Orations (other than the Theological Orations) 36.1–37.8

I wonder what it is that you feel toward my words, and why you are so captivated by my voice, a foreign voice, perhaps a small one, and with nothing lovable about it, that you seem to me to feel toward us what iron feels toward the magnet. For you hang upon me, and upon one another, held by the one, and all upon God, from whom are all things and to whom are all things. O the wonderful chain, which the Holy Spirit weaves, fitted together with unbreakable bonds! As for the cause, I know nothing wiser than others, as far as I am aware; unless someone thinks this my wisdom, to know that I am not wise, nor near the true and first wisdom; which the wise men of today are far from supposing of themselves, since it is very easy to deceive oneself and think oneself something when one is nothing, puffed up by vainglory. Nor was I the first to preach to you the doctrine of orthodoxy, to which you cling most of all, but I followed in the footsteps of others, and those yours (for the truth shall be told), since you are disciples of the great Alexander, the great champion and herald of the Triad, who banished impiety by word and deed. For you remember that apostolic prayer, which destroyed the leader of impiety in a place worthy of the sins of his tongue, so that outrage might repay outrage, and the unjust death of souls be pilloried by a just death. Nor am I one to steal goodwill by flattery, as I see many of those who now profess the priesthood do, who have made our simple and artless piety artful, a new kind of statecraft transferred from the market place to holy things, and from the theatres to the mystery that the many do not see; so that there are two stages, if one may dare to say so, differing from one another as much as the one is open to all and the other to few, the one laughed at and the other honoured, the one called theatrical and the other spiritual. “You are witnesses, and God,” says the divine Apostle, that we are not of this portion, but such as would sooner accept a charge of clumsiness and rusticity than of flattery and servility; we who sometimes appear harsh even to those who are most attached to us, if they seem to act unreasonably. And the recent innovation concerning us showed this, when you, the people, boiling with zeal and anger, set us, shouting and lamenting, on this throne, which I do not know whether to call tyrannical or high-priestly; you set us there, at any rate, breaking the law out of longing. On that occasion we were so displeased with some of the more fervent that they broke away from us, turning their affection into enmity. For we look not to what will please more than to what will benefit.

What, then, is the cause of so great a longing for us and for our words? Do you wish to show it and set it out yourselves, and make your own feeling known, or to publish it through us, as you eagerly use us as interpreters of other things too? You leave the word to us, I know, as far as I can judge from your silence. Hear, then, and see whether I am a poor guesser of such things. You seem to me, first of all, since you called us yourselves, to be supporting your own judgment, and so to cherish your own catch. It is natural to be well disposed toward everything that is one’s own, whether possession, offspring, or word, and to be won over by a voluntary goodwill toward one’s own productions. Second, nothing is so respected as our not being forward: not violent, nor theatrical and showy, but retiring and moderate, as it were apart in the common life, solitary, and, to put it more briefly, philosophic; not, again, contrived by art and statecraft, but honoured simply and spiritually. For we do not hide in order to be sought, nor to be thought worthy of greater honour, like those who show their beauty a little and then withdraw it; but to show by our quietness that we flee presidencies and do not lay claim to such honours. Third, seeing what we suffer both from those who war against us from outside and from those who plot against us from within (since, as in Daniel, “lawlessness came forth from Babylon, from elders who seemed to judge Israel”), you are indignant and distressed, and, having no way to help one who is tyrannized, you offer pity in place of everything else. And pity mingled with respect has become affection. This is the mystery of the honour paid to me.

And since what is warred against is my words, and this superfluous and envied tongue, which, trained in outside learning, we have ennobled with divine words, sweetening the bitter and undrinkable Marah with the tree of life, you have felt a thoroughly generous feeling: you love the very thing for which we are warred against. For why did we not embrace a mute education? Why not one that is dry and keeps to the ground? Why, seeing that the many delight in such, did we teach strange and unfamiliar things and stand against the contradicting tongues, when we should have fled from reasonings with rashness and called unreason faith? I too would have loved this, you know well, if I had been a fisherman, since this is ready to hand for most people in defence of their ignorance, if I had possessed the power of signs in place of words. Would that envy might perish from among men, the consumption of those who have it, the poison of those who suffer it, the one passion that is at once most unjust and most just: unjust because it troubles everything good, just because it wastes away those who have it. I will not curse those who first praised us, for they did not know where praise would end; otherwise they might perhaps have added some reviling, to check envy. … made a fratricide, since he could not bear a holier sacrifice. Envy covered with water a world that had become disordered, and flooded the Sodomites with fire. Envy buried Dathan and Abiram, who raged against Moses, and made Miriam leprous for merely murmuring against her brother. Envy defiled the earth with the blood of prophets and overthrew Solomon, the wisest, with women. Envy made Judas a traitor, bought for a little silver, worthy of the noose; and fashioned Herod the child-killer and Pilate the Christ-killer. Envy winnowed and scattered Israel, from which sin they have not yet recovered even now. Envy raised up against us the apostate tyrant, whose coals still trouble us, even if we have escaped the flame. Envy cut apart the fair body of the Church, dividing it into different and opposing parties. Envy raised up Jeroboam against us, the slave of sin, and puts a bond on the tongue; for it cannot bear the Triad made brilliant and shining with the whole Godhead, and making its genuine heralds precious to you. Do we seem to you to talk nonsense in surmising so? Or has the painter, my discourse, depicted the causes of your longing quite rightly? This, at any rate, is what I think of these things.

And since I see some of you annoyed at the insults against us, and making our dishonour your own misfortune, come, let us speak a little about this too as philosophers. For if, intending something human and petty, or aiming at this throne, I either came to you in the first place with these grey hairs and these limbs shrivelled by time and disease, or now endure these insults, I would be ashamed before heaven and earth, which the ancients were accustomed to call to witness; I would be ashamed before this throne, this sacred assembly, and this holy and newly formed people, against which so great an array of evil powers was drawn up, that it might be broken up before it was constituted and killed before it was born, though it was already being formed according to Christ. I would be ashamed before my labours and toils, this ragged clothing, the solitude and retirement in which we lived, the unequipped life, and the frugal table, falling little short of the birds’. Let some speak the truth about us, then, that we coveted another man’s wife, we who did not wish to have even one of our own. Let the Gibeonites have more of us, whom, I know, the Holy Spirit does not accept even as woodcutters and water-carriers, as long as they approach the holy things with such brands on their life and doctrine. But if we came to defend the word, and to contribute what we could to a widowed Church, without a husband until now, like guardians and protectors, to lead her as a bride to another, whoever might appear worthy of her beauty and bring more bridal gifts of virtue to the queen, are we to be praised for our eagerness or blamed on suspicion, because we are judged by the passions of others? As if you, my good man, when we stretch out a hand to a ship in a storm, or a besieged city, or a house being consumed by fire, helping with boats, or troops, or fire-fighting tools, would by all means call us lovers of the ship, the city, or the house, and not protectors and guardians.

“But it does not seem so to the many,” he says. And what difference does it make to me, whose concern is more with being, or rather wholly with being? For it is this that condemns or justifies, that makes one wretched or blessed. Seeming is nothing to us, any more than another man’s dream. “You do not seem so to the many, man,” he says. And does the earth seem to stand still to those who are dizzy? Do the sober seem sober to the drunk, and not to be walking on their heads or turning round? Is honey not bitter, when and to whom it seems so, to the sick and those in a bad state? But things are not, for that reason, as they seem to those who are so affected. Show, then, that those who think so are healthy, and then advise us to change; or else condemn me if I am not persuaded but stand by the same judgment. I do not seem so to the many, but I seem so to God; and I do not merely seem, I am manifest to him who knows all things before they come into being, who alone fashions our hearts, who understands all our works, the movements and the thoughts with which deeds are done; from whom nothing that exists is hidden or can be, who sees our affairs differently from the way men see them. For man looks on the face, but God on the heart. Hear the Scripture that says so, and believe; for those who have sense must care for him more than for all others together. Or, if you consulted two men about the same matter, one more intelligent and the other more ignorant, would you be thought sensible if you passed over the more intelligent and followed the more ignorant? Nor did Rehoboam do well when he despised the counsel of the elders and adopted that of the younger men. And when God and men are compared, would anyone prefer the things of men? Not you, if you will listen to me and think better. [8] “But we are ashamed,” he says, “at the insults against you.” And I am ashamed for you, that you are ashamed. For if we suffer these things justly, it is we, rather than you on our behalf, who ought to be ashamed, not because we are dishonoured but because we deserve dishonour; but if unjustly, the charge belongs to those who insult us, and one ought to be indignant for them rather than for us; for it is they who are suffering harm. If, when I was bad, you thought me excellent, what should I have done? Become worse, so as to please you more? I would not have advised myself so. So too, if you think that I err when I do right, I will not change from doing right because of you. For I live not for you rather than for myself; and I have as my counsellor in everything reason and the ordinances of God, by which I am often convicted when no one accuses me, and acquitted when many condemn me. And this alone cannot be escaped, the tribunal within us and in us; looking to it alone, one must go the straight way. As for seeming, if it is ours, we will accept it, to speak in a human way; but if it goes against us, we will let it go, and lose nothing of being through seeming.

For so it is: whoever pursues the good for the sake of something else is not firm in virtue; for as soon as that thing has passed, he will stop doing good, like one who sails for gain, who will stop sailing if gain is not at hand. But whoever honours and cherishes the good for its own sake, since he loves what stands firm, has a standing eagerness for it, experiencing something divine, and is able to say the word of God, “I am the same, and I have not changed.” So he will not be remade, nor moved, nor change along with times and affairs, becoming now one thing and now another and taking on many colours, as octopuses take on those of the rocks they cling to; but he will always remain himself, fixed among things that are not fixed, and unturning among things that turn; a rock, I think, against the onsets of winds and waves, unshaken, and breaking upon itself whatever strikes it. So much for these things; for I have no leisure to fight with tongues, and this has perhaps been more than necessary.

But this is my word to you, my flock:

Become for me …

… my joy and crown of boasting; you are my defence to those who examine me; so that, just as it is enough for carpenters or painters, when asked to account for themselves, to show the building or the painting to be rid of trouble (for deed, it is said, is stronger than word), so I, by showing you yourselves, may rise above the reproaches. And how shall I rise above them? First, if you keep the confession in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit unswerving and firm, adding nothing, taking nothing away, diminishing nothing of the one Godhead (for to lessen any part is to lessen the whole); and if you send away those who think or say anything else, or who dissolve the one by measures of natures, or wall it off, as a plague of the Church and a poison of the truth, not hating them but pitying their fall. Second, if you show a way of life consistent with right doctrine, so that you may be skilled with both hands in virtue and not fall short in either. Emperors, respect your purple; for the word will lay down the law even for lawgivers. Know how great is what has been entrusted to you, and how great a mystery surrounds you. The whole world is under your hand, held by a small diadem and a short cloak. The things above are God’s alone; the things below are yours too. Be gods to those under you, if I may say something bolder. “The heart of the king is in the hand of God,” it is said and believed. Let your power lie there, not in gold and armies. You who are about the palaces and the thrones, do not be too elated by your authority, nor think immortal thoughts about things that are not immortal. Remain faithful to the emperors, but first to God, and for his sake also to those to whom you have been entrusted and handed over. You who boast of your birth, ennoble your character; or I will say something unpleasant, but noble: your nobility would be truly the noblest if registers did not also enrol low-born men among you.

You wise men and philosophers, solemn in beard and cloak, you sophists and grammarians and hunters of public applause: I do not know how you could be called wise, when you do not have the first Word. You who are about wealth, hear him who says, “If wealth flows in, do not set your heart on it”; know that you are trusting in an unstable thing. Lighten the ship a little, so that you may sail lighter. Perhaps you will take something away from an enemy, to whom your goods will pass. You who are about luxury, take something from the belly and give it to the spirit. The poor man is near: help him in his sickness; belch out to him something of your excess. Why do you suffer from indigestion and he from hunger? You from drunkenness and he from dropsy? You weighing down surfeit with surfeit, and he overthrown by disease? Do not overlook your Lazarus here, lest he make you the rich man there. You, the great city, first immediately after the first, or not even yielding this: show yourself first to me, not in vice but in virtue, not in dissoluteness but in good order. How shameful it is to rule cities and be ruled by pleasures; or to be sober in other things, but so mad about horse races, theatres, stadia, and hunts as to make these your life, so that the first among cities becomes a city of players, when it would more fittingly be a model of every good thing for the others. If you spit on these things, may you be a city of God, may you be inscribed on the hands of the Lord, and may you stand with us before the great Founder of the city, bright and brightly, hereafter. This good news I announce to you in Christ himself our Lord, to whom be glory, honour, and might for ever. Amen.

Jesus, who chose the fishermen, himself also casts the net like them, and moves from place to place. For what reason? Not only that he may gain more of those who love God by his visit, but also, it seems to me, that he may sanctify more places. He becomes to the Jews as a Jew, that he may gain Jews; to those under the law as under the law, that he may redeem those under the law; to the weak as weak, that he may save the weak. He becomes all things to all, that he may gain all. But why do I say “all things to all”? What not even Paul ventured to say of himself, this I find the Saviour undergoing. For he not only becomes a Jew, and takes upon himself all the strange and vile names, but also what is stranger than all of them: he is called sin itself and curse itself. He is not these, but he is called so. For how is he sin, who frees us from sin? How is he a curse, who redeems us from the curse of the law? But he does it that he may display his humility even to this extent, shaping us towards humility, which brings exaltation. As I said, then, he becomes a fisherman, he comes down to all, he casts the net, he bears all things, that he may draw up from the deep the fish, man, who swims in the unstable and bitter waves of life, …

For this reason too, now, “when he had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee and came to the borders of Judaea beyond the Jordan.” He rightly sojourns in Galilee, that “the people who sat in darkness may see a great light.” He moves into Judaea, that he may make them rise up from the letter and follow the Spirit. Now he teaches on a mountain, now he discourses on the plains, now he crosses into a boat, now he rebukes storms. Perhaps he also accepts sleep, that he may bless sleep too; perhaps he grows weary, that he may sanctify weariness too; perhaps he weeps, that he may make tears praiseworthy. He passes from place to place who is contained by no place, the timeless, the bodiless, the uncircumscribed, the same who both was and comes to be; he was above time and comes under time, he was invisible and is seen. “In the beginning he was, and he was with God, and he was God.” The “was” is made firm by being said three times. What he was he emptied; what he was not he assumed; not becoming two, but enduring to become one out of the two. For both are God, that which assumed and that which was assumed: two natures meeting in one, not two sons. Let the blending not be falsely represented. He who is so great, so vast… but what has happened to me? I have again fallen into human words. For how is the simple so vast? How is what has no quantity so great? But pardon my speech: I speak of the greatest things with a small instrument. And this too the great and long-suffering nature, without form and without body, will bear: words about it as about a body, and words weaker than the truth. For if it accepted flesh, it also bears such speech.

“And great crowds followed him, and he healed them there,” where the wilderness was greater. If he had stayed on his own height, if he had not come down to weakness, if he had remained what he was, keeping himself unapproachable and incomprehensible, perhaps few would have followed him; I do not know whether even few, perhaps only Moses, and he only so far as barely to see the back parts of God. For he passed through the cloud, having got outside the weight of the body or withdrawn from the senses; but the subtlety of God, or his incorporeality, or however one might name it, how could he have beheld it, being a body and looking with bodily eyes? But since he empties himself for us, since he comes down (by emptying I mean the lowering, as it were, and lessening of his glory), for this reason he becomes able to be contained, …

But pardon me in passing if I again suffer a human feeling. I am filled with anger and grief for my Christ (and may you share my feeling) when I see my Christ dishonoured on account of the very thing for which he most deserved to be honoured. Is he without honour, tell me, because for your sake he is humble? Is he a creature because he cares for the creature? Is he under time because he visits those under time? He bears all things, he accepts all things. And what is wonderful in that? He bore blows, he endured spitting, he tasted gall because of my tasting. Even now he bears being stoned, not only by those who insult him but also by us ourselves who seem to be devout. For to use bodily names in speaking about the incorporeal is perhaps the part of those who insult and stone; but, I say again, pardon our weakness. For we stone not willingly, but because we have no other way of speaking, using what we have. You are called Word, and you are above word; you are above light, and you are named light; you are called fire, not as perceptible, but because you purge away the light and worthless matter; sword, because you cut the worse from the better; winnowing fan, because you cleanse the threshing floor, sending off all that is light and windblown and laying up all that is heavy and full in the barns above; axe, because you cut down the fruitless fig tree after long patience, because you cut out the roots of wickedness; door, because of the leading in; way, because we travel straight; sheep, because you are the victim; high priest, because you offer the body; Son, because you are from the Father. Again I set tongues moving; again some rage against Christ, or rather against me, who was thought worthy to be the herald of the Word. As “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” I become John, in a wilderness once also waterless, but now all too thickly peopled.

But, to run back to my subject as I was saying, for this reason great crowds followed him, because he comes down to our weaknesses. What next? “And the Pharisees came to him,” it says, “testing him and saying, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” Again Pharisees test him; again those who read the law do not know the law; again those who are the interpreters of the law need other teachers. It was not enough that Sadducees tested him about the resurrection, and lawyers asked about perfection, and Herodians about the tribute, and others about authority; someone must again ask about marriage him who cannot be tested, the Creator of wedlock, who from the first cause established this whole race of men. “And he answered and said to them, Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female?” He knows how to solve some questions and to silence others. When he is asked, “By what authority do you do these things?” because of the great ignorance of the questioners, he himself asks in return, “The baptism of John, was it from heaven or from men?” And he entangles the questioners on both sides. So we too, imitating Christ, may sometimes silence those who dispute with us officiously, and undo the absurdity of their questions with more absurd counter-questions; for we too are sometimes wise in vanities, if I may boast of folly. But when he sees a question that needs reasoning, then he does not refuse the questioners a sensible answer. The question you have asked seems to me to honour chastity and to call for a humane answer: chastity, about which I see most people badly disposed, and their law unequal and inconsistent. For why did they punish the woman but give licence to the man? A woman who plots evil against her husband's bed commits adultery, and the penalties of the laws for this are bitter; but a man who commits sexual immorality against his wife goes unpunished? I do not accept this legislation; I do not approve the custom. The lawgivers were men; that is why the legislation is against women, since they also placed children under the authority of their fathers and left the weaker sex uncared for. But God does not do so; rather: “Honour your father and your mother,” which is the first commandment with a promise, “that it may be well with you.”

“He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him die the death.” Likewise it honoured the good and punished the evil. And, “The blessing of a father establishes the houses of children, but the curse of a mother uproots foundations.” See the equality of the legislation. One Maker of man and woman, one dust both, one image, one law, one death, one resurrection. We are born alike of man and woman; one debt is owed by children to parents. … [7] “The two,” it says, “into one flesh”; so let the one flesh have equal honour. And Paul legislates chastity also by the example. How, and in what way? “This mystery is great, but I speak with reference to Christ and the church.” It is good for the wife to reverence Christ through her husband; good also for the husband not to dishonour the church through his wife. “Let the wife,” it says, “see that she fears her husband,” for so she fears Christ; but also let the husband cherish his wife, for so Christ cherishes the church. But let us labour still further over the saying.

“Milk the milk, and there will be butter.” Examine it, and perhaps you will find something more nourishing in it. For the passage seems to me here to reject second marriage. For if there were two Christs, there would be two husbands and two wives; but if there is one Christ, one head of the church, there is also one flesh, and let a second be refused. But if it forbids the second, what is to be said of the third? The first is law, the second concession, the third transgression of the law. And he who goes beyond this is swinish, as one who does not even have many examples of the vice. The law gives the bill of divorce for every cause; but Christ not for every cause: he permits separation only from the unchaste woman, and commands that all else be borne with philosophy. He makes the unchaste woman the exception because she corrupts the offspring; in all else let us endure and be philosophers, or rather, endure and be philosophers, all you who have taken up the yoke of marriage. If you see painted lines on her face or under her eyes, take that adornment away; if a forward tongue, make it sober; if a harlot's laugh, make it grave; if extravagance or excessive drinking, curb it; if untimely outings, fetter them; if a roving eye, correct it. But do not cut rashly; do not separate. It is unclear which is endangered, the one who cuts or the one who is cut. “Let the fountain of water,” it says, “be your own, and let no stranger share it with you”; and, “Let the colt of your favours and the fawn of your love keep company with you.” Do not then become a stranger's river, nor be eager to please others more than your own wife. But if you are carried elsewhere, you lay down licentiousness as a law for your own member too. So the Saviour.