The Apocriticus (Answers to the Pagan Critic) 4.25–4.28

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on “But you were washed, but you were sanctified” (4.19).] When the Greek had made such a forceful entry into the questions, he seemed to shake us and to throw us into the turmoil of helplessness. But we, earnestly entreating in secret the one who reveals deep things out of darkness and teaches man the most luminous knowledge, met each of the points made in good time, saying to the eloquent man: Your propositions are great and very obscure; but receive a clearer answer to them, since Christ brings you this interpretation through us. Hear, then, the first heading first, and the second in the second discourse, then the third likewise, and the fourth and the fifth, and again the sixth together with the seventh question. First, then, we must speak of the apostle's saying: “And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” Let this be the prelude to our subject. What has come into being, when it offends, is often pitied freely by the uncreated nature, saved by grace, and released from the debt of its sins. For even one who has become a worker of wickedness and is punished by the judge's lawful verdict is saved by the king's kindness alone, having only begged and entreated him once. For the man whom the law tormented severely in order to preserve justice, the king, who is master of the law, pitied and showed mercy — not allotting justice to the matter, but, as master, ratifying out of sympathy what is in his power, and correcting the injustice not by punishing the unworthy man but by saving him. Many, indeed, who have received the sentence of death from the laws have fled for refuge to the king, annulled the sentence of the laws, and shown the king's kindness to be stronger than their deeds. For in this the profession of the master's authority is preserved: that the slave's debt is generously forgiven, and that the one who was liable is made brilliant by the gift. But whatever matters are judged as they ought to be receive no benefit from the judge; they are tested by the merits of the case itself. If, then, the spring of grace offered nothing to men by grace, but judged everything by the rule of the law, it would no longer be grace, but an examiner of pursuits and deeds. And how did the Creator supply us with light freely, when we had done nothing worthy of light? How did he prepare a way of life for those who were born, before they perceived the principle of that way of life? If God gives everything as a gift and is grace, and enriches created things without receiving anything from them, he rightly frees sinners too from their fall, as a father pities ungrateful sons. Nor would it be right for the nature of creatures to possess brightness from its own virtue, since then the beauty of goodness would be hidden and the Creator's generosity invisible. For if the universe had not received its life from the Better, and what was not had not received existence from what is — having it as a gift of grace, not as a repayment of something owed — each of the things that have appeared would be unseen and would not have its shining comeliness; but as it is, since it has the gift of the Better, its beauty shines and shows the grace. If you like, let us consider the matter of the present subject from the beginning, and exercise the account of those who sin and those who do not sin: how the law has no authority to save offenders, but the one who laid down the law, being master and lord of the law, frees them from their fall. For the ordinances of truth cry this aloud, and the nature of things teaches it in its love of truth: that the law does not rise to the master's dignity, nor by its own authority forgive wrongdoers their sin, nor hold out the master's grace to the worthy; and that the ruler and lord of the law does not come down to the cheapness of the law, take account of sins with fine-spun judgment, play the pauper in a petty guise, hide the gift of his authority, display a pretence of strictness, judge those who are caught like the law, and bring on each the justice due to his deed. Rather, it befits the all-good and divine one that the Lord, as Lord, should forgive the sin, and the law, as law, should punish the offence, so that the grace of authority may be plain and the work of the one who serves that authority evident, and the order of each not be outraged by a single verdict cast out of confusion; the one will be seen as a slave who labours, the other as lord, possessing the wealth of freedom. One may learn this from a true image and an ample example. Yesterday — not long ago — and lately — not a long time back — some who were caught in forbidden deeds and were about to be punished with heavy punishment bowed down before a royal procession, began to pray earnestly that his rule might last for ever, and were released from every bringing of charges and cast the judicial sentence behind them. But others, free of every blemish and stain, with no share in common wrongdoing or theft, who did not even crown the king in show, as disloyal and very ungrateful at once received the most dreadful punishment of destruction, gaining nothing from having lived blamelessly nor profiting from being clean of charges; on the contrary, lifted up by deeds that they judged pure, they perished as if by their own ruin. But those who appeared in a modest guise, workers and doers of countless evils, full of unlawful practices, trusting that it was easy for the king to save the desperate, came forward with a pitiful look and a pitiable bearing and were saved, suffering no penalty for the base deeds they had done. For to both, by their own judgment, he became the cause of life and of death: to the one the king, mindful of their safety, gave help; to the others he gave the wages their arrogance deserved. If, then, faith is stronger than wrongs, and unbelief a just penalty even for the blameless, why should the apostle be blamed for saying this? For see what he says: “But such were some of you” — liable to the verdicts of the law, slaves, and having before you the inexorable torment of punishment — “but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” If you wish to know the exact force of what is said, the account will be clear to you. He does not say simply, “You were washed,” or “You were justified,” but “in the name of the Lord.” For as the characters of letters are powerful in every way and notable when they are written by a royal hand — able to free a man who has been slandered, able to overcome camps of phalanxes and to fill the whole subject land with boldness — while, when inscribed by a private hand, they have the same outline of shape but not the same working of strength, so water marked by the name of Christ is powerful, strongly invigorating, sufficient for the cleansing of all, able to wash away the stain of wickedness, quick to scour away the wrinkle of evil. For the naming of the Saviour Jesus, made mystically over the water, makes it no longer common water but set apart and ineffable, able to wash not only the surface of the visible body but the very hidden part of the conscience, to arm the reasonings like a camp, and to fill with life the one washed in it, so that he no longer fears the threat of the law which it hung from of old over those who were liable, since he has fled for refuge to the very master of the law, received from him the full armour of grace, and is able to pierce the phalanx of the passions. See, then, the sequence and the consistent order; see the apostolic teaching flashing like lightning. He does not say first, “You were sanctified,” but first, “You were washed”; for a man is first washed, then cleansed, that is, sanctified. For as soda thrown into water scours away the dirt, so the name of Christ, joined with the waters, cleanses the body of the one who has gone down into them, and shows him bright with the lightning of grace; then, after sanctification, it makes him righteous, every unrighteous deed having been put off. And he says that these things come to those who are being saved in no other way than in the name of the Lord and of the Spirit of God. Divinely and very fittingly he laid down that grace is supplied to the faithful from the Trinity, saying, “in the name of the Lord and of the Spirit,” and not simply “of the Spirit,” but “of God's Spirit,” naming one Godhead of the three, and saying not “in the names” but “in the name.” For there is one name of God for the Son and the Father and the Holy Spirit, and God is, and is named, one in three hypostases; and neither does the Father receive the believer without the Son, nor does the Son bring anyone to the Father without the Spirit. For see how mystically he said, “But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified”: whom Christ washed, the Spirit sanctified; whom the Spirit sanctified, the Father justified. Not that Christ, in washing, cannot sanctify; nor that the Spirit, in sanctifying, has no power to justify; nor that the Father, in justifying, is too weak to wash or sanctify whom he will — for the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are equally able to wash, to sanctify, and to justify all things — but because it befits the Son, as Son, to make sons; the Holy Spirit, as Spirit, to sanctify; and the Father to justify the one who is sanctified, so that the name of three hypostases in one substance may be made known. For the apostle, having been taught this mind in the Gospel, where it says, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” takes up the name of the Trinity at the washing, saying, “But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” And if some, as you say, have taken the gift as an encouragement to sin, and, peddling the grace, trade through it in the passions of wickedness, buying off the outrage of the most shameful deeds, that is nothing to the giver. For in calling he does not urge the one called to be licentious, just as one who welcomes friends to a banquet does not teach them to get drunk in dissipation, but on the contrary to be sober and clean of all greed and surfeit. In the same way the Lord, generously calling men to a heavenly table and a spiritual mixing-bowl, does not suggest that they glut themselves with evils, but that they prepare themselves to take what is offered in a sober manner, and not to make their freedom an occasion of slavery, nor the promise of their nobility. And if it happens that some despise the one who calls and glut themselves on the disorder of life, the giver does not repent of what he promised; the one who received, by disposing himself badly through surfeit, has harmed himself, not the giver. For his purpose is to spread out one table of gladness for all and to bring about one condition in those who are nourished. And if some, led by their own self-chosen reasoning, met it with insolence, they were harmed not a little, unable to digest their share in the good. Many indeed, as you said, contriving the matter with such reasoning, have fallen away from the grace set before them: plastering on themselves the mud of wickedness until old age and zealously following the course of loathsome deeds, thinking they would clear away the whole heap of evils at once at baptism, they were suddenly torn away from this accursed life without bearing on their forehead even the sign of pitiable consolation, perishing together with their great hardness of mind; and by testing the gift and putting off the good, they brought harm upon themselves. These words, I suppose, have answered you clearly on behalf of the apostolic teaching.

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on the monarchy of God (4.20).] Next I will clear up for you the sophism of the monarchy and examine the account of the gods and of the only God. Even though you were eager to strengthen for us, from an image, the account of the monarchy of God and of the gods he rules, we must ask whether the nature of things is usually preserved by sameness of name. For we have found that the thing does not have its truth from the name; the name has its truth from the thing. So with fire, which is hot, and with what comes near the fire: both are hot, yet both do not have a hot substance; the one is hot by nature, the other by attribution; the one hot of itself, the other not of itself. And sameness of name by no means shows us one nature. So the apostle, in order to teach the true Godhead, to refute the error by distinguishing the substance from the sameness of name, and to show his disciples the one who is God by substance and Lord in the proper sense, and the others who are gods by attribution and lords by title, says: “For even if there are gods, as indeed there are, and many lords, yet for us there is one God, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus, through whom are all things.” You see how he says, “For even if there are gods,” meaning “gods in name only, not gods in the proper sense,” and “yet for us there is one God,” that is, truly God. It is the principle of substance that bears witness to Godhead; the utterance of a name does not confirm what is said, but the nature of the thing ratifies the truth. He rules over the gods, then, is master of them and has power over them, not as being one of them by sameness of name, but as being alone unoriginate and master of those that have come into being. For they received their substance from him, but he did not provide himself with the privileges of honour from them; he created their substances, but they did not lay the beginning of his existence; and he knows how to preserve those he rules, while they, being ruled, give him nothing. He does not grudge that many be called gods and lords, provided only that they draw near him and, neighbouring the principle of the Godhead, keep company with it; but if they grow careless and go somewhere far off, they suffer the same as those who have turned away from the ray of light and live in the shadow of darkness, in gloom. That is a rule without tyranny and a just one: to rule what is unlike through excellence of substance. For one who is lord of beings of another kind through the superiority of his nature does not give orders as a master by the force of tyranny, but leads in friendship by the firmness of love. But Hadrian, or any other world-ruler, being a man and reigning over men like himself, did this by the law of power and tyranny; he did not rule those of the same substance by an ordinance of fitness, but enslaved his own kind by compulsion and force. And he did great wrong, wearing down the members of the substance, not the substance itself, wronging the individual, not oppressing the kind. For a man cannot be master of a man insofar as he is a man; but insofar as he is a ruler or tyrant who has seized authority, he oppresses and enslaves his fellow through it. So whatever has tyrannized over nature by force did not obtain its authority from nature, but appeared stronger than its like through cruelty. But God, the only ruler, who truly holds the monarchy, is lord of what has come into being, being himself unoriginate; he has power over creatures, being uncreated and without beginning; he governs and cares for beings not like himself but unlike him. For as the sun brightens those on whom it shines by giving them a share of its light, but is never itself illumined by them, so God sanctifies, making them gods, those who draw near him by the reasoning of their mind, and gives them blessedness from himself, but does not himself receive from them the adornment of virtue. If, then, the sun, lighting someone with its rays, lets him be called luminous as it is itself called, it imparts nothing of its own substance to those it lights by way of subtraction, yet does not prevent what it lights from being called bright; for being bright itself in substance, it makes what it lights be called bright by attribution. In the same way, then, God, who is monarch and everlasting by nature, does not prevent the angels from being called gods, making them gods by the attribution of the thing, not cutting off his own substance into them nor giving them a part of his own nature. So the one who worships the God who is God by nature is blessed, but the one who worships the god by attribution goes badly astray, reaping an unsound benefit from his worship. For as one who seeks out fire for the sake of heat is both warmed by it and brightened by its light, but one who looks for warmth from a material heated by fire, bronze or iron, misses the mark — for the material, after counterfeiting that nature for a little while, withdraws to the proper lot of its own substance, benefiting its owner in no way with heat nor supplying him with bright light — so one who wishes to obtain the blessedness of pure virtue does not go wrong in asking it of the God who is God by nature; but he loses greatly if he asks it of an angel or of some bodiless order, which is God by attribution and not by nature, wishing to receive what the one who has acquired it would, by giving it, be stripped of as a grace. But God, giving everything to all, has everything, and refuses poverty: as the sun, supplying light to those who see, both benefits them and does not put off its light; as a teacher giving lessons to his disciples both makes them wise and keeps his wisdom — so power went out from Christ and drove out the diseases of the sick, and, remaining in Christ, was not separated from him at all. So the account has persuasively answered for you this question too, about God and gods and the monarchy held by the only true ruler, God.

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on the immortal angels and the finger of God (4.21).] Next we will speak in due measure about the angels and their incorruption, and how in the kingdom of heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. Christ, wishing to show the blessedness of those whose lot is to dwell in the heavenly country, and to pity those who live in the corruption of the earth and have received their existence from the filthy growth of the flesh, being begotten and begetting and quickly falling away like leaves, says in effect: “Those who have been deemed worthy to enter the indestructible palace of life receive the way of life that the angels have, released from bodily mingling and blending, no longer having death or birth, separated from bodily union and its bonds.” He said this so that anyone of right mind, hearing of a rational being in heaven celebrating its festival by the principle of immortality, might order his life in imitation of them and emulate their dignity in his deeds, abstaining from marriage and fleeing the tokens of corruption, and at last, passing the door of death, might go up, made light, into the court of the blessed, that is, of the angels. He does not, however, stamp images of them in a shape, as you yourself say, and speak to a shadow and delight in a phantom: conversing with lifeless matter as if it were alive, feasting on dead sights of figures, bringing his petition to a voiceless moulding, laying it down that the Divine nests in stone and wood, imagining that what cannot be held is held by bronze and iron, and irrationally picturing the hunting of what cannot be hunted in a dead contemplation. For even if angels have at times appeared in a man's form, they were not what appeared; what they were is invisible. And if someone paints them or forges them in a shape, he does not make what truly is, nor enclose its nature, even if he labours over the painting; he wears himself out in vain, toiling much, wishing to grasp by touch what refuses to be touched. For even if the divine word somewhere tells of God's finger and shows that tablets were inscribed by him, and speaks of feet, head, tongue, or hearing, it did not speak so as to cut the Lord up into members; it taught that the invisible being comes in sympathy into a visible form, mystically moulding an appearance suited to the weakness of the world, so that man, seeing a likeness of his own make-up in a divine vision, might not be troubled when receiving oracles of things to come, but might be blended with what appeared through the kinship of the sight, and so from a proportionate sight might receive the rite of ineffable mysteries. So, fittingly, in a mystical manner of speech, for the sake of the economy of those who are benefited, the Divine plays the part of both natures, defiled in no way even if it is shown in a plant; for created things cannot see the uncreated naked, nor can bodily things contain the bodiless, nor composite things receive the uncompounded. For one who in sleep has seen a lion or a pillar or a river has not truly seen a river or a pillar or a lion, but, by the imagination of sight, an insubstantial dream, to be judged by the examination of knowledge. So one who hears of God's feet or hands or fingers or tongue or hearing, if he is educated and understands the Divine in a manner befitting God, will not judge them to be bodily feet or hands, but an appearance of things set in the imagination. So angels once appeared to Abraham, showing the form of men to his sight, but not men by nature, keeping the principle of bodiless beings. What they did was human and did not falsify human nature; but those who did it were truly angels, not blending their own nature with the deed, but adapting their appearance to Abraham's own sight. And the food and drink they received they did not consume as Abraham did; they consumed what was set before them as fire does, neither receiving satiety from it like the hungry, nor casting out the remainder as waste, as nature does. They did both, being fitted to both: appearing as men, they kept what is proper to men, so as not to grieve the righteous man greatly by refusing to eat and thereby showing that their nature could have no dealings with his; and again, so as not to seem to have slipped into human nature, they kept exactly the bound of their own lot: receiving the food from Abraham as men, they ate it and consumed it as angels, not sweetening their throat with bodily taste, but consuming the food with bodiless heat. And when these things had clearly happened in truth, Abraham did not model the appearance of those he saw, nor carve a likeness, nor paint them on a panel, supposing that he would see in them the guests he had entertained; he kept their memory in the hidden storeroom of his soul, and took pride in meditating on them.

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on the incarnation of the Word (4.22).] If it seems to you far preferable that the Divine should be pleased to dwell in a statue rather than to have become flesh in Mary, because of the lowliness of the sufferings involved, hear the mystery of the doctrine more fully: that the all-ruling and creative Word, being self-sufficient, great, and wholly a stranger to passion, does not fear the things that among us are causes of shame. For in this he is impassible: that, born together with what suffers, he is not ashamed; and in this he is undefiled: that he does not admit being stained with wickedness. So the Word becomes flesh, not coming down into the disease or the lowliness of the flesh, but bringing the things of the flesh to his own incorruption. For as the sun, going down into wetness, does not receive the wetness nor is found muddy, but dries the wetness of the mud and makes it firm, its own ray not clouded at all, so God the Word, being an intelligible sun, having come down into flesh, draws up no disease from the flesh, nor is he himself overcome and caught in its passions, in the sickness of the rot of wickedness. On the contrary, raising it up from slippery things and drawing it up out of its misfortunes, he set it in the divine lot of blessedness, warming it as it ebbed badly away and holding it together as it was dissolved by sins, so that it became unassailable and impregnable and overcame the assaults of its weaknesses — so that the flesh both keeps its own nature and rejects the reproach of that nature, both preserves its bounds and casts down the disorder of those bounds. For this reason he carries out the achievements of the economy not in anything else but in flesh — and not in flesh in general, but in human flesh, and that a virgin's — to show that, as in the beginning he took flesh from virgin earth and made it a dwelling of mind, reasoning, and soul, so now he prepares a temple for himself from a virgin and maiden, needing no human hand or art. Which, then, is more honourable, dust or a virgin? Man or clay? I think man is better than clay and the virgin more honourable than dust. If, then, God is not ashamed to take dust from the earth, but moulds a material of clay and shapes man, how will he shrink from taking a man from man? Or how will he hesitate to wear flesh from a virgin? Will he not, without any lingering or delay, lay hold of the dough more honourable than earth and make from it, by an only-begotten birth, a God-bearing image, dwelling in which he shakes the world with the beauty of virtue and flashes on all with the grace of his gift? For if the one called Prometheus among you moulds man without any shame at all, and Zeus makes a woman whom Athena girded, and you praise the myth and exalt the deed, seeing no shame in it, reckoning no suffering, and not examining the question of the hidden parts — yet it is much more shameful (if it is truly shameful at all) to mould those parts and cover them with some coverings than to pass through them for the sake of the economy and a profitable purpose. For one who builds a house and is then ashamed to stay in it is his own accuser and inexorable judge, since in building he reckoned nothing worthy of shame, but after it was finished slandered the achievement of his own labours, judging his work of art unworthy to be lived in. So the Divine, which made man, would be seen to do wrong if it were ashamed to dwell in him. If it refused to take a part from him, it would have annulled the whole art of its own zeal and slandered its whole wisdom by setting it aside, because, having made man as the image of its own glory, it judged it shameful to dwell in him.