Letters 98.12–98.26

This too makes Origen a stranger to the feast of Christ, that he says the principalities, powers, virtues, thrones, and dominions were not created for this from the beginning, but, after their creation, did some things worthy of honour, and, when others like them had slipped down to lower things through negligence, were called by these glorious names; so that, according to his error, God did not create them principalities and powers and the rest, but the sins of others gave them the material of their glories. And how does the apostle Paul write: 'In Christ all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and in him, and he is before all things'? If he understood the force of the word 'through whom all things were created', he would know that they were so created from the beginning, and that it was not the sloth of others and their fall to lower things that gave God occasion to call them principalities, powers, virtues, and the rest; especially since the beauty of creatures consists in the order of ranks. For just as of the sun, the moon, and the stars it is written, 'God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars, and set them in the firmament of heaven to give light on the earth,' and they did not receive it as a reward for good works that, after their creation, they should shine in the firmament of heaven and succeed each other by day and night; so we believe that the principalities and powers created in the regions of heaven did not advance to this after good works, but were so created from the beginning. For we do not imitate the error of Origen and his disciples, who think that, like the demons and the devil, who by their own will obtained such names and offices, the principalities and powers, virtues, thrones, and dominions did something good after their creation, so that, while others slipped to lower things, they rose to the heights and were distinguished by these names, having afterwards what they did not have before. Those who say this do not understand that they contradict Paul's statement, who says that principalities, powers, thrones, and dominions were created in Christ. And since he says 'created', no one doubts that they were so made from the beginning and did not receive such ranks afterwards.

Let it suffice to have touched on these things briefly; let us come to another of his impieties, which he belches out as from the deepest darkness, leaving the world the worst memorial of his blasphemies. For he says that the Holy Spirit does not work in things that are soulless, nor reach irrational things. In asserting this he does not reflect that the mystical waters in baptism are consecrated by the coming of the Holy Spirit, and that the Lord's bread, by which the Saviour's body is shown and which we break for our sanctification, and the sacred cup, which are placed on the table of the church and are certainly soulless, are sanctified through the invocation and coming of the Holy Spirit. If the power of the Holy Spirit does not reach irrational and soulless things, why does David sing, 'Where shall I go from your Spirit?' In saying this he shows that all things are held together by the Holy Spirit and surrounded by his majesty. If all in all, then certainly irrational and soulless things too. And elsewhere we read, 'The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world,' which Scripture would never record unless irrational and soulless things too were filled by his divinity. But he is not content with this limit of blasphemy; like lunatics, who show their madness by gnashing their teeth and spitting foam, he belches again and says that the Son of God, that is, his reason, word, and power, reaches only rational things. Hearing this, I wonder where he got it, or how he does not know he has read, 'All things were made through him,' by which it is proved that the power of the Word of God reaches all things. Perhaps he has forgotten that story too, when by the power of Christ Lazarus was raised, whose body, at the moment it rose from death to life, certainly lacked both soul and reason. He did not know either that five thousand men, besides women and children, were fed with five loaves, and twelve baskets of fragments were left over, which Christ's power certainly accomplished. I think he did not remember that miracle either, when, treading with divine foot the waves of the irrational sea, he restored calm to those sailing, which the power of Christ and the command of no other accomplished. How, then, does he not shudder with his whole soul and body when he says that the power of the Word of God cannot reach irrational creatures? And he who boasts of his knowledge of the Scriptures and thinks he has read more than any man has read should know that it is written that they brought the sick on their beds and placed them at crossroads and in the streets, so that Peter's shadow might touch and heal them. The sacred Acts of the Apostles testify to this, refuting Origen's folly, since they prove that the shadow of the apostles did what he declares the Son and Word of God could not do.

Deceived by a similar error and not knowing what he says, he (follows the opinion) of those who will not have providence descend to all creatures and the lower parts of the world, but only dwell in the regions of heaven; so that, of course, Peter's shadow did what the Saviour's power could not accomplish. But let us come to those other things too. While the apostle plainly proclaims of the firstborn Son of God, 'Let each of us think this, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,' Origen dared to say that it was the soul of the Saviour that emptied itself and took the form of a slave; so that John may be thought to have lied when he says, 'The Word was made flesh.' He presents the Saviour as like our condition, since it is not he himself who emptied himself and took the form of a slave, but his soul; and he undoes by his impiety the faith confirmed by the confession of all. For if, according to Origen's madness, it is the Saviour's soul that was in the form of God and equal to God, and the Son of God is equal to God, and what is equal to God is proved to be of the same substance, the very order of the argument leads us to believe that the soul and God are of one nature. When he says this, it follows that he contends that our souls too are of no other nature than God, and no one doubts that our souls and the Saviour's soul are of one substance; so that now the maker and the made would be of one nature. And how were all things created in Christ, if the souls of men are of the same substance as the Creator? But it is not so, brothers: it was not the Saviour's soul, but the Son of God himself, who, being in the form of God and equal to God, emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. And Origen, sunk in the deep mire of impiety, does not understand that he shares in the Gentiles, who, worshipping idols instead of God, claiming to be wise became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man. Incurring this, he too has been deceived by a similar error; for in affirming that the Saviour's soul was in the form of God and equal to God, as was said above, he is equal to Gentile impiety. As they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, calling gods those who were not, so he too has changed the glory of the incorruptible God by asserting that the Saviour's soul, which was created, was in his form and equality, and that it emptied itself, and not that the Word of God came to earthly things, as the authority of the apostle affirms.

Nor, in his wordiness forgetful of himself, is he ashamed to deny that man's soul was so called from the beginning of its creation, but says it was so called because what was previously mind and sense took on the coldness of negligence and unfaithfulness. This etymology suits the Greek language rather than the Latin. But if he asserts that the Saviour's soul was equal to God and set in his form, then it too received its name from the cooling of love and lost the dignity of its former name. For his general argument is that the souls of men are so called because they have lost the warmth of their former fervour. Therefore, if the souls of all are so named from the cold they have taken on, and he confesses that the Saviour had a soul, it follows that he says it too passed from mind and sense to a name of this kind. Although he is silent about this in words, and open impiety restrains his madness, he is nevertheless forced to say it by the very necessity that links what follows to what has been granted before. For he must either deny that the Saviour had a soul, so as most openly to contradict the authority of the gospels, or, if he cannot contradict himself, he will confess that this soul too was named from the cooling of love, from mind and sense; for he thinks the souls of all who have departed from God and lost the warmth of divine love are named from cold. Who would not believe him content with this limit of sacrilege?

Again he attaches another slander to the Son of God and speaks in these words: 'As the Father and the Son are one, so the soul which the Son of God assumed and the Son of God himself are one.' He does not understand that the Father and the Son are one because of the communion of substance and the same divinity, while the Son and his soul are of different and far distant natures. For if, as the Father and the Son are one, so the Son's soul and the Son himself are one, the Father and the Saviour's soul will be one, and the soul itself will be able to say, 'He who has seen me has seen the Father.' But it is not so (far be this from the church's faith!): for the Son and the Father are one because there is no different nature between them; but the soul and the Son of God differ in nature and substance, because the soul too was created by the Son and is of our condition and nature. For if, as the Father and the Son are one, so the soul of the Son of God and the Son himself are one, then, as we have said, the soul and the Father will be one, and the Saviour's soul will be believed to be the radiance of his glory and the image of his substance. But to say this is impious and blasphemous. It is therefore the same impiety to say that the Son and his soul are one as to deny that the Father and the Son are one. Again, forgetful of himself, he contradicts himself; for he says: 'The soul that was troubled and made sorrowful was not itself the Only-begotten and Firstborn of all creation, nor the Word of God, which, surpassing the condition of the soul and truly Son of God, said in the gospel: I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up.' If, then, the Son of God is better and more powerful than his soul, which no one doubts, how could his soul be in the form of God and equal to God? And when he says that it emptied itself and took the form of a slave, does he not surpass all heretics in the greatness of his blasphemy? For if the Word of God is in the form of God and equal to God, and the Saviour's soul is in the form of God and equal to him, how can one of two equals be greater and the other less? For things of an inferior nature testify, by their lowering of themselves, to a loftier nature and substance.

This blasphemy is not enough for him; but, directing the course of his folly beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, he exults again in his raving, saying that God by his will created as many rational creatures as he could govern, so comparing the power of God to the weakness of men and of the other things that were created. For in the human body its strength sustains and rules as many limbs as, infused into them, it can quicken, and it gives us that balance which it can rule by its presence, and sustains by its power as much as the limbs of men can bear. But God is greater than the things he himself made: though in creating them he gave them the measure that the order of things required and beyond which they could not bear more, he can do more than the things that were made can contain. Yet that pillar of truth asserts that God's power is limited and less than the skills of men. For builders and those skilled in the knowledge of constructing houses can build greater things than they have made, provided the foundations can bear what is to be built on them; the building of what they think out is not the limit of their arts; and when they have completed works as large as need demanded and have a measure beyond which, if anything were built, it would prove unseemly and useless, the art itself contains more in the mind than it has shown in the work, and no limit is put to knowledge by the limit of things, provided, as I said, the underlying materials can bear whatever the mind has conceived and thought has extended to the greatness of works. And how is it not impious to set no limit to human art, nor to make the knowledge of craftsmen equal to their works, and to say that God made as many rational creatures as he could make? Let the impious man hear and learn: the power of God is not as great as the number of rational creatures he is said to have made; but, setting a measure to his works beyond which they could not exist, and enclosing the number of things by the art of his arrangement, he himself is not held by measure and number. From this it plainly appears that he did not make as many things as he could, but that his power made as many as the need of things required. Let us give an example to make what we say clearer. If a rich householder wishes to invite guests to dinner and to offer as many dishes as can satisfy the appetite of the diners, it does not follow that the rich master had only as much as they ate and as was prepared for them; he provided them with as much as the dignity of the banquet required. So too almighty God, surpassing the comparison, did not make as many creatures as he could, but as many were made by him as ought to be made. But that seedbed of wordiness weaves and unrolls and says: 'God made as many things as he could comprehend and keep subject to himself and govern by his providence.' Nor does he hear the prophet saying, 'If all the nations are counted as a drop from a bucket and as the weight of a balance, and will be reckoned as spittle, to whom have you likened God?' and again, 'Who has measured the water in his hand and the heaven with his palm and all the earth with his fist?' If, in comparison with God's power, the water is measured by the hand, the heaven by the palm, and all the earth by the fist (and these things are said by metaphor, so that the worthlessness of what is made may be shown by the magnificence of the maker; for God is not composed of different limbs), how can he be said to have made as many things as he could comprehend by his power?

Let us press on with what we began and explain our meaning more fully. If all the nations are reckoned as drops from a bucket and as the weight of a balance, and will be reckoned as spittle (words by which the worthlessness and small substance of all creatures is shown, so that the incomparable loftiness of God may appear), then his power too will be reckoned as a drop from a bucket, the weight of a balance, and a man's spittle, if, according to Origen, he made as much as he could comprehend by his power; and God's power must be equal to the number and measure of the things made, if indeed he could not make greater things than he made. But I do not think anyone, I will not say of men but not even of demons, would dare to invent of God what he both thought and wrote: that God made as much matter as he could adorn and divide into the forms of things. Let one who thinks this learn from us again: God did not make as much as he could make, but made as much as the order of the measure of things required, having art and power much greater than the number and measure of the things made. And let him know that this is proved by the testimonies of the prophets, one of whom says, 'His power covered the heavens,' and another cries, 'But he made the earth as nothing,' so as to proclaim that God's power is greater than what has been made. Further, what he said, 'He made the earth as nothing,' the apostle, interpreting it of all creatures, expresses: 'Who calls the things that are not as though they were'; so that by these words too we may learn that the power of God is greater than the things made by him. And he is not ashamed, arguing against the power of God, to say that God can do only as much as matter supplied him for working; nor does he understand that the nature of things made is one thing, and that of the maker another, and that the material from which something is made cannot do as much as he who makes something out of it can; for different substances have different power and condition.

Therefore, if those who prefer the ravings of Origen to the authority of the Scriptures wish to celebrate the Lord's Pasch with the church, let them hear God crying out, 'And did I not show you these things, so that you might walk after them?' and the prophet warning tearfully, 'Oh, oh, flee from the land of the north, says the Lord, for I will gather you from the four winds of heaven; be saved in Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon'; so that, leaving the darkness of error and the cold of ignorance, they may turn to the rising of the sun of righteousness, joined to the zeal of the magi, and, dwelling in the warmest region of heaven, which is felt in the fervour of the Scriptures, may, spurning Origen's madness, inquire of the church's shepherds and say, 'Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?' When they find him lying in a manger, that is, in the humble speech of the Scriptures, they will offer him gold, incense, and myrrh: that is, a tested faith shining with all the splendour of truth, the fragrance of a sweet-smelling life, and continence that dries up the luxury of pleasure and the flowing incentives of the flesh. For those who, after repeated warnings, contradict the church's faith are held by a double sickness, of wickedness and of ignorance, and, like serpents wholly turned to earthly things and clinging to the ground, prefer evil to good, and do not know the difference between vices and virtues, and despise the medicines from the holy Scriptures for their correction and healing, suffering a distaste for truth like pregnant women, who spit out their usual food and pursue whatever is harmful; nor can they lift the clear light of the soul against the rays of truth. Despising the church's discipline, they wallow like pigs in the mud and despise ointments. But it is just that they should at least recover health from the examples we bring forward. For as eye disease harms the eye, fever ravages the whole body, and rust gradually consumes bronze and iron, so the pernicious contagion of perverse doctrines violates the beauty of negligent souls and spreads over them the ugly pallor of lies. I beg you, brothers, to pardon my grief as I bring wicked doctrines into the open. For though we have crossed the rivers of Babylon to persuade the captives staying there to go to the feast of Jerusalem, yet by the mercy of God we have not ourselves felt captivity, spreading the sails of the Scriptures to favourable winds. The swelling eddies of heretical doctrine have not overwhelmed us, nor the storm of lies terrified us, nor the torrents of iniquity dragged us into the middle of their sea, where, as the psalmist sings, dwell creeping things without number and the dragon, the devil, a most venomous animal, open to the sport of the saints. Nor, to sum it all up briefly, could the blasts of winds rising from every side overturn the ship of the church and cover the oars of our efforts with a fierce whirlwind. See, sailing with the Lord and Saviour like his disciples, we have crossed over, and, entering the harbour of rest, we embrace the most beautiful shore of the divine books, gathering the various flowers of knowledge; and, pressing kisses on the snowy limbs of wisdom, we cling in her embrace and, if the Lord grants it, living with her and persevering in her love, we sing: 'I became a lover of her beauty.' For all who read the holy Scriptures more diligently and run through the painted meadows of the heavenly words enjoy this blessedness; but those who, leaving the green of the Lord's feast, pass over to the deserts, suffer the hostile attacks of demons like cities without walls.

Therefore, celebrating the approaching feast, let us understand both ourselves and all that is ours, and let us embrace knowledge and our rational soul with all zeal as a mother, having the notion of knowledge as the root of speech and reason, speech as, so to speak, the vestibule of work, and work as the completed roof of the building of speech and knowledge and the firmest top set on the house. For speech, reason, knowledge, and faith without work are empty and unstable. And (to seem to borrow something from that discipline for the sake of those trained in the arts of dialectic) as, if we join a verb to a noun, a complete sense results, whereas if there is a verb alone, or a noun without a verb, nothing at all is said, so knowledge without work and work without faith are weak and perishable, while, on the contrary, knowledge joined to work is the sign of perfect virtue. For the silent thought of the soul is its secret speech, which, sounding outwardly through the tongue, brings out the mind's judgement. And when speech has been completed by work, an end is put to our knowledge and thought. For all these, thought, speech, and work, we shall give account at the judgement, our thoughts accusing or defending one another on the day when God will judge the secrets of men through Jesus Christ, as the apostle Paul writes.

Since this is so, as the feast of the Lord approaches, let us say to those whom Origen's error has entangled and whose deceit holds captive: 'Flee from the midst of Babylon, and let each one save his soul.' For though, according to the prophetic oracle, Babylon is said to be a golden cup, and by the arrangement and charm of its words displays the beauty of truth and transforms itself into an angel of light, yet it must be known that whoever drink of its wine are moved and fall and, crushed, are worthy of lamentation. But let us, resisting deadly passions, fortify the soul with the wall of continence and guard its freedom by the daily exercise of the virtues. For as slaves sold become the servants and floggable slaves of those who paid the price for them, so those who have sold their souls to various desires are called the servants of those to whom they have handed themselves over, and obey them as cruel masters. And when they despise with hard faces those who correct their error, defending folly by rashness, they do not know that audacity, as it seems to me at least, is nothing else than a judgement without sense and thought, driving far from itself the mind that governs the passions. And when the soul has been stripped of such a defence, it is carried headlong into the depth of impiety and, as though with a most bitter phlegm, darkens the light of the mind and surrounds its eye, according to the word of Scripture, with a darkness that can be felt.

So let those who delight in Origen's errors not scorn the proclamation of the Lord's feast, nor seek ointments, gold, and pearls in the mud, nor tear apart in great cities their mother the church, who bore and nourished them. Once ours, they now, because of him and his disciples, surpass the Gentiles in hatred of us, and to please them redouble their curses against us; they besiege the doors of the rich and do not fear to hear, with the Jews: 'I have begotten and raised up sons, but they have despised me.' They seem to me not to know that every word of truth that has no foundation, even if for an hour it entices the hearer to think true what is not, is gradually dissolved and reduced to nothing; and that every sentence poured out like a torrent from a most evil mind overwhelms its author, and, losing the letters and syllables of which it was woven, is left without sense, sound, or any image, and like a most venomous serpent strikes the one who uttered it and at once draws back its head and, as in the hole of the mind, wastes away and is consumed. For the end of lies is destruction. Those who once boasted that they were lovers of solitude, let them at least build a little cell over the lips of their fury to hide their curses, not of the holy stones of Jerusalem but of the shapeless rocks of Babylon, which, unhewn and uneven, prop up the walls of a house about to fall. Though they commend themselves to unrestrained ears and the hatred of the Gentiles by disparaging us, picking at the church's discipline and abusing our patience as a kind of fuel for rashness, yet let them at last be silent and at rest and hear the prophet saying, 'Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit'; and let them desire to think what is worthy of the solitary life, and not grieve God, the prince and teacher of the church.

But I beg you, brothers, let us pray together for them and say with the prophet's voice, 'Who will give water to my head and a fountain of tears to my eyes? And I will weep day and night for the wounded of the daughter of my people,' beseeching God's mercy that he may free them from the error by which they are bound and change into love the hatred with which they rage against us in vain. So we too, forgetting injuries, desire to receive them into a most indulgent bosom, and count their healing and conversion to God as our own health and glory. And if they cannot be cured except by our humility, let us make amends to them of our own accord; we have taken nothing from them, done them no harm, though they are indignant and rage against the medicines of the church by which health is restored to the wounded. We speak what we know and preach what we have learned, praying that those who despise the church's rules may accept the standard of truth, and not lose the benefit of repentance through the shame before men which usually makes it hard for those who err to be corrected. We say now, we said before, and we say it often: we do not want them to wander or roam through other provinces; but to the exiles and the raging we cry out and say with the prophet: 'Be saved from the land, and return, and do not stand still; remember, you who are far from the Lord, and let Jerusalem come up into your heart.'

Perhaps, hearing this, love for the church's congregation may come over them, and they may remember the common joy of the brothers and the hymns they used to sing to the Lord with the others, and change the cold of hatred into the warmth of love, and understand that we are physicians, not enemies; most indulgent fathers, not swollen with hostile pride. For it cannot be that we desire the destruction of those whom we wish to be saved, and that the church's rod should not be turned for them into a staff, if they are willing to leave error and follow the truth and give up the rashness of wanton boys. But if they reject it, and, despising the church's discipline, lift up their horn against its rules and, spurning salutary counsels, throw them behind their backs, let them hear the Lord threatening: 'The man who acts presumptuously, so as not to listen to the priest who stands to minister in the name of the Lord your God, or to the judge who shall be in those days, that man shall die, and you shall remove the evil from Israel; and all the people shall hear and fear, and act impiously no more.' But lest, busied with the healing of the wounded, we forget ourselves and neglect our own affairs, and, as it is written, while preaching to others we ourselves be found reprobate, we warn those who stand to take care lest, while they hold out a hand to those who lie fallen, they themselves fall; and that, keeping the church's discipline, they fear the judgement to come.

So, celebrating the Lord's Pasch, let us be purified by the holy words of the Scriptures and, looking to the Saviour's trophies, remove from our midst all the stumbling blocks by which the course of our life is slowed. Avoiding avarice as the worst of moneylenders, let us slay the desire for vainglory as an insatiable beast, and with watchful mind shun the flattering and slippery serpent of sexual immorality. If ever a more prosperous breeze of fortune blows for us, let us temper the swelling of the mind with humility and meekness; if contrary winds blow, let us rouse the fallen spirit, trusting in fortitude, and be ourselves the accusers of our sin, and know that we have in this the beginning of salvation. For it is impossible to become worthy of the Lord's feast unless we rebuke ourselves and by constant meditation on the virtues recover the freedom of the soul oppressed by vices. So, set in the contest and preparing for ourselves, by the sweat and labour of the present, the future glory of the heavenly feast, before we stand at the judgement seat of Christ, let us correct past sins by repentance, redeem future joys by present weeping, and with the sting of conscience, like bees, drive away the harmful drones of sins, keeping hives full of wax and honey. Let us heal the various wounds of the vices, and by frequent admonitions restrain the robberies of the rich, by which this kind of men is especially caught. And so we shall be able to set out on the road of the approaching fasts, beginning Lent on the thirtieth day of the month Mechir, and the week of the saving Pasch on the fifth day of the month Pharmuthi; ending the fasts, according to the gospel traditions, on the evening of the Sabbath, the tenth day of Pharmuthi, and, as the Lord's day dawns, celebrating the feast on the eleventh day of the same month, joining to it the seven remaining weeks of holy Pentecost; so that with those who confess the one divinity of the Trinity we may receive rewards in heaven in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom and with whom to God the Father be glory and power, with the Holy Spirit, for ages of ages. Amen.

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the brothers who are with me greet you. And we write this, as is necessary, so that you may know that, in place of the holy and blessed bishops who have fallen asleep in the Lord, there have been ordained: at Limnodos, Mnaseas in place of Heron; at Erythrum, Paul in place of Sabbatius; at Ombos, Verses in place of Silvanus. Write to them, then, and receive letters of peace from them according to the custom of the church.