Apology against Rufinus 1.16–1.29

Chrysippus and Antipater move among thorns. Demosthenes and Aeschines thunder against each other. Lysias and Isocrates flow sweetly. Wonderful is the diversity in each, but all are perfect in their own kind. Read Tully's books to Herennius, read his Rhetorics; or, since he says those slipped from his hands unfinished and crude, turn over the three volumes On the Orator, in which he brings in the most eloquent orators of that time, Crassus and Antonius, disputing; and the fourth, the Orator, which he wrote when already old to Brutus: then you will understand that history is composed one way, speeches another, dialogues another, letters another, commentaries another. For in the commentaries on Ephesians I so followed Origen and Didymus and Apollinaris (who certainly hold doctrines contrary to one another) as not to lose the truth of my faith. What is the task of commentaries? They explain the sayings of another, make plain in simple language what was written obscurely; they repeat the views of many, and say: "Some explain this passage thus, others interpret it so; those try to support their sense and understanding by these testimonies and this reasoning"; so that the prudent reader, when he has read different explanations and learned what of many is to be approved or disapproved, may judge what is truer, and, like a good money-changer, reject the coin of counterfeit money. Shall one who in one work that he expounds has set down the explanations of many be held guilty of differing interpretation and of meanings contrary to one another? I suppose you read as a boy the commentaries of Asper on Virgil and Sallust, of Vulcatius on Cicero's speeches, of Victorinus on his dialogues and on Terence's comedies, of my teacher Donatus likewise on Virgil, and of others on others: Plautus, namely, Lucretius, Flaccus, Persius and Lucan. Accuse their interpreters, why they did not follow one explanation, and list in the same matter what seems right either to themselves or to others.

I pass over the Greeks, whose knowledge you boast, and while you pursue foreign things you have almost forgotten your own tongue: lest, by the old proverb, I seem to be "the sow teaching Minerva," and carrying wood into the forest. This I wonder at: that the Aristarchus of our time does not know these childish things. Although you, busy with meanings and bent on building slander against me, despise the precepts of grammarians and orators, and think little of restoring hyperbata after their windings, avoiding harshness of consonants, and shunning gaping speech. It is ridiculous to point out a few wounds in a body weakened and broken all over. I do not choose what to censure; let him choose what is free of fault. He ought not even to have known that Socratic saying: "I know what I do not know."

They are indignant that I wrote that the Origenists are bound together among themselves by orgies of lies. I named the book in which I read this: the sixth book of Origen's Stromata, in which, comparing our doctrine with Plato's view, he speaks thus: "Plato in the third book of the Republic: 'Truth too is to be pursued above all. For if, as we said a little before most rightly, a lie is unbecoming and useless to God, but sometimes useful to men (so that they may use it as a seasoning and a medicine), no one doubts that such licence must be given to physicians and withheld from the unskilled.' 'You say what is true,' he says; 'then the rulers of cities, if it is granted to any others, must sometimes lie, either against enemies or for their country and citizens. But from others, who do not know how to use a lie, every lie must be taken away.'" Origen: "And we, therefore, mindful of that precept, 'Speak truth each one with his neighbour,' ought not to say, 'Who is my neighbour?' but consider how cautiously the philosopher said that a lie is unbecoming and useless to God, but sometimes useful to men; and that God is not to be thought to lie at any time even for the sake of economy. But if the good of the hearer requires it, he speaks in ambiguous words and through riddles brings out what he wishes, so that both the dignity of truth is preserved with him, and what could have been harmful if brought out naked to the crowd is brought out covered with a kind of veil. But the man on whom the necessity of lying lies should take careful heed to use a lie sometimes as a seasoning and a medicine; that he keep its measure, and not exceed the bounds which Judith used against Holofernes, and overcame him by prudent pretence of words. Let him imitate Esther, who corrected the sentence of Artaxerxes by long keeping silent the truth about her race; and above all the patriarch Jacob, who, we read, obtained his father's blessings by a cunning lie. From which it is clear that unless we lie in such a way that some great good is sought for us by it, we must be judged as enemies of him who said, 'I am the truth.'" Origen wrote this; we cannot deny it: he wrote it in books which he spoke to the perfect and to disciples; and he teaches that teachers may lie, but disciples must not lie. He, then, who lies well, and without any shame invents against the brothers whatever comes into his mouth, proves himself an excellent teacher.

He is said also to carp at this: that in interpreting the second Psalm, where we read in Latin "Lay hold of instruction," and in the Hebrew volume it is written nescu bar, I said in my little commentaries "Worship the Son"; and again, turning the whole Psalter into the Roman tongue, as if forgetting my former exposition, I put "Worship purely," which certainly is plain to all as self-contradictory. And truly he must be pardoned if he does not know the truth of the Hebrew tongue, who sometimes falters even in Latin. Nescu, to translate word for word, means kataphilēsate, that is, "kiss"; and I, not wishing to translate it clumsily, followed the sense rather, so as to say "worship." For since those who worship usually kiss the hand and bow the head (which blessed Job denies that he did to the elements and idols, saying: "If I saw the sun when it shone, and the moon walking brightly, and my heart rejoiced in secret, and I kissed my hand with my mouth, which is the greatest iniquity and a denial against God most high"), and the Hebrews, according to the idiom of their language, put kissing for veneration, I translated what they themselves understand, whose word it is. But bar among them signifies different things. For it means "son," as in Bar-Jona, "son of a dove," and Bartholomew, "son of Tholomaeus," and Bartimaeus, and Bar-Jesus, and Barabbas. It also means wheat, and a sheaf of ears, and chosen, and pure. What sin did I commit, then, if I turned an ambiguous word by different interpretations? and if, in the little commentaries, where there is freedom to discuss, I said "Worship the Son," while in the body of the text itself, lest I seem a violent translator and give room to Jewish slander, I said "Worship purely," or "choicely," as Aquila too and Symmachus translated? What harm, then, is done to the church's faith if the reader is taught in how many ways one verse is explained among the Hebrews?

Your Origen may discuss metempsychosis, bring in countless worlds, clothe rational creatures with one body after another, and say that Christ has often suffered and will suffer more often, so that what once profited, once assumed, may always profit; you too assume such authority for yourself that you lie, making a martyr of a heretic and heretics' corruptions of Origen's books: shall I not be permitted to discuss words, and in a work of commentaries teach the Latins what I learned from the Hebrews? If it were not both lengthy and smacking of vainglory, I would show you now what profit there is in wearing out the thresholds of teachers and learning an art from craftsmen; and you would see how great a forest of ambiguous names and words there is among the Hebrews. This has provided material for different interpretation, while each one, among doubtful things, translates what seems to him more consistent. Why do I send you to foreign things? Turn over Aristotle, and Alexander expounding Aristotle's volumes, and you will learn from reading them how great an abundance of ambiguities there is: so that at last you may stop censuring your friend in what you never learned even in a dream.

But since my brother Paulinian reported certain things in the commentaries on Ephesians censured by him, and committed a few of them to memory, and showed me the very places, I must not evade; and I ask the reader, if I am a little longer in setting out and refuting the charges, to pardon the necessity. For I accuse no one else; I strive to defend myself and to refute the slander of heresy thrown at me. On Paul's Letter to the Ephesians Origen wrote three volumes. Didymus too and Apollinaris composed works of their own. Translating or imitating these, what I wrote in the prologue of that work I will append: "This too I mention in the preface, so that you may know that Origen wrote three volumes on this letter, whom we too have followed in part; that Apollinaris and Didymus also published some short commentaries, from which we have gathered some things, though few; and we have added or taken away some things that seemed good to us, so that the studious reader may know at the very beginning that this work is either another's or ours." Whatever fault, then, can be shown in the explanation of this letter, if I cannot show it in the Greek volumes from which I said I translated into Latin, I will acknowledge the charge, and what was not another's will be mine. Yet, lest I seem again to quibble and, by this trick of excuse, not to dare to join battle, I will set down the very testimonies that are charged as crimes.

In the very first book, the testimony of Paul in which he says, "As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him," we interpreted so as not to say, with Origen, that the election is of those who had existed before, but to refer it to the foreknowledge of God. In short, we said: "That he testified that we were chosen to be holy and blameless before him, that is, God, before the making of the world, belongs to the foreknowledge of God, to whom all things to come are already done, and all things are known before they happen; as Paul himself is predestined in his mother's womb, and Jeremiah is sanctified in the womb, chosen, strengthened, and sent, as a type of Christ, as a prophet to the nations." Certainly there is no crime in this exposition; and while Origen says the contrary, we followed the church's sense. And because it is the duty of a commentator to set down the opinions of many, and I had promised in the preface that I would do this, I also set down Origen's explanation, without odium to his name, saying: "But another, who tries to show that God is just, in that he chooses each one not by the prejudgment of his knowledge but by the merit of the elect, says that before the visible creatures, heaven, earth, the seas and all that is in them, there were other invisible creatures, among them also souls, which for certain causes known to God alone were cast down into this vale of tears, into the place of our affliction and pilgrimage, set in which the saint prayed that he might return to his former seat, saying: 'Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged; I have dwelt with those who dwell in Kedar; my soul has long been a pilgrim.' And the Apostle: 'Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?' And: 'It is better to return and be with Christ.' And elsewhere: 'Before I was humbled, I sinned'; and other things like these which it would be long to write." Notice what I said: "But another, who tries to show that God is just": tries to show, I say, not shows. But if you are scandalized because I compressed Origen's very broad discussion into brief words and opened his sense to the reader, and on that account I seem to you his secret follower because I omitted nothing he said, see whether I did not do it to avoid your slander, so that you might not say that I had kept silent about what he said forcefully, and that he argues more strongly in Greek. I set down, then, though more briefly, everything I found in the Greek, so that his disciples would have nothing new to press on Latin ears. For we despise the known more easily than the sudden. But having set out his interpretation, listen to what we said at the end of the chapter: "For the Apostle does not say, 'He chose us before the foundation of the world when we were holy and blameless,' but 'he chose us that we should be holy and blameless,' that is, we who were not holy and blameless before, that we might be so afterwards. This can be said also of sinners converted to better things; and that sentence will stand: 'No one living will be justified in your sight,' that is, in his whole life, in all the time he has spent in this world. This, understood so, also tells against him who says that souls were chosen before the world was made because of their holiness and having no fault of sins." For (as we said before) Paul and those like him are not chosen because they were holy and blameless; but they are chosen and predestined so that in their subsequent life, through works and virtues, they may become holy and blameless. And does anyone dare, after such a judgment, to accuse us of Origen's heresy? It is about eighteen years since I dictated those books, at the time when Origen's name flourished in the world, when his work Peri Archon was unknown to Latin ears; and yet I professed my faith and showed what displeased me. So even if an enemy could have shown anything heretical in the rest, I would be held guilty not so much of perverse doctrines, which I have often condemned here and in other books, as of an unwary error.

The second passage which my brother showed me was censured by him, because it is very frivolous and plainly displays its slander, I will set down briefly. On that testimony where Paul says, "Making him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, above every principality and power and virtue and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come," after a manifold exposition, when I had come to the offices of God's ministers and was speaking of principalities and powers and virtues and dominions, I added this too: "They must have subjects, who fear them and serve them, and who are strengthened by their might. These distributions of offices will exist not only in the present but also in the age to come, so that by particular advances and honours, ascents and descents, one may grow or decrease, and come under one or another power, virtue, principality and dominion." And after the example of an earthly king and a whole description of the palace, by which I showed the different offices of God's ministries, I added: "And do we think that God, the Lord of lords and King of kings, is content with a single kind of ministry?" Just as one is not called an archangel unless he is first among the angels, so principalities and powers and dominions are not so called unless they have some subjects of lower rank. But if he thinks I follow Origen because I set down advances and honours, ascents and descents, increases and diminutions in my exposition, let him know that it is very different to say that angels and seraphim and cherubim become demons and men, which Origen affirms, and that the angels among themselves have been allotted different kinds of offices, which is not contrary to the church. As among men too the order of dignities differs according to the variety of labour, since bishop and presbyter and every ecclesiastical grade have their own order, and yet all are men: so also among the angels merits are different, and yet all remain in the angelic dignity; men do not come from angels, nor again are men re-formed into angels.

The third passage censured is that, where the Apostle says, "That he might show in the ages to come the abundant riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus," we set down a threefold exposition: in the first what seemed right to us; in the second what Origen would object; in the third what Apollinaris explained simply. If I did not give their names, pardon my modesty: I ought not to carp at those whom I imitated in part and whose views I was translating into the Latin tongue. "But," I said, "the careful reader will at once ask and say"; and again at the end: "But another transfers this, 'That he might show in the ages to come the abundant riches of his grace,' to that understanding." "See," you will say, "under the person of a careful reader you set out Origen's views." I confess the error: I ought not to have said "careful," but "blasphemous"; and if I had done so, and had known by some prophecy that you would follow such trifles, I would have avoided even the words of slander. A great crime, if I called Origen a careful reader, whose seventy books I translated, whom I raised to the sky with praises; for whom I was compelled two years ago to answer your proclamations against me in a short little book! You object, among your praises, that Origen was called by me a teacher of the churches; and you think I should be terrified if, as an enemy, you accuse me of having called him a careful reader. We are accustomed to call very thrifty merchants, frugal slaves, troublesome tutors, and very clever thieves "careful." And in the Gospel the steward of iniquity is said to have done certain things prudently; and, "The sons of this age are more prudent than the sons of light in their generation"; and, "The serpent was wiser than all the beasts which the Lord had made upon the earth."

The fourth passage censured occupies the opening of the second book, in which we expounded this testimony of Paul: "For this reason I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles"; and because the passage is clear in itself, I will set down only the part of the explanation that is open to slander: "That Paul is the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the Gentiles can be understood also of martyrdom, because, cast into chains at Rome, he sent this letter at the time when, as we have shown elsewhere, those to Philemon, the Colossians and the Philippians were written. Or else, since in very many places it is read that this body is called the chain of the soul, in which it is held as though shut up in a prison, we say that Paul is therefore restrained by the bonds of the body and does not return and be with Christ, so that the preaching to the Gentiles through him may be fully completed; although some bring in another sense in this place, that Paul, predestined and sanctified from his mother's womb for preaching to the Gentiles before he was born, afterwards received the chains of the flesh." And in this, as above, I set down a threefold exposition: in the first what seemed right to me; in the second what Origen asserted; in the third what Apollinaris thought, going against his doctrines. Read the Greek commentaries; and unless you find it so, I will confess the crime. What is my sin in this place? That, no doubt, for which I answered above: why I did not name those by whom the things were said. It was superfluous to set down at each testimony of the Apostle the names of those whose works I had marked in the preface that I would translate. And yet that the soul is said to be bound by the body until it returns to Christ, and in the glory of the resurrection exchanges the corruptible and mortal body for incorruption and immortality, is not an absurd understanding. Hence the Apostle too says: "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?", calling it the body of death because it is subject to vices and diseases and passions and to death, until it rises with Christ in glory, and the clay, fragile before, is baked by the heat of the Holy Spirit into the most solid earthenware, changing its glory, not its nature.

The fifth passage is the strongest, in which, expounding that testimony of the Apostle, "From whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each member, makes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love," we compressed Origen's very broad exposition, which turns the same thoughts over in different words, into brief speech, taking nothing away from his examples and assertions. And when we had come to the end, we added this: "So also in the restoration of all things, when Christ Jesus the true physician comes to heal the body of the whole church, now scattered and torn, each one according to the measure of faith and recognition of the Son of God (whom he is said to recognize for this reason, that he knew him before and afterwards ceased to know him) will receive his place and begin to be what he had been; yet not so that, according to another heresy, all are set in one age, that is, all re-formed into angels; but each member will be perfect according to its own measure and office. For example, the fugitive angel will begin to be what he was created, man who had been cast out of paradise will be restored again to the tilling of paradise," and so on.

I wonder that you, a most prudent man, did not understand the art of my exposition. "For when I say, 'yet not so that, according to another heresy, all are set in one age, that is, all re-formed into angels,' I show both that the things I am discussing are heretical and that they differ from another heresy." What, then, are the two heresies? One, which says that all rational creatures are re-formed into angels. The other, which asserts that each thing in the restoration of the world will be what it was created. For example: since demons come from angels, demons become angels again; and the souls of men, as they were created, are re-formed not into angels but into what they were created by God, so that both the righteous and sinners become equal. Finally, so that you may know that I did not set out my own view but compared heresies with one another, both of which I had read in Greek, I closed my discussion with this ending: "Therefore, as we said above, these things are rather obscure with us because they are said metaphorically in Greek; and every metaphor, if it is transferred word for word from one language into another, has the sense and shoots of its speech choked as if by thorns." Unless you find these same things in Greek, consider whatever was said to be mine.

The sixth and last thing he is said to object against me (if indeed my brother has forgotten nothing in between) is why, in interpreting that passage of the Apostle where he says, "He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ also the church," after the simple exposition I set down Origen's question, in whose person, his name unspoken, I said: "It can be objected against us that the Apostle's saying, 'No one ever hates his own flesh,' is not true, since those suffering from jaundice, consumption, cancer and catarrhs prefer death to life and hate their own bodies"; and immediately I added what I myself thought: "Let the saying, therefore, rather be referred to a figurative understanding." When I say "figurative," I show that what is said is not true literally, but figured in the cloud of allegory. Yet let us set down the very words contained in Origen's third book: "Let us say that the soul loves that flesh which is to see the salvation of God, and nourishes and cherishes it, instructing it with disciplines, fattening it with heavenly bread, and watering it with the blood of Christ, so that, refreshed and sleek, it may follow its husband with free course and not be weighed down by any burden of weakness. Beautifully too, after the likeness of Christ nourishing and cherishing the church, and saying to Jerusalem, 'How often I wished to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not,' souls also cherish their bodies, so that this corruptible may put on incorruption, and, held up by the lightness of wings, be lifted more easily into the air. Let us therefore cherish, husbands our wives, and our souls our bodies, so that both wives may be turned into men and bodies reduced to souls, and there may be no difference of sex at all; but as among the angels there is neither male nor female, so we too, who are to be like the angels, may begin even now to be what is promised us in heaven."

Above, we expressed the simple exposition which seemed to us right in that testimony, saying: "As far as the simple understanding goes, holy love between husband and wife being commanded, we are now bidden to nourish and cherish our wives, that is, to provide them with food and clothing and what is necessary." This is our view. Everything, then, that follows, "and it can be objected against us," we showed must be understood as coming not from our person but from that of the objectors. Though this is a brief and complete answer, and, as we said above, distorted also by the shadows of allegory from what is to what was not, yet I will come closer and ask what displeases you in this discussion. No doubt that I said that souls, like husbands, cherish their bodies as wives, so that this corruptible may put on incorruption, and, held up by the lightness of wings, be lifted more easily into the air. When I say, "that this corruptible may put on incorruption," I do not change the nature of bodies but increase their glory. So too what follows, "held up by the lightness of wings, be lifted more easily into the air": he who takes on wings, that is, immortality, so as to fly more lightly to heaven, does not lose being what he was. "But," you will say, "what follows moves me: 'Let us therefore cherish, husbands our wives, and our souls our bodies, so that both wives may be turned into men and bodies reduced to souls, and there may be no difference of sex at all; but as among the angels there is neither male nor female, so we too, who are to be like the angels, may begin even now to be on earth what is promised us in heaven.'" They would rightly move you, had I not said after the former words, "may begin even now to be what is promised us in heaven." When I say, "may we begin here on earth to be," I do not take away the nature of the sexes, but I take away lust and the intercourse of husband and wife, as the Apostle says: "The time is short: it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none." And the Lord, asked in the Gospel whose wife of the seven brothers she should be in the resurrection, said: "You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God: for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but will be like the angels of God in heaven." And indeed, where there is chastity between man and woman, there begins to be neither man nor woman, but, while still in the body, they are changed into angels, among whom there is neither male nor female. Which is also said in another place by the same Apostle: "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus."