The Apocriticus (Answers to the Pagan Critic) 3.17–3.25

[The philosopher's objection.] See a saying like this one and following from it: “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, truly I say to you, you will say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and nothing will be impossible for you.” It is plain, then, that whoever cannot move a mountain by command is not worthy to be counted in the brotherhood of the faithful. So you are plainly refuted: not only is the rest of the Christians not to be counted among the faithful, but not even any of the bishops or presbyters is worthy of this title.

[The philosopher's objection.] Come, let us also tell you of this saying: why, when the tempter said to Jesus, “Throw yourself down from the temple,” he does not do it, but says to him, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” It seems to me that he said this out of fear of the danger of the fall. For if, as you say, he performed many other wonders and even raised the dead by a word alone, he ought to have shown at once that he was able to rescue others from dangers by hurling himself down from the height and suffering no injury at all to his body — especially since a passage of Scripture somewhere spoke of him, saying, “They will bear you up on their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” So the truly right thing was to show those present in the temple that he is God's Son and able to rescue himself and his own from every danger.

[The philosopher's objection.] These things, so diffusely said at such length, are, as is likely, very distasteful, and they inflame, as it were, the battle of contradiction against themselves. For suppose someone, as if from the crossroads, wished to explain those words of the gospels which Jesus addresses to Peter, saying, “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me, because you do not think the things of God but the things of men,” and then in another place, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” If he so condemned Peter as even to call him Satan, thrust behind him, and a stumbling block who had taken up no divine thought at all, and so drove him off, as one who had sinned mortally, that he did not wish to have him in his sight any more, but threw him behind into the crowd of the cast-off and the obscure — what verdict more severe than this sentence must one expect against the chief and first of the disciples? So if anyone, being quite sober, chews these things over, and then, as though Christ had forgotten the words spoken against Peter, hears, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church,” and, “To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” will he not laugh till his mouth splits? Will he not guffaw as at the stage from his seat in the theatre? Will he not speak in mockery and hiss more loudly? Will he not say more loudly to those standing by: “Either when he called Peter Satan he was drunk, overcome by wine and talking as in a fit; or when he made him key-keeper of the kingdom he was painting dreams in the imaginings of sleep”? For what sort of Peter was able to bear the foundation of the Church, he who was shaken countless times by the fickleness of his mind? What firm reasoning was ever detected in him, or where did he show an unshakable mind — he who, hearing a little word about Jesus from a wretched serving-girl, was terribly shaken and perjured himself three times, though no great necessity pressed on him? If, then, he rightly took him up beforehand and called him Satan, as one who had stumbled at the very head of godliness, he acted absurdly in turn, as though he did not know what he had done, in giving him authority over the summit of affairs.

[The philosopher's objection.] That Peter is accused of stumbling in many things is shown also by the saying of that heading where Jesus said to him: “I do not say to you up to …, but up to seventy times seven you shall forgive the one who offends.” Yet he, having received this commandment and law, cuts off the ear of the high priest's servant, who had done nothing wrong at all, and does him harm though he had not sinned at all. For what sin had he committed, if at his master's command he joined in the attack made on Christ at that time?

[The philosopher's objection.] This Peter is convicted of wrongdoing in other matters too. For a man called Ananias, and with him a woman named Sapphira, because they did not deposit the whole price of their land, but set aside a little for their own necessary needs, he put to death, though they had done no wrong. For what wrong did they do, if they did not wish to give away all that was theirs? And even if the thing was thought a wrong, he ought to have remembered the commandments of Jesus, who had taught him to bear with as many as four hundred and ninety offences, and to have pardoned this one, if indeed what was done was a sin at all. And besides the rest he ought to have considered this too: how he himself, swearing that he did not know Jesus, not only lied but perjured himself, despising the judgment and resurrection to come.

[The philosopher's objection.] This man, who stood first in the choir of the disciples, taught by God to despise death, when he was seized by … and escaped, became the cause of punishment for those who guarded him. For after he escaped by night, when day came there was a commotion among the soldiers about how Peter had got out; and Herod, having searched for him and not found him, examined the guards and ordered them to be led away, that is, beheaded. One may well wonder, then, how Jesus gave the keys of heaven to Peter, such as he was; how to one so troubled by such turmoil and worn down by such affairs he said, “Feed my lambs” — if the sheep are the faithful who have advanced to the mystery of perfection, and the lambs are the gathering of those still being instructed as catechumens, nourished as yet on the tender milk of teaching. Yet Peter is recorded to have been crucified after feeding the lambs not even a few months, though Jesus had said that the gates of Hades would not prevail against him. Paul too condemned Peter, saying, “For before certain men came from James, he ate with the Gentiles; but when they came, he separated himself, fearing those of the circumcision; and many Jews joined him in hypocrisy.” In this too there is much and great condemnation: that a man who had become interpreter of the divine mouth should live in hypocrisy and conduct himself to please men; and further, that he should take a wife about with him, for Paul says this too: “Do we not have the right to take about a sister as wife, as do the rest of the apostles and Peter?” And then he adds, “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers.” If, then, Peter is recorded to have been mired in so many evils, how can one not shudder to suppose that he holds the keys of heaven, and looses and binds, when he is himself bound fast, as it were, in countless absurdities?

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood” (3.15).] When the doctrine of godliness had thus been battered, and the foundation of the Christian ramparts was almost shaken, we sought the support of sufficient arguments, and then raised it up, fortified like a tower in war. Trusting in it, though we received many darts of words, we remained unwounded, and we bore a great quiver of sophistic skill emptied against us. And when the man who held the armour was at last growing weary of aiming his bow with sharpened arrows whizzing at us, we quietly sharpened against him the full armour of good order and made, as it were, our first start against him, saying to his face and to those with him, concerning the flesh of Christ, that the Saviour said nothing strange or horrible in saying, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life.” For consider with me — let us speak now of the newborn infant just brought forth, which has come out of its dark and moist dwelling. Unless it eats the flesh and drinks the blood of its mother, it has no life and is not brought up among men, but departs into the darkness of death. But if it partakes of those natural springs and feasts abundantly on the kindred flesh, then, brought on to maturity, it is thought worthy of a better diet and rank: it is enrolled among men, shares in education, and learns the marks of a brilliant way of life; and from there it is sometimes ranked among men distinguished and great, gaining experience of generalship, of command at sea, and of many councils. And the cause of so many and such great goods is eating the flesh of the one who bore it and drinking the blood of the mother. And do not try to say that this is not blood but milk. For it is blood, truly by nature and life-giving from nature, gathered to the breast and then changed into the whiteness of milk, because the nipple, placed above the chest, mixes it by contact with the air and turns the yellow to brightness. For the air is accustomed somehow to give a quality to the nature near it: sometimes, by the descent of flame, when it finds something white uncovered it makes it black; sometimes, cooling what is yellow and confined, it makes it white and bright. So, for instance, water that is dark in a spring and in very deep wells it freezes and makes into white snow and bright ice. So the mother's life-giving blood, gathered to the outside, in a manner meets the neighbouring air, and being broken and constantly turned this way and that it is whitened and takes the quality of milk. For it was not by chance or idly that creative nature placed the spheres of the breasts above the chest, like capacious and mystical vessels; it was with reason, like abundant reservoirs, to sweeten the blood gathered from the veins, to make it bright, drinkable, and white, and to thin out the thickness of the flesh contained in it. And this is no wonder, since the salt and turbid water borne from the channels of the abyss is purified for us as if through the breasts of the springs. If, then, the children of the natural philosophers report these things to us persuasively and clearly teach the exactness of things, which you too value highly, what disturbance do you think the gospel saying of Christ has here? For what horrible or strange thing, as you suppose, did he teach in saying, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in yourselves”? For tell me, from what is the newborn nourished? Is it not from the blood and the flesh of the one who bore it, as has been shown — not by the invention and contrivance of plausible words, but by the unadulterated rule of truth? If, then, Christ gave to as many as received him authority to become children of God, bringing them to birth by a mystical word and then wrapping them in unspeakable and divine swaddling clothes, tell me, from what will the children of God, newly born, live and be nourished? Surely by tasting the mystical flesh and drinking the mystical blood of the one who bore them. And she who bore them is none other than the Wisdom of God. For she has prepared her own table for her own children and mixed her own wine for her own offspring, pouring it out richly as from two breasts, the two testaments. She, nourishing the newborn with her own flesh and her own blood, makes them full-grown and perfects them as disciples of the heavenly kingdom; then she enrolls them in the commonwealth of the angels above, leading them into the undefiled council; and, filling them with immortality and all blessedness, she makes them like the Father, giving them incorruption. The flesh and blood of Christ, or of Wisdom (for Christ and Wisdom are the same), are therefore the words spoken allegorically in the new and the old testament, which we must eat by study and digest in the mind by remembering them, and have from them life not temporary but eternal. So Jeremiah, receiving into his mouth the words from the hand of Wisdom, ate, and by eating had life; so Ezekiel, eating a scroll of words, was sweetened and cast off the bitterness of the present life; so each of the saints, once long ago, and again, and afterwards, eating the flesh of Wisdom and drinking her blood — that is, receiving her knowledge and revelation within himself — has lived for ever and will never cease to live. For he did not give his own flesh to eat and likewise his blood to drink to the disciples only (for then he would have done wrong, providing eternal life at a particular time to some and not granting it to others); he gave this nourishment allegorically to all holy men and prophets alike. But at the last of times, giving bread and a cup to the apostles, he said, “This is my body and my blood.” And to show the account more clearly and make the question of the heading plain, I will open to you a feast of natural reasonings, if you will put aside the conceit of prejudice; for from it you will learn the mystery. What then do we say? We men have come into being from earth as to the body, and in a sense, eating the flesh of the earth — not the earth itself — and drinking its blood, we are not destroyed. The flesh and blood of the earth are its dry and its liquid fruit; eating and drinking these to the full we live, without grieving the earth by consuming its flesh and its blood; for gathering grain and wine from it, we live in it and enjoy it gladly. Now lend me your ear for the economy of the mystery, and sharpen your mind for hearing. What then? The Only-begotten Son created the earth in the beginning; taking man from the earth he fashioned him; taking a body from man he became man. If, then, the body is called earth by reason of its origin, and the earth is Christ's work by reason of its creation, being rightly his own work; and if from it bread and wine came forth, and from it also the body of man; and if Christ put on this body — then, fittingly, taking bread and a cup he said, “This is my body and my blood.” For it is not a type of the body nor a type of the blood, as some have babbled, their minds hardened, but in truth the body and blood of Christ, since the body is from earth, and the bread and the wine likewise are from earth. How, then, could anyone else have dared to say, “My flesh is food and my blood is drink,” since no one else appeared as the creator and maker of the earth, nor is this creature and work proper to anyone but to the Son of God alone? Therefore he said: “This is mine; for the creation of the earth is mine and not another's. All who came into being after the earth received their body from me; but I, before the earth, received it from no one and fashioned it; and taking a body from it, as from my own work, I became man. So from myself I hold out to you my own gift: the bread from the earth is set apart for your food, and the earth is my handiwork; the body likewise is from the earth, and it is my dough. So I, the Holy One, give bread and a cup, having sealed them by the union in which I was united with the earthly, declaring that this is my body and blood.” For if Abraham, or any other of the righteous, had said, “My flesh is food and my blood is drink,” he would have lied greatly in his boldness, bestowing what was another's as if it were his own; and he would have done great harm, giving bread and a cup to some carelessly and saying, “This is my body, and this is my blood.” For the substance was not his, but another's. Nor would the things eaten have granted life to those who ate them, since he did not have the living Word in the union. But the earthly thing, having become the body of God, led those who ate it to eternal life. So Christ gave his own body and blood to those who believe, having placed in it the life-giving medicine of the Godhead. So, calling the flesh bread and the blood wine, he rightly taught us that the body and the bread alike are from the earth, and that both have one substance. But the common bread grown on the earth, though it is the flesh of the earth, does not promise to have eternal life; it gives a temporary comfort to those who eat it and is quickly extinguished, being without the divine Spirit. But the bread grown in the blessed earth of Christ, united by the power of the Holy Spirit, makes a man immortal from the tasting alone. For the mystical bread, having received inseparably the Saviour's name, given to his body and his blood, unites the one who eats to the body of Christ and makes him a member of the Saviour. For as a writing-tablet, instilling the teacher's power through his letters, gives it to the learner and through it leads him up, joining him to the teacher, so the body, which is the bread, and the blood, which is the wine, having drawn the incorruption of the undefiled Godhead, give it at once to the one who partakes, and through it lead him back up to the undefiled abode of the Creator himself. So the flesh of the Saviour, when eaten, is not destroyed, nor is this blood consumed when drunk; the one who eats comes to an increase of divine powers, while what is eaten is inexhaustible, since it is akin to and inseparable from the inexhaustible nature. Receive, then, if you please, a great account of a great difficulty.

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on “If they drink anything deadly, it will not harm them” (3.16).] Let us examine this next point as follows, not taking the sickness or the deadly drug in too bodily a sense. For we would undo the principle of faith if we found countless unbelievers, strangers to God and to godliness, proving stronger than deadly drugs. For if believers and unbelievers alike refute the power of drugs, how shall we call some unbelievers and others believers, when they have equally conquered the evil of harmful things? We shall have to call either all unbelievers or all believers. Moreover, among the sick too one may see many godless unbelievers who drove away the pain merely by making a sign over it. What then? Shall we call these men believers from the deed, or rather skilled men and quick expellers of diseases by knowledge? We must not, then, be deceived into testing the faithful in a physical way by the drinking of drugs, nor take the measure of the godly from the sick. For in that way people will surely practise drinking drugs and making light of them by some stronger art, and demand from men the prize of faith; in that way some, having conquered sickness by art, will boast that they are saviours of men. So we must not take this saying of the Saviour off-hand, but deem it worthy of due examination. For if the deadly drug is not harmful to believers, this drug is evidently invisible, working an unseen and bodiless death — a drug not mixed from reptiles, not compounded by human art, since it does no harm to those who believe. I will give you as teacher of this drug the herald of Christ, Paul, who makes it well and plainly known where he says: “[As many of us as] were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death; we were buried with him in baptism.” See a deadly drug that does not harm those who believe: for it killed sin, which was tyrannizing, and saved the man who was tyrannized, by faith. For whoever has drunk this drug in faith has killed the old beast of disobedience still living within him, and is not harmed himself, but goes on to a better lot of life. So to unbelievers it is harmful, to believers harmless. So a stone lying in the road, so that walkers may not be soiled by the mud, is useful to those who see and an ally on the journey, but to those who do not see it is a knock, a blow, and a bruise; so the trespass of the Jews became the wealth of the Gentiles, and their defeat the wealth of the world; so the cross, blazing on the earth with the brightness of the Godhead, became incurable darkness to unbelievers but clear and unclouded light to the faithful. He says, then, that these signs follow believers invisibly: they drink a drug in faith and are harmed in no way; and further, they lay hands on the sick. Taken figuratively, this has a plain meaning. For “hands” figuratively signify nothing other than practical activities, and “sickness” names the changes of the seasons, the irregularity of livelihoods, and the upheavals of the great discord in life that happen on land and sea. A season is often sick in drought; it is ill in heavy rains and measureless snowfalls; the times have often appeared sick when the air is harmed by the battle of the elements. And the saints, applying to these the works of their actions, did not fail or fall short of their hope. So Polycarp, who governed the episcopate of Smyrna, when the season of the crops was greatly sick — when the sky, hidden by not even a little cloud, sent down unquenchable burning from the air, scorching the land beneath beyond measure until it dried up even the moisture of the springs, and the distress pressed on the people for a long time — that inspired man came forward and, seeing the inhabitants so worn down, laid his hands in prayer, as it were, upon the burnt-up season, and suddenly made everything well. And again, when the dry land was drowned by measureless rain and the inhabitants lamented pitiably, the same man stretched out his hands to the air and undid the calamity, healing what was so grievous. And even before his episcopate, supporting his life by the work of his hands, wherever he laid his hands in faith, everything went well. Why should I tell you the noble deeds of Irenaeus of Lyons, or Fabian of Rome, or Cyprian of Carthage? Passing them over, I will speak of those of today. How many, stretching out their hands in prayer to the One who watches over all, have invisibly healed — how, we do not know — those afflicted by the unseen diseases of the passions that lie heavily on men's souls? How many, laying hands on catechumens fevered in the old body or disease of sin, have made them well, lifting them to the new gift of health through the mystical and divine bath? For the faithful are not so much concerned to drive out bodily sufferings more vigorously (for these know how to train a man rather than to wear down the commonwealth of his soul), but to drive out the things that are accustomed to harm the understanding, enslaving the judgment of reason …; so the answer has proved persuasive to those who hear it.

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on faith that moves mountains (3.17).] I will set out the next proposition, about “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and your word, once spoken, will not fail.” It is the custom of teachers to teach their disciples to accomplish what they themselves know and are accustomed to do. But if a teacher tells his disciples to practise what he himself is not recorded as having done, he does the work not of a teacher but of a deceiver, forcing them to do what he has been found not to have done; nor will the learner accept what the teacher does not do, for it is not right for a disciple to do anything other than what he sees his teacher saying and doing. What bodily mountain, then, did Christ remove? What visible hill did he shake? What hill of Palestine did he ever shake, so that the disciples, seeing him do it, might imitate him? And if he is shown never to have done anything of the kind, how could he say to his companions, “You will say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea’”? And what consistency would there be in the saying, to move into the sea a mountain rooted from the beginning by creative power? For even if the believer were able to do this, the law of consistency does not permit overturning the work of all-wise power, since Scripture says, “He established the world, which shall not be moved.” The apostles, indeed, are recorded to have brought the four quarters of the world under their own authority by the abundance of their faith; their faith was not like a grain of mustard seed, but like the summit of a great ridge above the clouds; and they were so powerful that they subdued cities from end to end by faith alone. But nowhere did they move a visible mountain from its place — not Parnassus, not Olympus, not Ida, not Gargarus, not Taurus, not Bosporus, not Mount Sinai. Yet they rolled away many intelligible mountains from many, driving out the demons who make themselves mountains and press upon men. Indeed one of the prophets, fighting in the person of God against the intelligible mountain, said, “Behold, I am against you, the corrupted mountain, says the Lord, which corrupts the whole earth.” And so that what I say may be clearer to you, I will tell you the subject itself from the beginning. When Jesus at that time had banished a harsh demon from the boy called moonstruck, having come down from the visible mountain, and the disciples said to him, “Why could we not free the boy from the demon?” he said to them, “Because of your little faith. Truly I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain” — not simply “to a mountain,” but pointing, “to this one,” the one just now moved by me from the afflicted boy. For if he had said without the article, “You will say to a mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’” he would have been thought to speak of a bodily mountain; but as it is, by speaking with the article he showed that he was speaking of the demon and of the height that lifts itself against the knowledge of God. Jesus has already thrown many such proud beings like great mountains into the sea, lifting them out of human life and haunts, hurling the so-called legions with the swine down the steep into the sea. So here he spoke allegorically of the demon's hill raised against men; and you must sincerely accept the saying in this way.