Miscellanies 7.2.5–7.4.27

Faith, then, is the first step toward knowing God; and with it, through the Savior's teaching, comes the conviction that one must in no way do what is unjust: this one should consider fitting for the knowledge of God. In this way the best thing on earth is the most godly human being, and the best in heaven is an angel, which is nearer in place and already purer in its share of eternal and blessed life. But most perfect, most holy, most sovereign, most commanding, most royal, and most beneficent is the nature of the Son, which is closest to the only Almighty. This is the supreme excellence, which orders all things according to the Father's will and steers the universe in the best way, working all things with untiring and unwearied power, and looking upon hidden thoughts through what it works. For the Son of God never departs from his watchtower; he is not divided, not cut off, does not pass from place to place, but is always everywhere and contained nowhere, all mind, all paternal light, all eye, seeing all things, hearing all things, knowing all things, searching the powers with power. To him the whole army of angels and gods is subjected, to the Father's Word, who has taken on the holy administration “on account of the one who subjected it”; through him all human beings are his too, but some “according to knowledge,” others not yet; some as friends, others as faithful servants, others simply as servants. This Teacher trains the one who knows by mysteries,

the believer by good hopes, and the hard-hearted by corrective discipline through action they can perceive. Hence providence works in private, in public, and everywhere. That there is a Son of God, and that he is the one we call Savior and Lord, the divine prophecies show directly. So the Lord of all, Greeks and barbarians, persuades those who are willing; for he does not compel the one who is able to receive salvation from him by choosing and by fulfilling all that is required of him to lay hold of the hope. He it is who gave philosophy to the Greeks too, through the lower angels; for by an ancient divine ordinance angels have been distributed among the nations. But “the Lord's portion” is the glory of those who believe. For either the Lord does not care for all human beings (and this would happen to him either through being unable, which it is not lawful to say, for that is a sign of weakness, or through being unwilling though able, but such a feeling does not belong to one who is good; and surely he who for our sake took on flesh capable of suffering is not lazy through luxury), or he cares for all together, which is fitting for him who has become Lord of all. For he is not Savior of some and not of others; but according to each one's fitness he distributed his benefaction, to Greeks and barbarians, and to those among them who were predestined and in their proper time called, the faithful and elect.

Neither, then, would he who has called all equally ever envy anyone, though he has assigned exceptional honors to those who have believed exceptionally; nor could the Lord of all ever be hindered by another, especially since he carries out the will of the good and almighty Father. Envy does not even touch the Lord, who is without passion, being without beginning; nor are human affairs such that the Lord could envy them. The one who envies is another, one whom passion has touched. Nor indeed can one say that the Lord does not wish to save humanity out of ignorance, not knowing how each person is to be cared for. For ignorance does not touch the Son, who was the Father's counselor before the foundation of the world. For this was the wisdom “in which” God Almighty “delighted”; for the Son is the “power of God,” as the Father's most sovereign Word before all things that came into being, and he might properly be called his “wisdom” and the teacher of those formed through him. Nor would he ever abandon his care for human beings, drawn away by some pleasure, he who took on flesh, by nature subject to passion, and trained it into a state of freedom from passion. How could he be Savior and Lord, unless Savior and Lord of all? But he is Savior of those who have believed, because they wished to know, and Lord of the disobedient, until, having become able to confess him, they obtain the benefaction through him that is proper and suited to them. All the Lord's activity has reference to the Almighty, and the Son is, so to speak, a certain activity of the Father.

So the Savior would never hate human beings, he who, because of his surpassing love for humanity, did not disdain the tender sensitivity of human flesh but put it on, and came for the common salvation of human beings; for faith is common to those who choose it. Nor would he ever neglect his own work, the human being, the only living creature into whom, at creation, a notion of God was instilled. Nor could there be any other better and more harmonious government of human beings for God than the one appointed. It is fitting, at any rate, for what is better by nature always to lead what is worse, and for the government of anything to be given to the one who can manage it well. And what truly rules and leads is the divine Word and his providence, overseeing all things and neglecting the care of none of its own. And these would be those who have chosen to be his own, those made perfect through faith. Thus, by the will of the almighty Father, the Son is established as the cause of all good things, the first-working power of motion, beyond the grasp of sense. For he was not seen as what he was by those unable to receive him because of the weakness of the flesh; but, taking on flesh that could be perceived, he came to show what is possible for human beings in obedience to the commandments. Being, then, the Father's power, he easily prevails over whatever he wishes,

leaving not even the smallest part of his government uncared for; for then the whole would no longer have been well made by him. It belongs, I think, to the greatest power to examine with precision all the parts, down to the smallest, all of them looking to the first administrator of the universe, who by the Father's will steers the salvation of all, some ranked under others as their leaders, until one reaches the great High Priest. For from one first principle above, working according to the will, the first, second, and third ranks depend; then, at the uppermost edge of the visible, is the blessed order of angels; and so, down to ourselves, some are ranked under others, being saved and saving from one and through one. As, then, even a very long chain of iron is moved together by the spirit of the Heraclean stone, extending through many iron rings, so too, drawn by the Holy Spirit, the virtuous are joined to the first dwelling place, and others in turn down to the last; but those who are bad through weakness, having fallen into an evil condition through unjust greed, neither mastering nor mastered, fall away, whirled about by their passions, and drop to the ground. For this is the law from above: that whoever wishes should choose virtue.

Therefore the commandments, both those under the law and those before the law, given to people not under law (“for law is not laid down for the righteous”), ordained that the one who chooses should receive eternal life and a blessed reward, and allowed the one who delights in vice to be with what he chose; and again, that the soul which is improving at each stage in the knowledge of virtue and growth in righteousness should receive a better place in the universe, “straining forward” with each advance toward a state of freedom from passion, until it “attains to the perfect man,” the pre-eminence of knowledge and inheritance together. These saving revolutions are apportioned according to the order of change, by times, places, honors, kinds of knowledge, inheritances, and ministries, each in its turn, up to the contemplation that is highest and nearest to the Lord, in eternity. And what is lovable draws to the contemplation of itself everyone who has given himself wholly to contemplation through love of knowledge.

Therefore the Lord, drawing from one spring the commandments that he gave, both the former and the latter, neither overlooked those before the law, leaving them lawless, nor allowed those who did not understand the barbarian philosophy to run wild. For by giving commandments to the one and philosophy to the others, he “shut up” unbelief until his coming, so that everyone who has not believed is without excuse. For he leads from either kind of progress, Greek and barbarian, to the perfection that comes through faith. And if any of the Greeks, passing over the preliminary training of Greek philosophy, has rushed straight to the true teaching, he has outstripped the rest, even if he is unlearned, having chosen the short way of salvation, through faith to perfection.

All things, then, that did not prevent a human being's choice from being free, he made and showed to be helps toward virtue, so that somehow, even to those able to see only dimly, the one who alone is truly the one almighty good God may be revealed, saving from age to age through the Son, and in every way wholly without responsibility for evil. For all things have been ordered by the Lord of the universe toward the salvation of the whole, both in general and in part. It is the work, then, of saving justice always to lead each thing to what is better, so far as possible. For toward the salvation and permanence of the better, even the lesser things are governed in proportion to their own characters. So everything virtuous changes to better dwellings, having as the cause of the change the choice of knowledge, which the soul possessed with sovereign power. And the necessary disciplines, through the goodness of the great Judge who oversees all, through the angels close at hand, through various preliminary judgments, and through the final judgment, compel those who have become more “callous” to repent.

“The rest I pass over in silence,” glorifying the Lord. But I say this of those knowing souls: surpassing, by the grandeur of their contemplation, the way of life of each holy order, according to which the blessed dwellings of the gods have been marked out and allotted; reckoned holy among the holy, and carried over wholly from wholes, arriving at better places from better places, no longer embracing the divine contemplation in mirrors or through mirrors, but feasting on the vision, as clear as can be and precisely pure, of which souls that love beyond nature never have their fill; enjoying everlastingly an everlasting gladness to endless ages, they remain, all honored alike with the same pre-eminence. This is the comprehending contemplation of the “pure in heart.” This, then, is the activity of the perfected one who knows: to converse with God through the great High Priest, being made like the Lord as far as possible through all his service toward God, which extends to the salvation of human beings, by care in the benefaction toward us, by public ministry, by teaching, and by doing good through works. Yes indeed, the one who knows creates and fashions himself, and moreover adorns those who listen to him, being made like God: as far as possible he makes what has been disciplined into freedom from passion by training like the one who has freedom from passion by nature, and he does this while conversing and being with the Lord “without distraction.” Gentleness, I think, love for humanity, and magnificent godliness are the rules of the likeness that belongs to knowledge.

These virtues, I say, are “an acceptable sacrifice” with God, since Scripture calls the humble heart joined with right understanding “a whole burnt offering to God,” as every human being taken up into holiness is enlightened into inseparable union. For both the gospel and the apostle command us to take ourselves captive and to put ourselves to death, killing “the old man that is being corrupted according to its desires” and raising “the new” from the death of the old perversion, laying aside the passions and becoming sinless. This, then, is what the law too was hinting at when it commanded that the sinner be put to death: the passing from death to life, the freedom from passion that comes from faith. Not understanding this, the teachers of the law, who took the law in a contentious sense, have given occasions to those who try in vain to slander it. For this reason we reasonably do not offer sacrifice to God, who lacks nothing and has provided all things to all; but we glorify him who was sacrificed for us, sacrificing ourselves, from what is without need toward what is without need, and from what is without passion toward what is without passion. For God takes pleasure only in our salvation. Reasonably, then, we do not bring sacrifice to one who is not overcome by pleasures, since the vapor of the smoke rises only somewhere down below, not even as high as the densest clouds, but far even from them, reaching only those whom it does reach.

The divine, then, is neither needy nor fond of pleasure, of gain, or of money. Being full, and supplying all things to everything that has come into being and is in need, it is not charmed by sacrifices or offerings, nor again by glory and honor, nor led astray by any such things, but it appears like good and noble men, who would never betray justice either for fear of a threat or at the promise of greater gifts. But those who have not perceived the self-determination of the human soul and its freedom from slavery in choosing a way of life, being vexed at what is done by uneducated injustice, think there is no God. Equal to these in opinion are those who, falling into incontinence in pleasures, into extraordinary griefs and unwelcome misfortunes, and giving up in the face of calamities, say that there is no God, or that if there is, he does not oversee everything. And there are others who are persuaded that those thought to be gods can be won over by sacrifices and gifts, as if they were, so to speak, accomplices in their licentiousness; and they will not believe that the only one who truly is God is he who is constant in just goodness.

Pious, then, is the one who knows, who cares first for himself and then for his neighbors, so that we may become as good as possible. For a son pleases a good father by showing himself worthy and like his father, and so does a subject please a ruler; for believing and obeying are in our power. As the cause of evils one might suppose the weakness of matter, the involuntary impulses of ignorance, and the irrational compulsions that come from lack of learning. The one who knows, having risen above these through learning, as above wild beasts, imitates the divine purpose and does good, as far as he can, to those human beings who are willing. And if he is ever appointed to rule, like Moses, he will lead for the salvation of those he rules, and will tame what is savage and unpersuadable by honoring the best and punishing the wicked, with punishment rationally enlisted in the service of education. For the soul of a righteous human being is above all a divine statue, resembling God; in it, through obedience to the precepts, the leader of all, mortals and immortals, is enshrined and set up, king and begetter of good things, who is truly law, ordinance, and eternal Word, the one Savior both for each individually and for all in common. He is the truly only-begotten, the “imprint of the glory” of the Father, King of all and Almighty, who stamps on the one who knows the perfect contemplation according to his own image, so that there is now a third divine image, made as far as possible like the second cause, like the true Life, through which we live the true life; as though we were describing the pattern of the one who knows as it comes to be in us, occupied with things that are firm and wholly unchangeable.

Ruler, then, of himself and of what is his, possessing a firm grasp of divine understanding, he approaches the truth genuinely. For the knowledge and firm grasp of things grasped by the mind may rightly be called understanding. Its task in divine matters is to consider what the first cause is, and what that is “through which all things came into being and without which nothing came into being”; which things pervade and which contain, which are joined and which are separate, what rank each of these holds, and what power and what function each contributes. And again in human matters: what the human being himself is, what is according to nature or against nature for him, how he ought to act or be acted upon, what his virtues and his vices are, about goods and evils and things indifferent, and all that concerns courage, prudence, self-restraint, and justice, the virtue complete over all. He makes use of prudence and justice for the acquisition of wisdom, and of courage not only in enduring hardships but also in mastering pleasure and desire, grief and anger, and in general in resisting everything that leads us astray, whether by force or by some deceit. For vices and evils must not be endured but repelled, while what is fearful must be endured. Pain too, then, is found useful, in medicine, in education, and in punishment, and through it characters are corrected for the benefit of human beings.

The kinds of courage are endurance, high-mindedness, greatness of soul, liberality, and magnificence. For this reason the one who knows does not take notice of blame or of ill repute from the many, and he is not subject to opinions or to flatteries. In enduring toils, while accomplishing at the same time something fitting and rising courageously above all hardships, he shows himself truly a man among other human beings. And again, keeping prudence, he is self-restrained in the calm of his soul, receptive of the promised good things as his own, just as he turns away from shameful things as alien to him; he becomes orderly and above the world, doing everything in order and rank and in no way ever going wrong; rich as much as can be in desiring nothing, since he needs little and has an abundance of every good through his knowledge of the Good. For the first work of his justice is to love to spend his life with those of his own kind and to be with them both on earth and in heaven.

In this way he is also generous with whatever he possesses and loving toward humanity, while hating wickedness intensely in his complete turning away from all wrongdoing. One must learn, then, to be faithful both to oneself and to one's neighbors, and obedient to the commandments. For this is “the servant of God,” the one who willingly submits to the commandments. But the one who is “pure in heart,” no longer because of the commandments but because of knowledge itself, is a “friend of God.” For we are not born with virtue by nature, nor does it grow on us naturally after birth, as some parts of the body do (since then it would no longer be voluntary or praiseworthy); nor is virtue perfected from circumstances and the habit that follows them, in the way language is (for it is roughly in this way that vice comes in). Nor again is knowledge acquired from some art, either from those that provide a livelihood or from those that care for the body; nor even from the ordinary round of education, for it is enough if that can only prepare the soul and serve it.

For civil laws are perhaps able to restrain wicked actions; but neither they nor persuasive arguments, being superficial, could provide a firm scientific hold on the truth. Greek philosophy, however, as it were purifies the soul in advance and accustoms it beforehand to receive faith, on which the truth builds knowledge. This is he, this is truly the athlete, who in the great stadium, the beautiful world, is crowned with the true victory over all the passions. For the president of the games is God Almighty, the umpire is the only-begotten Son of God, and the spectators are angels and gods; and the all-out contest, embracing every kind of fighting, is “not against blood and flesh,” but against the “spiritual powers” of impassioned passions that work through the flesh. Overcoming these great adversaries, and having fought through, as it were, the contests that the tempter sets up, he has won immortality; for God's vote in the most just judgment cannot be misled. The spectators have been summoned to the contest, and the athletes compete in the stadium; and of them the one who has obeyed his trainer prevails. For all things are set out equally for all by God, and he himself is blameless; the one who is able chooses, and the one who has willed will be strong. For this reason too we have received a mind, so that we may know what we do; and here “Know yourself” means to know for what we were born. And we were born to be obedient to the commandments, if we choose to will to be saved. This, I suppose, is Adrasteia, by which it is not possible to escape God.

The human task, then, is ready obedience to God, who has proclaimed a manifold salvation through commandments; and pleasing him is agreement with him. For the benefactor takes the lead in doing good, and the one who has received it eagerly, with the right reasoning, and has kept the commandments is faithful; while the one who also repays the kindness through love, as far as he can, is already a friend. And the one most proper repayment from human beings is to do what is pleasing to God. And as if it were his own offspring and a work in some way akin to himself, the Teacher and Savior receives the benefits and improvements of human beings as a favor and honor to himself, just as he regards injuries done to those who have believed in him as ingratitude and dishonor to himself. (For what other dishonor could touch God?) Therefore there is no other repayment one can make worthy of so great a salvation for the benefit received from the Lord. And as those who damage property insult its masters, and those who harm soldiers insult their commander, so ill-treatment of those consecrated to the Lord is disregard of him. For as the sun not only lights heaven and the whole world, shining on land and sea, but also sends its ray through windows and a small opening into the innermost rooms, so the Word, poured out everywhere, looks upon even the smallest actions of life.

The Greeks suppose the gods to have human passions, just as they suppose them to have human forms. And as each people paints their forms like themselves, as Xenophanes says, “the Ethiopians black and snub-nosed, the Thracians red-haired and grey-eyed,” so they also mold their souls like their own: the barbarians, for example, make them savage and wild in character, the Greeks gentler, yet subject to passion. It is reasonable, then, that the wicked should have poor notions of God and the good the best. And for this reason the one who is truly “royal in soul” and knowing is also pious and free from superstition, persuaded that the only God is alone honorable, venerable, magnificent, beneficent, the doer of good, the author of all good things, and not the cause of evil. About Greek superstition, I think, we have shown enough in the work we entitled the Exhortation, where we made full use of the history that pressed upon us. So there is no need “to tell again a tale already clearly told.”

Having come to this topic, just to point out a few things out of many, these are enough to show that those who liken the divine to the worst of human beings are godless. For either their gods are harmed by human beings, and so, being harmed by us, are shown to be worse than human beings; or, if not, how is it that they grow bitter over things by which they are not harmed, like an irritable old woman provoked to anger, as they say Artemis was angry with the Aetolians because of Oeneus? For how did she, a goddess, not reckon that Oeneus neglected her not out of contempt but either through forgetting or thinking he had already sacrificed? And Auge too speaks well, pleading her case against Athena, who was angry with her for giving birth in the temple: “Spoils that destroy mortals you delight to see, and the wreckage of the dead, and these are not polluted in your eyes; but if I gave birth, you think this dreadful.” And yet the other animals too give birth in temples and do no wrong.

Naturally, then, people who become superstitious about gods quick to anger think that everything that happens is a sign and a cause of evils: if a mouse digs through an altar made of clay, or, having nothing else, chews through a sack; if a rooster being raised crows in the evening, they take this as a sign of something. Such a man Menander mocks in The Superstitious Man: “May some good befall me, O most honored gods! For in tying on my right sandal I broke the strap.” “Naturally, you fool; it was rotten, and you are a skinflint who won't buy new ones.” Antiphon's remark is charming. When someone took it as an omen that a sow had eaten her piglets, he saw that she was wasted with hunger because of the stinginess of her keeper and said, “Rejoice at the sign: hungry as she is, she did not eat your children.” “And what is surprising,” says Bion, “if the mouse chewed through the sack when it found nothing to eat? What would have been surprising is if, as Arcesilaus jokingly proposed, the sack had eaten the mouse.”

Diogenes too spoke well to someone who was amazed at finding a snake coiled around a pestle: “Don't be amazed,” he said; “it would have been more surprising if you had seen the pestle coiled around an upright snake.” For irrational animals too must run and race and fight and give birth and die; and these things, being natural to them, could never be against nature for us. “And many birds wander beneath the rays of the sun.” The comic poet Philemon also mocks such things: “When I see someone watching,” he says, “who sneezed or who spoke, or looking to see who is walking ahead, I sell him at once in the market. Each of us walks and talks and sneezes for himself, not for those in the city; things happen as their nature is.” Then, when sober, they ask for health; but gorging themselves and wallowing in drunkenness at the festivals, they bring diseases on themselves.

Many also fear the inscriptions set up on houses. Diogenes, very wittily, finding written on the house of some scoundrel, “Heracles, the glorious victor, lives here; let no evil enter,” said, “Then how will the master of the house get in?” These same people, who worship every piece of wood and every stone, “the anointed ones,” as the saying goes, are afraid of red wool, grains of salt, torches, squill, and sulfur, bewitched by sorcerers in certain impure purifications. But God, the true God, recognizes as holy only the character of the righteous, just as he recognizes as accursed what is unjust and wicked. One can see, at any rate, that eggs used in purifying people hatch if they are kept warm; this would not happen if they took on the evils of the person purified. Charmingly, then, the comic poet Diphilus mocks the sorcerers in these words: “Purifying the daughters of Proetus and their father Proetus, son of Abas, and an old woman as a fifth besides, with one torch and one squill, so many human bodies, with sulfur and asphalt and the loud-roaring sea, from gently flowing, deep-flowing Ocean. But, blessed Air, send Anticyra down through the clouds, so that I may turn this bug into a drone.”

For Menander also says well: “If you had some real ill, Phidias, you would need to seek a real remedy for it. But now you do not; so find an empty remedy for the empty ill, and imagine that it does you some good. Let the women wipe you around in a circle and fumigate you with sulfur; sprinkle yourself with water from three springs, throwing in salt and lentils. Everyone is pure who is conscious of no evil in himself.” Indeed, the tragedy says: “Orestes, what sickness is destroying you?” “Conscience, because I know I have done terrible things.” For in truth purity is nothing else than abstaining from sins. Epicharmus, then, says well: “If you have a pure mind, you are pure in all your body.” So we say that souls too must first be purified from worthless and wicked opinions through right reason, and only then turn to the recollection of the principal heads of doctrine; since also before the handing on of the mysteries they think it right to apply certain purifications to those who are about to be initiated, because one must put off godless opinion before turning to the true tradition.