The Apocriticus (Answers to the Pagan Critic) 1.6–2.15

[Macarius, from Book 1, chapter 6, on Berenice, the woman with the flow of blood.] … Then Berenice, mistress of a notable estate and from of old an honoured ruler of the great city of the Edessenes, freed from unclean flows of blood and swiftly healed of a painful affliction — the woman whom for a long time “many physicians had tormented, and besides doing no good at all had increased the suffering into worse pain” — saved by touching the saving hem: he made her celebrated in song to this day in Mesopotamia, or rather the great achievement throughout the whole earth. For the woman had the story of what had been done nobly cast in bronze and handed it down to the world, as though the deed had happened just now and not long ago …

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on “I came not to bring peace on the earth, but a sword” (Matt 10:34–38); the beginning of the answer is lost. Christ is imagined as speaking.] … “[Whoever wishes] to enter on such contests, let him first read my ordinance, which I laid down with stern judgments and fearful commands because of the combative nature of the matter. Let him take it in his hands and count it off on his fingers, or reckon it more carefully within, in his mind: that one who goes to war in such a war must disregard father and mother, push aside the affection of children and wife, spit out the bond of brothers and kinsfolk, and at last loathe his own life in the flesh, and take up ‘the whole armour of God,’ and fight against the treacherous phalanx of Beliar, laying aside every bodily care and stripping off the earthy anxiety of the flesh. For I do not summon bodily men to a bodiless war, nor do I arm earthly men against spirits. If I did that, I would seem drunk with ignorance, to be doing in folly what the ignorant do, and to differ in no way from infants, who mould a wall in fine sand and scatter the beginning of their work before it has begun, laughably raising a plaything, not a wall. Therefore, so that we may not be laughed at for campaigning against a shifty serpent and arming ourselves against unseen enemies, let us first consider the plan of the encounter and rehearse the manner of the battle in our mind, so that we may finish the contest within the appointed time, and loathe this flesh like a scale, having covered the inner man with the new breastplate of faith. Let us cast away the memory of a temporary father: an eternal Father, and a mother, will embrace us after the victory. Let us hate the love of wife and dearest ones: for a shining commonwealth that has no end will embrace us more than these, when we have fought nobly, with its own goods and children. Let us forget brothers and kinsfolk altogether: for instead of them angels, seeing us victorious, and the whole kinship of the heavenly beings, will love us. Let us take no thought at all for perishable life, but hate living in the flesh: for undefiled life will look upon us when we have succeeded in this way. Such is the resolve that must be taken up by one who wishes to conquer the battle-line of sin and to be enrolled under the standards of my kingdom. But if anyone is not so, if his mind is not strengthened by such counsel and such reasoning, but is fenced round with tender feeling, held fast by the body of clay, bound with the nooses of fleshly cares, made womanish by love and affection for a wife, and loves the temporary and earthly father instead of the undefiled and everlasting Father — then this man is not worthy to be enrolled among my soldiers. Let him not walk behind me on my paths. He cannot stand the battle-line of my enemies; he cannot break the phalanx of wickedness. He is plunder carried off before the encounter, a pitiable spectacle before the battle. Even while he lives he has died in soul, and when he dies he does not rise. He is wounded by himself beyond cure; before the contests he is a casualty of the contest; he is a slave among slaves and the chattel of slaves. So, being such, he is not worthy of me.”

This is what he would say to those who wish to receive the heavenly armour. But what rewards they won who, for longing for the everlasting kingdom, campaigned nobly and exchanged this toilsome life, one may see from the achievement in the deeds themselves. So the blessed martyrs, in their time, held this commandment like a safe and impregnable shield: they defeated temptation of every kind, overthrew the varied war of the passions, routed numberless assaults of enemies, and destroyed untold hosts of wickedness, always holding the sword and, as their weapon, the cross — by which the shield of tyrants was cut to pieces, by which the tribes of armed demons were brought down, by which the world was defeated …, by which the darts of wickedness were broken, by which the weapons of deceit were cast down. For when the martyrs were cut off in the very middle of the battle-line of terrors, they spared neither father nor mother nor children pleading with them, nor wife; they did not even pity themselves; but as if at one signal, rushing forward at one trumpet, they did not throw away the cross, but fought nobly with it until they put off the robe of the body and put on the bodiless glory of confession — because of the saving and blessed saying, namely: “If anyone comes after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

This, then, is the sharpened and shining sword: love of the indestructible kingdom, by which fathers were separated from children and daughters stood apart from mothers, as Thecla from Theocleia, and a brother renounced friendship with his brothers. Often, then, in various temptations and contests, chaste daughters, obeying the saving teaching, were cut off in a way from their mothers' way of life, having received the promise of the commonwealth above as a sword that cuts and divides. Others, in love with praiseworthy virginity and purity, renounced the manners and ways of their mothers, gladly welcoming the cutting word of teaching like a sword. Sons of judges, too, and distinguished citizens of famous cities, thrusting away the custom of ancestral usages, changed over to the ascetic way of life, climbing by the labours of self-control to the citadel of the heavenly virtues, divided in friendship from their family ties by the teaching of the gospel; and their fathers, seeing this, are not angry, the mother is not vexed, the brothers are not harsh. You may run through the cities of the East, and in short the provinces of Syria, and learn the reality of what I say more exactly. Take at once those whose lot it is to live in the royal metropolis of Antiochus: they are divided by countless judgments about right conduct. Some welcome the yoke of marriage, others take no partnership with a woman; some cultivate a luxurious life, others the squalid toil of fasting; some insatiably heap up the possession of money, others love poverty as a good; some pride themselves greatly on trade, others rejoice in want as at a feast; some are eager to consort with courtesans, others wish to dwell in solitude. And the saving sword has cut through all of these, dividing them without wounds as though in one house. For it cuts judgments and makes no bruises; it usefully divides the bond of kin while bringing no cause of pain; it cuts, and makes no lament for those who are cut; for it does not divide bodies, but changes the choice and the mind.

And if you wish to hear the saying in a spiritual sense: see, in the man divided from his father, the choir of the apostles separated from the law; the daughter is the flesh, and the mother circumcision; the bride is the Church, and the mother-in-law the synagogue; and the sword that cuts is the grace of the gospel. And this, I think, has been made sufficiently clear concerning “I came not to cast peace on the earth, but a sword.”

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” (Matt 12:48–49).] It remains, then, to explain what Christ said: “Who is my brother and sister?” And stretching out his hands toward the disciples he said, “Behold my brothers and my mother.” Many of the Jews, especially the more thoughtless, not clearly understanding the economy of his becoming man, supposed him a mere man possessing nothing beyond a man. So, since they had formed such an opinion about him, held nothing more divine in him, and were unwilling to peer beyond the curtain, that is, the veil, he reproves their blindness and pities the fools who out of ignorance dared to rob the Only-begotten of his dignity, all but crying out, curbing their unbridled tongue, and saying: “Who is my brother, if I am only-begotten? What mother of the motherless one stands outside? For tell me, what mother gave birth to the Creator dwelling in a creature? Who wrapped in swaddling clothes the craftsman who was never brought forth in childbirth? Who is called his older or younger brother? See how with unbridled tongue you mock a lot that is undefiled in purity; see what you whisper out of season; see how much harm you do from ignorance. You have understood nothing beyond what appears; you judge and decide by what you see, and seeing a man you think him only that. Tell me, then, holding nothing back at all: what man since the world began, knowing brothers and a mother, as you say, took a corpse down from the bier and raised it? What man since the world began walked on the sea and travelled over it as over solid land? What man since the world began, having brothers and a mother and kinsfolk, raised from the dead a man four days dead? What mere man of the common rank since the world began loosed leprosy like scales from a body and spread fresh skin over the flesh? What man since the world began … changed the nature of water into dry wine? What man since the world began, with a word, made firm a man lying motionless on a bed and made him swift as a deer? What man since the world began, when five thousand were hungry in the desert, filled them with only five loaves and two fishes? What man since the world began sent ten lepers on their way to be cleansed and, overtaking them with invisible power, healed them? What man since the world began, at one time and overlooking none, called countless multitudes struck with all kinds of diseases and sufferings back to health? What man since the world began filled up what was lacking and promised to fulfil what was to come? But if there was none (for there was none), nor is, nor will be, a mere man who accomplishes such deeds, how do you not shrink from babbling that the Only-begotten of God is a mere man who has brothers? Were you not put to shame even by the works in which you see him at work? Did not the dead and the living teach you, how they rose from the tombs because they understood the voice not of a man but of God? Did not the man blind from birth instruct you that he saw the light not from a man but from God? But if the blind man, blind in body, saw with the eyes of the soul the one who had come to dwell among us, while you, who see such a lightning-flash of power, do not perceive the one present, but, dashing against him out of season, think that he has brothers and a mother — then to you who are blind I too say: ‘Whoever does the will of my Father, he is my brother and mother.’ For whoever does the will of the Father (and what I will, the Father wills), I say has the goodwill of a brother and a mother. For he gives birth to me like a mother, having conceived me in doing the will of the Father, and he is born together with me — not becoming so in the substance of being, but united in the grace of the will. For whoever has done my Father's will gives birth to me by sharing in the deed, and is born together with me. For whoever believes that I am the Only-begotten of God — through faith, not through substance — in a sense begets me by faith, being mystically present with the one who is born.” Christ would rightly have said this to those who talked nonsense; and he did not name Peter or Judas or any of the other disciples when he spoke so, but said without qualification, “whoever does the will of the Father.” So much on this.

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on “No one is good but one, God” (Mark 10:18) and “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good” (Luke 6:45).] Come, let me make clear to you also the saying that says, “No one is good except one, God,” and the one that declares, “The good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth what is good.” For see how plainly here too Jesus withdraws himself from men, saying, “No one is good except one, God.” Yet Christ is undoubtedly God, since John says, “And the Word was God”; and the Saviour himself, showing the reality of his own Godhead, says, “I and the Father are one,” so that the one who says this is beyond dispute God. Why then, being good as God, did he deny it, saying, “No one is good except one, God; why do you call me good?” If you will attend honestly to what is said, the point that is asked about by many and much talked of is easy to see and clear. A certain young man, in a fair outward show, was painting before the Saviour a picture of his upright conduct; and thinking that he who became man for men's sake was the equal of other men and possessed nothing more than mortal kinship — for that young man, showing off, had often deceived many, receiving praise from many as one who did well — and supposing the Lord to be one of the many, he approached and spoke to him not as to God but as to a man, saying, “Good teacher.” And he, meeting him, since the young man held such an opinion of him, says: “Why do you call me good, taking me for a mere man? You are mistaken, young man, in taking a human view of me and addressing me as good; for what is good in the proper sense is not found in men, but in God alone. So, by your reckoning, I deny that I am good, since I am thought a man. For if you had held that God was in me and that the nature of God is in me unadulterated, you would have judged that I acknowledge the nature of the good, and I would not have hesitated. But since you have unawares robbed me of what is good by nature and without reason attest goodness by attribution, you will not have me readily as a partner in your theft. For do not suppose, without examining it, that we used the word ‘good’ carelessly. For even if we said, ‘The good man out of the good treasure brings forth what is good,’ we call the man good not by nature but by attribution, whenever he does something good by sharing in the good. For as fire is hot, and what comes near the fire is also called hot, and the one is called hot by nature and the other by attribution — and the sameness of name does not rob the truth and give a single account of the thing, but the difference of natures regularly distinguishes the shared name — so if one calls the Creator good and the creature good, he has made clear that the one is good of itself, the other good from another. So man is good, not possessing this from his own nature but having obtained this advantage from another; but God is good, not having received or acquired it from another, but being himself what is by nature good, unchangeable and everlasting.” Let this, then, be for you the distinction concerning the good, so that Christ may not seem to have annulled his own word in saying, “No one is good except one, God.” For he says that what is good by nature, good in the proper sense, the archetypal good, the everlasting good, the unchangeable good — God alone is and subsists as that. But the good by attribution, the changeable good, is whatever among creatures is so; just as indeed he called a fish and an egg good, saying, “You know how to give good gifts to your children.”

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is moonstruck” (Matt 17:15).] Next let us see what is meant by the man who says, “Have mercy on my son, for he is moonstruck”; for it was not the moon that was tormenting him but a demon. And let us not hear as an afterthought the saying, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you?” For what business had the many to hear this utterance, when one man was making the request, or even erring in his request? And why, when the father was kneeling piteously for his son, did he speak in rebuke, addressing not him alone but the crowds as well? Should he not rather have welcomed the petition, since it was made in sympathy for one who was suffering? Instead, on the contrary, he sends the suppliants' request packing; for Christ seems, without reason and openly, to insult the people. But let us not attend only to the surface of what is said; let us gather up the hidden wickedness of the matter. What then? The serpent called a demon, being crafty and deceitful, inhumanly twisted the boy's body, painting various terrors of apparitions and fearful things, and in many ways scourged the souls of the onlookers, leading the credulous to an opinion that fights against God. For at the turning, or rather the return, of the moon's cycle he lodged in the youth an unbearable and violent frenzy, and worked in him so as to throw him piteously into water or fire and to convulse him without mercy in great madness, so that those who saw it thought the boy suffered this not from a demon but was distorted by the cycle of the moon — because the evil demon watched for each return of the moon's light to hurl himself on the youth. And thereafter a hidden, and almost an open, heap of blasphemy came about, as the fault-finders said that the Creator had not made the moon's orb as a good creature but for the destruction of the human flock: “From what we have learned, look, the moon's account is murderous and very inhuman; yet it is not the moon we must now blame, but the one who created and fashioned it, who devised it as a vessel so harmful and hostile to us and a cause of corruption.” This was the business the demon carried on: to scourge the boy's body savagely, and to raise among the onlookers lawless blasphemy against the Creator, working a double wound with one blow, harming the souls of a countless multitude through one, and through what was seen shooting at what was unseen. Since, then, they disbelieved that the moon was created for good and supposed it had been brought into being for destruction, and the occasion of this evil arose from the case of the demoniac, Christ for this reason greatly pities those who were secretly sick in soul together with the possessed boy, and reproves the sickness of their unbelief, saying: “O generation faithless and unstable in judgment, which supposes that men go mad from the moon, which slanders the Creator through the creature and dares to blame the maker for the thing made! Bring him here to me; for the sickness is not one man's but all of yours. And when he is healed, you will be healed in your souls together with him, knowing that the suffering comes not from the moon but from the spirit that does the harm. When it has gone out, the boy will be seen healthy, and he himself will publish your wickedness, how with an uneducated word you lied about the moon.” And if Matthew says that a moonstruck boy was brought to Christ, he did not choose to write this as though he did not know that the affliction was not from the moon, but as one who had heard it and said what he heard; for it is the mark of a historian to say what he heard or saw, not what is the case. Let the question of this subject be thus well answered, if it pleases you, brought up as a free man, to accept the lesson of freedom.

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on “If I bear witness to myself, my witness is not true” (John 5:31).] Let us also examine carefully what he means when he says, “If I bear witness about myself, my witness is not true.” A man who bears witness to himself is not true; but God, on the contrary, is true when he bears witness about himself from what he does. So it would not suit a man to say, “I am the light and the life and the truth,” but God alone, who is by nature life and light and incorruption. Since, then, when Christ uttered these and similar words, he was thought by the Jews to be not God but a mere man, he overturns the verdict that was not rightly given. For if they judged that the divine deeds were done by human power, the divine lot was overthrown, as if it had not become man; the nature of mortals received no benefit, since this had not happened; and while this opinion prevailed, the mystery of the economy was in danger of collapsing, a worse shipwreck was in danger of happening in the world, and everything of sinking together under the wave — if the one present was God and the deeds divine, yet they had only a man's testimony. Therefore, insofar as he was man, he declined to bear witness to himself and sought the testimony from God; but insofar as he was God, in bearing witness to himself he was not mistaken when he said, “I am the light of the world and the life and the truth.” For no one else has borne witness to himself to these things; and the dignity of the greater would be insulted if it received testimony from those unlike it. So, rightly, to those who improperly mocked him by saying, “You bear witness about yourself,” he said: “If, as you suppose, I am a man who has borne witness, the testimony is not true; but if I am not only man but also God, I have borne witness truly in saying, ‘I am the light of the world and the truth and the life.’ For I answer you according as I see your verdict on me. If, then, I am a mere man, as you judge, the testimony I have given is not true; but if I am God, as the divine verdict has confirmed, my word of testimony is true. So I do not cancel what was said by me about me; I reject your judgment, which judges that Christ is only a man — he who performs prodigious works of power far beyond a man, or rather beyond all comparison. If, then, you suppose that I bear witness about myself as a man, I do not do this, but seek the testimony from another; but if as God, you are badly mistaken, for God bearing witness to himself is not mistaken. For who will bear witness to God, when no one exists before him or with him? Who has been found his equal in age? But he, being one before all things, speaks about himself, and in speaking he speaks the truth.” Let this be said by us firmly and more clearly, and let this question too be closed. And if any other passage of the Gospels seems more perplexing, lay it bare and bring it into our hearing.

[The philosopher's objection on the disagreement of the Evangelists about the Passion (Matt 27:34, 46, 48; Mark 15:34, 36; Luke 23:46; John 19:29–30).] But he, frowning sharply and staring at us very grimly, said to us more cuttingly, with a nod, that the Evangelists were inventors, not historians, of the deeds concerning Jesus. For each of them wrote an account not in agreement but in disagreement, especially the account of the Passion. One records that “someone filled a sponge with vinegar and brought it to him” when he was crucified. Another says otherwise: “When they came to the place Golgotha, they gave him wine to drink mixed with gall; and when he had tasted it he would not drink.” And a little later: “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani,’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” This is Matthew. Another says: “A vessel full of vinegar stood there. So they bound a vessel full of the vinegar with hyssop and brought it to his mouth. When Jesus had taken the vinegar, he said, ‘It is finished,’ and bowing his head he gave up the spirit.” This is John. And another says: “And crying out with a loud voice he said, ‘Father, into your hands I shall commit my spirit.’” This is Luke. From this stale and discordant story one may take the account as being of not one sufferer but many. For if one says, “Into your hands I shall commit my spirit,” another, “It is finished,” another, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, and another, “My God, my God, why have you reproached me?”, it is plain that this discordant fable-making shows either many crucified men, or one who died hard and did not give those present a clear view of his suffering. And if these men, unable to tell the manner of his death truthfully, simply made up their tale, then they made nothing clear about the rest either.

[The philosopher's objection on John 19:33–35, the piercing of Christ's side.] That they made up everything about his end by guesswork will be shown from another heading. For John writes: “When they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out.” John alone said this, and none of the others. That is why he wants to bear witness to himself, saying, “And he who has seen has borne witness, and his testimony is true.” This, it seems to me, is the saying of a simpleton. For how is the testimony true when the thing it testifies about did not exist? One bears witness about what is; but about what is not, how could testimony be spoken?

[The philosopher's objection on the resurrection of Christ and his appearances.] There is another argument able to prove this opinion unsound: the one about his resurrection, which is talked about everywhere. Why did Jesus, after he suffered, as you say, and rose, not appear to Pilate, who punished him and said he had done nothing deserving death, or to Herod, the king of the Jews, or to the high priest of the Jewish clan, or to many trustworthy people at once, and especially to the Roman senate and people — so that, marvelling at what had happened to him, they would not by common decree condemn to death as impious those who obey him? Instead he appears to Mary Magdalene, a common woman who came from some miserable little village and had been possessed by seven demons, and with her to another Mary, herself a quite obscure village woman, and to a few others not very notable — although Matthew says that he had told the high priest of the Jews beforehand, “From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds.” For if he had appeared to notable men, all would have believed through them, and no judge would punish them as fabricators of outlandish fables. For surely it is pleasing neither to God nor even to a sensible man that many should be subjected to the most extreme punishments on his account.

[The philosopher's objection on “Now is the judgment of the world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out” (John 12:31).] And if anyone reads that other piece of claptrap written in the Gospel, he will know clearly that what is said is a tale of marvels, where it says: “Now is the judgment of the world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.” Tell me, before God, what is the judgment that took place then, and who is the ruler of the world who was cast out? If you say it is the emperor — but he is not the sole ruler, nor was he cast down; for many rule the world. If it is some intelligible and bodiless being, it is not possible for him to be cast out; for where would one be cast who is ruler of the world? If you say that some other world exists into which the ruler will be cast, tell us this from some credible account. But if there is no other — since it is not even possible for two worlds to exist — where would the ruler be cast, if not into the very world in which he already is? And how is one cast down into that in which he is? Unless, as with an earthenware jar, it is broken and makes what is in it be cast out — yet not into a void, but into another body, of air or earth, as it may be, or of something else. If, then, in the same way — which is impossible — the world were broken and the one in it cast out, what kind of place is there outside, into which he will be thrown? And what is proper to that place — what quantity or quality, height or depth, length or breadth? For if these are in it, it will be a world, since it has them. And what reason is there for the ruler to be cast out as though he were a stranger to the world? … For from the expression the meaning is plain: what is cast out is cast out against its will; but it is the one who uses force, not the one who suffers it, who does wrong. Such obscurity in the Gospels it is right to leave to silly women, not to men. For if we wished to examine such things more exactly, we would find countless obscure narratives containing no windfall of sense.