that admits growth and perfection. For the common faith underlies as a foundation (at any rate to those who longed to be healed, moved by faith, the Lord said, “Your faith has saved you”); but the excellent faith, built on it, is perfected together with the believer, and is completed by what comes from learning and from fulfilling the commandments of the Word; such were the apostles, of whose faith it is said that it could move mountains and transplant trees.

That is why, perceiving the greatness of its power, they asked that faith be added to them, faith like a grain of mustard seed that bites the soul beneficially and grows mightily in it, so that the words about heavenly things may rest on it. For if someone knows God by nature, as Basilides thinks, … calling the excellent intellection faith and kingship, and creation of good things, … a substance worthy of the maker, near to him, interpreting it as substance, not authority, and nature and reality, an indefinable beauty of an unsurpassable creation; he does not call faith the rational assent of a soul with free will. So the commandments, both of the old and the new covenant, are superfluous, if someone is saved by nature, as Valentinus would have it, and is faithful and elect by nature, as Basilides thinks. Nature could then shine forth in time even without the Savior's coming. But if they say that the Lord's coming was necessary, the peculiarities of nature are gone for them, the elect being saved by learning, purification, and good works, not by nature.

Abraham, at any rate, who believed through hearing the voice that promised under the oak in Mamre, “To you I give this land and to your seed,” was he elect or not? If he was not, how did he believe at once, as though by nature? But if he was elect, their hypothesis is undone, since an election is found even before the Lord's coming, and indeed a saved one: “for it was counted to him as righteousness.” For if someone should dare to say, following Marcion, that the Creator saves the one who believes in him even before the Lord's coming, his own salvation, the power of the Good One will be surpassed by him, attempting to save late and after the Creator they praise, and that by learning from him or imitating him. But even if, being so, the Good One saves according to them, he undertakes salvation neither of his own nor with the consent of the one who made the creation, but by force or by deceit. And how is one who is so, and later, still good? And if the place differs and the dwelling of the Almighty falls short of the dwelling of the good God, yet the will of the one who saves does not fall short of the good, since it came first.

From what we have gone through, unbelievers are shown to be foolish; “for their paths are crooked and they do not know peace,” says the prophet. And the divine Paul exhorted us to refuse foolish and uninstructed questionings, because they breed quarrels. And Aeschylus cries out: “Do not toil in vain at what brings no profit.” The inquiry that understands with faith, building on the foundation of faith the magnificent knowledge of the truth, we know is best. And we know that neither are plain things inquired into (as whether it is day when it is day), nor things obscure and never to become plain (such as whether the stars are even or odd in number), nor indeed things that can be turned around (those are turned around which can be said equally by those who argue the opposite, as whether the embryo is a living being or not); a fourth kind is when an irrefutable and indissoluble argument is put forward from one side of these. If, then, the cause of inquiry is removed in all these ways, faith is established. For we put forward to them that irrefutable thing: that it is God who speaks and sets out in writing about each thing I inquire into.

Who, then, is so godless as to disbelieve God and demand proofs from God as from men? Again, of questions, some need sense perception, as if someone asks whether fire is hot or snow white; some need admonition and rebuke, as Aristotle says, like that question whether one should honor one's parents. And there are some that deserve even punishment, such as demanding proofs whether there is providence. Since providence exists, then, it is unholy to think that all prophecy and the arrangement concerning the Savior did not come about according to providence; and perhaps one should not even try to prove such things, since divine providence is plain from the sight of all things seen, works of art and wisdom, some coming about in order, others revealed in order. And the one who gave us a share in being and living has given us a share in reason too, wishing us to live rationally and well. For the Word of the Father of the universe is not the uttered word, but the most manifest wisdom and goodness of God, and his almighty and truly divine power, not incomprehensible even to those who do not confess him, the almighty will.

Since some are unbelieving and others contentious, not all attain the perfection of the good. For it is not possible to attain it without choice, nor does everything rest on our intention, such as the outcome. “For by grace we are saved,” not, however, without good works; but those born for the good must acquire some zeal for it; and we must also have a sound and unrepentant intention in the pursuit of the good, for which we most need divine grace, right teaching, pure docility, and the Father's drawing to himself. For, bound to an earthly body, we grasp sensible things through the body, but lay hold of intelligible things through the rational power itself. And if someone expects to grasp everything by the senses, he has fallen far from the truth. At any rate the apostle writes spiritually about the knowledge of God: “For now we see as through a mirror, but then face to face.” For the vision of the truth has been given to few. Plato too says in the Epinomis: “I do not say that it is possible for all men to become blessed and happy, except a few; as long as we live, this I define; but there is a fair hope that after death one may obtain everything.” The words of Moses mean the same: “No one will see my face and live.” For it is clear that no one can ever clearly grasp God during the time of life; but “the pure in heart will see God” when they arrive at the final perfection. For since the soul was too weak to grasp what is, we needed a divine teacher; the Savior is sent down, teacher and provider of the good possession, the holy token of the great providence, not to be spoken.

“Where, then, is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” it says. And again: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the understanding I will set aside,” clearly of these who are wise in their own conceit and contentious. Very finely, then, Jeremiah says: “Thus says the Lord: Stand on the roads and ask for the eternal paths, which is the good way, and walk in it, and you will find purification for your souls.” Ask, he says, and inquire of those who know, without contention and dispute. Having learned the way of truth, let us walk straight without turning, until we come upon what we long for. Fittingly, then, the king of the Romans (his name was Numa), being a Pythagorean, was the first of all men to found a temple of Faith and Peace. And to Abraham, who believed, “it was counted as righteousness.” He, pursuing the lofty philosophy of what happens in the air and the elevated philosophy of what moves in the heavens, was called Abram, which is interpreted “elevated father.” But later, looking up to heaven, whether seeing the Son in the Spirit, as some explain, or a glorious angel, or otherwise recognizing a God greater than creation and all its order, he received the alpha, the knowledge of the one and only God, and was called Abraham, becoming, instead of a natural philosopher, wise and a lover of God. For it is interpreted “elect father of sound”; for the uttered word sounds, and its father is the mind, and the mind of the good man is chosen.

And I am inclined greatly to praise the poet of Acragas, who hymns faith thus: “O friends, I know that truth is in the words I will speak; but very hard for men, and grudged, is the rush of faith upon the mind.” That is why the apostle too exhorts that our faith be not in the wisdom of men who profess to persuade, but in the power of God, which alone can save even without proofs, by bare faith. “For the most reputable man knows and guards … opinions; and justice will surely catch the fabricators of lies and their witnesses,” says the Ephesian. For he too, having learned from the barbarian philosophy, knows the purification through fire of those who have lived badly, which the Stoics later called the conflagration; according to which they also teach that the individual will rise again, thereby embracing the resurrection. And Plato says that the earth is purified at certain times by fire and water, thus: “There have been and will be many destructions of men in many ways, the greatest by fire and water, and other lesser ones by countless other means.” And a little later he adds: “The truth is that there is a deviation of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and at long intervals a destruction of things on earth by much fire.” Then he adds about the flood: “And when again the gods purify the earth with waters and flood it, the herdsmen and shepherds in the mountains are saved, while those in our cities are carried by the rivers into the sea.”

We showed in the first Miscellany that the philosophers of the Greeks are called thieves, having taken the chief doctrines from Moses and the prophets without gratitude. To this we will add that those angels who had obtained the upper lot, slipping down into pleasures, told the secrets to women, as much as had come to their knowledge, while the other angels concealed them, or rather kept them for the Lord's coming. From there flowed the teaching of providence and the revelation of heavenly things. And prophecy having now been passed on to the Greek poets, the dogmatic treatment by the philosophers became partly true, when they hit the mark by conjecture, and partly mistaken, when they did not understand the hidden meaning of the prophetic allegory; which it is our purpose to note, running briefly over what is pressing.

We say, then, that faith must advance not idle and alone, but with inquiry. For I do not say that one should not inquire at all; for “Seek and you will find,” it says. “What is sought is caught, but what is neglected escapes,” according to Sophocles. And Menander the comic poet says similar things: “All that is sought,” say the wisest, “needs care.” But we must stretch the soul's discernment toward discovery and clear away what hinders, and cast out entirely rivalry, envy, and strife itself, which will perish most miserably from among men. For very finely Timon of Phlius writes: “Man-destroying Strife goes about, crying emptily, sister and fellow worker of murderous Quarrel; she rolls about wandering over everything, and then she has fixed her head in a mortal and casts it into hope.” Then, a little further on, he adds: “For who set these to fight in destructive strife? A crowd running with Echo; for, angry at those silent, he stirred up a chattering disease on men, and many perished,” about the lying argument, the horned, the hidden one, the crocodile, the heap, and the veiled one, and about ambiguities and sophisms.

To inquire about God, then, if it tends not to strife but to discovery, is saving. For it is written in David: “The poor will eat and be satisfied, and those who seek him will praise the Lord; their heart will live forever and ever.” For those who seek according to true inquiry, praising the Lord, will be filled with the gift from God, that is, with knowledge; and their soul will live; for the heart is allegorized as the soul, which has supplied life, because the Father is made known through the Son. Nor must we offer our ears freely to all who speak and write, since cups too, when handled by many by the ears and soiled, lose their ears, and besides, falling, are themselves broken. In the same way those who have soiled the pure hearing of faith with much babbling, at last deafened to the truth, become useless and fall to the ground.

Not without reason, then, do we bid children, taken by the ears, to kiss their relatives, hinting, no doubt, that the perception of love comes through hearing; and God is love, known to those who love, as God is faithful, handed down to the faithful through learning. And we must make ourselves his own through divine love, so that we may behold like by like, listening to the word of truth guilelessly and purely, like children obedient to us. And this is what was hinted by whoever it was that inscribed at the entrance of the temple in Epidaurus: “Pure must he be who goes within the fragrant temple; and purity is to think holy things.” “And unless you become like these children, you will not enter,” he says, “into the kingdom of heaven.” For there the temple of God appears, established on three foundations, faith, hope, and love.

About faith, then, we have set out sufficient testimonies from the writings of the Greeks; but so as not to go on too long by striving to collect a great deal about hope and love too, it is enough to say only this: that in the Crito Socrates, placing living well and dying well before living, thinks he has some hope of another life after death. And in the Phaedrus too, saying that the soul alone, when by itself, can share in true wisdom and in what is greater than human power, when love from here gives it wings to heaven, he says that, having arrived through philosophic love at the goal of hope, it takes the beginning of another, eternal life.

In the Symposium he says that a natural love for the begetting of what is like has been mixed into all, in men of men only, but in the good man of what is similar to him. And it is impossible for the good man to do this without having the virtues perfect, by which he will train the young who come to him, and, as he says in the Theaetetus, will beget and make them men; for some are pregnant in body and others in soul; since among the barbarian philosophers too, to instruct and enlighten is called to beget again; and “I begot you in Christ Jesus,” says the noble apostle somewhere. And Empedocles counts Love among the first principles, understanding it as a uniting love, “which you must see with the mind, and not sit amazed with your eyes.” And Parmenides too, in his poem, hinting at such things about Hope, says: “Behold things absent as firmly present to the mind; for you will not cut off what is from holding to what is, neither scattered everywhere in every way throughout the world, nor gathered together.”

For the one who hopes, like the one who believes, sees intelligible and future things with the mind. If, then, we say that something is just, and say that something is beautiful, and speak of truth too, yet have never seen any such thing with our eyes, but only with the mind; and the Word of God says, “I am the truth”; then the Word is contemplated by the mind. “Whom do you call the true philosophers?” he said. “Those who love the sight of truth,” said I. And in the Phaedrus Plato will show it, speaking of truth as an Idea. And the Idea is a thought of God, which the barbarians have called the Word of God. The words run thus: “For one must dare to speak the truth, especially when speaking about truth; for the colorless, shapeless, intangible substance that truly is, is visible only to the mind, the soul's pilot.” And the Word, coming forth, is the cause of creation; then also he begets himself, when the Word becomes flesh, so that he may also be seen. The righteous man, then, will seek a loving discovery, and hastening toward it is fortunate; for “to the one who knocks,” it says, “it will be opened; ask and it will be given to you.” For “the violent who seize the kingdom” are said to take it by force not with contentious words, but by the perseverance of a right life and unceasing prayers, having wiped away the stains of their former sins. “Vice can be chosen in abundance.” “And God helps the one who toils.” “For the hard-won gifts of the Muses do not lie in the middle for anyone who happens by to carry off.”

The recognition of ignorance, then, is the first lesson for the one walking according to reason. Someone, being ignorant, sought; and seeking, finds the teacher; and finding, believed; and believing, hoped; and loving, is then made like the one he loved, hastening to be what he loved first. Socrates shows some such method to Alcibiades, who asks thus: “Do you not think I could know about just things otherwise?” “Yes, if you found out.” “But do you not think I could find out?” “Very much so, if you sought.” “Then do you not think I would seek?” “I do, if you thought you did not know.” In this way too the lamps of the wise virgins, lit at night in the great darkness of ignorance, which Scripture hinted at by night: wise souls, pure as virgins, understanding that they stand in worldly ignorance, light the light, rouse the mind, illuminate the darkness, drive out ignorance, seek the truth, and await the appearing of the Teacher. “For it is impossible,” said I, “for the multitude to be philosophic.” “For many are the thyrsus-bearers, but few the Bacchants,” according to Plato. “For many are called, but few chosen.” “And not in all,” says the apostle, “is knowledge.” “And pray that we may be delivered from absurd and wicked men; for not all have faith.” And the philosophical poetry of Cleanthes the Stoic writes similar things thus: “Do not look to opinion, wishing to be wise quickly, nor fear the undiscerning and shameless opinion of the many. For the multitude does not have understanding judgment, neither of just nor of beautiful things; you would find this among few men.”

More sententiously the comic poet says briefly: “It is shameful to judge fine things by the great noise.” For they have heard, I think, that fine Wisdom saying to us: “In the midst of the foolish watch your time, but in the midst of the thoughtful persevere.” And again: “The wise will hide perception.” For the many demand proof as a pledge of truth, not content with the bare salvation that comes from faith. “But for the wicked it is very much their way to distrust the powerful; but as the pledges of our Muse bid, know, the word having been divided within your heart.” For it is customary for the wicked, says Empedocles, to wish to master the truth by disbelieving. That our doctrines are reputable and worthy of belief the Greeks will know when the account is examined more fully in what follows; for we are taught like by like. For Solomon says, “Answer the fool according to his folly.” That is why we must hold out their own to those who ask for the wisdom that is theirs, so that through their own they may most easily and fittingly come to faith in the truth. “For I became all things to all,” he says, “that I might win all”; since the rain of divine grace too is sent down on just and unjust. “Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles too, since God is one,” cries the noble apostle.