The Apocriticus (Answers to the Pagan Critic) 4.29–4.30

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on “You shall not revile gods” (4.23).] So let us be afraid to take up such an opinion about God; let us shudder to meddle with the mind of the Maker. Let us confess that he wore flesh, but let us not judge that he dwells in lifeless and voiceless statues; nor let us call the elements of the world — earth, water, fire, and air — gods; and even if the stars run and race without end, let us not deify them. For as no one crowns the running horses, but their driver and charioteer, so let us keep our reverence genuinely not for the stars but for God, who drives them. And even if statues should appear and seem to speak, let us not offer them honour or dignity. And if Moses says, “You shall not revile gods,” let us not think that it was said about these or to them. For those are gods to whom the word of God came, as those are hot whom fire has warmed; but the word of God never sounded in stones or wood, nor supplied sense to things without sense. Empty-minded men, though, melting gold and moulding bronze, demanded oracles from them as from gods — maimed in mind and blind in thought, not even shamed in soul by the senselessness of stone images, nor judging and rightly testing that what is lifeless receives no sense of honour, nor again of insult, neither honours the one who blesses it nor avenges itself with punishments on the one who reviles it. So Moses does not speak of reviling senseless gods. For what is the senseless thing that is reviled? By whom will it ever be grieved? And who is so dumb and babbling and foolish as to revile what cannot, through the sluggishness of its matter, perceive the insult of reviling? So they are not gods; nor, having no sense, will they be outraged; nor will they take vengeance on anyone, being dead by nature and without the movement of reason. And if they have the names and title of gods, they do no harm to the Divine, just as dogs are not honoured by being given men's names. Many, indeed, through carelessness have given divine names to profane things, in no way grieving the Divine by this, but only revealing their own folly. For if anything is called god and has nothing divine, it insults the title and slanders the name, bearing a charge that cannot be excused or set right. Do not suppose, then, that God almighty is vexed and indignant at this, if some of the senseless have dragged the divine name down even to reptiles; they have sufficiently harmed themselves, attaching the name of the first, indestructible, and undefiled being to dishonoured materials. Let these words suffice for you on the claptrap of the unstable gods.

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on the resurrection of the flesh (4.24); the end of the work is lost.] Next, I ask you to brace your mind for the account that follows, of how the resurrection of the flesh comes about. And do not raise a din against me, neither you nor any of those sitting here; for I already know that some are not a little disgusted that we are about to speak of the resurrection. Since, then, the subject is great and needs much testing, there must also be much goodwill from those present. What then? From what image, or from what persuasive argument, shall we declare to you the account of the resurrection? For what is said ought to have, along with persuasion, trustworthy and very notable images; it is not the fancy of the wording that reveals the nature of what is sought, but the truth of the thing that knows how to dignify the nature of the account, since the appearance sometimes belies what is sought. For often a vessel that looked golden, or a coin beautified with a wash, has deceived the eye, having the cheapness of its material hidden; and someone who appeared not base in outward form alone has annulled that appearance by the baseness of his deeds. So too a word, solemnly chanted, has sometimes charmed the hearing and secretly imparted to the soul the harm of its prattle, not having the firm … of virtue. So we must flee sophistic cleverness on every side and look for pure knowledge together with the good. First, then, let us fittingly consider whether what has come into being came from what is or from what is not. If from what is, it is not reasonable to attach coming into being to it; and if it must be attached, clearly it is for some reason. But if he made it from not being into being, who granted existence to what did not exist before? For he who brought what was not into being will much more preserve again what has come into being and been dissolved, and deem it worthy of a better addition and lot. For this is proper to the unoriginate nature: to change the existence of things that have come into being for the better, to bring to renewal what has laboured in time, to scour away by grace what has been dyed with the poison of wickedness, and to deem what has grown weary worthy of a second birth, as it were, and a remoulding. For the world, receiving again a better form and clothing, does not dissolve its being; on the contrary, it rejoices, having put on a beauty better than the former. For to remain the same befits the Divine alone; creation must undergo change and alteration. The present life and condition, then, is a tutor leading us to the coming festival of incorruption, and prepares us beforehand to arrive at the brightness above. For the present life is like a womb holding a babe, holding the whole being of things in the lightless forgetfulness and obscurity of ignorance; and the whole growth must put off the present age as from a membrane and receive a second way of life in the light of the undefiled abode. But you want corruption to be without end: to grow filthily and to die loathsomely, to beget and be begotten and be covered by forgetfulness; evil to grow insolent and misfortune to increase; to waste away in want and grow thin with poverty; to suffer by day and be put to bed at night; to eat in pleasure and then again in bitterness to be weighed down by surfeit, and to be distressed in scarcity; slavery and mastery among equals; the rich to stand and the poor to lie low; the old to fall and the young to rise; breasts to swell and the babe to be suckled; to be harmed by care and sickened by toil; to hate the countryside and embrace the city; to flee equality and pursue inequality; the nature of things to be tormented by great irregularity; to be gloomy in winter and burned in summer; to be brightened in season by the flowers of spring and fed by the fruits of autumn; to dig the earth and work the clod; to prune the branches of trees and plants; to undergo change hour by hour; to receive sentence from one's like; cruelty to nest tyrannically in the nations; thrones of vainglory to be set up in the world; the east to be in revolt and the west in turmoil; the north to quarrel and the south to strive; land and sea alike to be shaken by circumstance; the worse to command and the better to be commanded; slander to prevail and the matters slandered to be worn out; life to be a tragedy and living a revel; in short, corruption, having bound the world in violent chains, to consume it in a pitiable state, and an Ogygian famine to graze insatiably on everything every day — and never, not even at last, the hateful curtain of these things to pass away and the gloomy robe to be dissolved; never the soul to be released from an inhuman life; never the lament to fall silent and the mourning to cease; never the affliction on the surface to be quenched and the successive sicknesses to abate; never the force of the world-rulers to be put to death and the boldness of the powerful to be cut down; never the toil of those who groan to be lightened and the tears of those who lament to be comforted; never the virtues of ascetics to shine out and the snorting of the proud to be quenched; never the deeds of the unrighteous to be punished and the achievement of the righteous to be seen; never the zeal of sorcery to be judged and the guilelessness of the simple to be honoured; never the rational to be glorified as far as may be and the irrational duly to be cast out; never those who laboured piously to be crowned and those who lived impiously to be put to shame; never those who suffered hardship for virtue to be exalted and those who luxuriated in licentiousness to be humbled; never the springs of kindred blood to be cleansed, nor the fountains and rivers to separate off their mud; never winter to cease and the blaze to be softened; never the air to appear as a pure mixing-bowl, nor heaven to throw off the thickness of its gloom; never the earth to be freed from defilements, nor the sea to rest from sailing; never the world to be turned like a wheel, keeping its being and changing its form; never the whole in the universe, except what is above the world, to receive renewal and take on the pure newness of life; never the sophism of deceit to be refuted and the lesson of understanding to be kindled; never the grim frown to fall and the … of holiness to be recognized; never the brow of arrogance to be downcast and the face of self-control to shine; never the temporary way of life to vanish and what is now wasting away to receive an indissoluble life; never reason to be freed from endless care, blame, and insult, nor the crowd of anxieties to be broken; never the world to put off its disorder nor cast away the unseemliness here, but to have for ever its grievous garment and be consumed ever more often by misfortunes. But what seems to be brought upon the world as universal corruption and destruction is the beginning of incorruption and the occasion of salvation; for it will have the good fortune of a second adornment of life, when rational nature receives in the resurrection a second principle of birth that cannot be dissolved. For the whole is changed for man's sake, since it was for his sake that in the beginning it was deemed worthy of coming into being. For man came into being for himself, not for another; but heaven and earth and what belongs to them were made for man; and when he receives change and alteration, the whole must be changed and scoured clean along with him. For as a craftsman who built a house in the beginning, when it has grown weary over time and collapsed in its fall, raises it again and deems it worthy of better workmanship and grace — not busying himself about which stone lay first or second or third in the building at the beginning, but building by setting the last among the first, the first among the last, and the middle ones here and there, harming in this nothing of the form of his work nor causing the composition of his art to be faulted, but, putting fitting adornment round the house and beautifying the form of its surface, he receives surpassing praise for his art — in the same way God, who became the craftsman of the rational house, who made man in the beginning and built him as a solemn dwelling of divine power, composed of many kindred races as of stones, will raise him up again, after he has been made over many ages and times, has fallen into many passions of sins, and at last has been utterly dissolved and destroyed; and he will gather his nature together with subtle knowledge and wise power and collect what has been scattered, allowing nothing of what has fallen to be lost. And even if he ranks the first in the last place, or brings the last to the first dignity, he will in no way harm the matter, giving to each the account of the resurrection that fits him. So even if Priam, as you say, or Nestor died a thousand years before, and another dies three days before the resurrection, neither of them on rising will receive measureless grief or boundless joy from this; each will receive the wages of his own deeds, neither blaming nor praising the principle of the resurrection, nor its swiftness nor its slowness, but either hymning or blaming his own way of life. For a period of a thousand years is reckoned with God as one very short day, and again the short, if he decides, is the extension of countless ages. So these are the words of petty men, who say, “If he raises the one who died three days before in the same way as the one who died a thousand years before, he does the greatest wrong.” For those who received life a thousand or two thousand years before luxuriated in life for five hundred years or more, while the one who died three days before ended his life having lived not even thirty whole years, and those in misery; so it is no great thing if, for consolation, dying at once he saw the resurrection. For the Divine, I think, has duly weighed the life of each by weight, measure, and rule: some he justified to live seven hundred years and, when dead, to sleep again for many years, giving rest to the enormous size of their bodies for years; others to live fifty, with many miseries, and he gives them the resurrection immediately, as though consoling them more quickly for their hardship. So you ought to throw away such a poor and beggarly notion, and not think that those who died long ago and rose later are wronged; nor should you chant that childish thing, saying, “How is it possible that one who was shipwrecked and eaten by fish — the fish then eaten by men, the men slaughtered and eaten by dogs, and at last the dogs consumed by vultures — should live again and receive the resurrection, consumed as he was by so many animals?” These are the words not of the sober nor of the wakeful, but of those who sleep in drunkenness and paint dreams — as if the maker of fire could not even do what fire does in separating things. For fire sometimes, when silver and gold lie in the earth, lead and tin, bronze and iron, hidden somewhere, so to speak, burns the earth and smelts the material, and brings out the gold and the silver separately, separately the bronze, separately the lead, the tin again, and again the iron, allowing nothing of their substance to be lost, except whatever earthy part in them is able to be destroyed. If, then, the power of fire is so strong and its working so effective that it brings pure material out of material and keeps the substance of each unharmed — even if the gold has fallen into countless ravines, even if it has been dissolved into endless grains and scattered in mire, in mud, in mounds, in dunghills, fire applied to all brings out whole the existence of what was lost — what shall we say of him who established the nature of fire? Will he not be able, at least as well as fire, to change man — a rational treasure laid up in countless materials and more precious than gold — and to present whole those who perished on land, at sea, in rivers or lakes, those eaten by beasts or birds, those dissolved into fine and endless dust? Or will he be found weaker than fire, and be seen powerless by the syllogisms you have stated? For the absurd fancy you imagined, that God cannot do everything, which you thought to polish persuasively from reasonings, has not stood, like a prop without a foundation. How, then, shall we make it plain to you that God can do all things? From the divine being itself, or from what is fitting? Or shall we test the account of both the first and the second, and first, if you like, declare to you the sense of what is sought from the undefiled nature itself? If God, who can do all things, could make what has come into being not to have come into being, then what has come into being must go up into the unoriginate; and if we grant this, there follows the account of two unoriginates — or rather nothing will have come into being, but all will be unoriginate; and much myth will follow this thought. For so the unoriginate too will have come into being; and when the unoriginate has come into the account of what has come into being, then again the account of what has come into being does not stand; for who will be the maker of what has come into being, if the unoriginate does not exist? Like that is this question, whether God, being unoriginate, can make himself originate; and since some say that it is impossible for the unoriginate to become originate, he cannot. But as just, he will judge, making vindication for the oppressed. For if he did not do this, his power would appear exactly as simplicity and folly: to make all things and shape them by the law of creation, and then to spit on them, neither honouring those who embraced virtue in life nor judging those who honoured wickedness in living, but letting both the good and its opposite be plunged in forgetfulness; neither crowning virtue as virtue nor exposing wickedness; neither accepting the discipline of the one who labours nor convicting the luxury of the licentious; neither making the poor man who suffered rejoice nor making an example of the rich man who luxuriated; neither judging the softness of the pampered nor dignifying the way of life of the austere; but, in a word, as though human nature had never come into being, letting it be shaken in silence and taking neither its wickedness nor its virtue into examination. This doctrine does not fit divine providence; this will is not akin to the undefiled nature, but is altogether alien, strange, and foreign, and banished far from the undefiled watchtower: so to neglect one's own works, to look on while the principle of one's creation perishes, to rejoice when men go off into obscurity. Therefore he will raise all, and give them a second existence; he will judge the world for its offences; he will spare those who have believed in him sincerely, and punish those who would not receive him nor revere the mystery of his appearing. For as all colts that are marked with the royal letter and brand are deemed worthy of the royal court and manger, even if they are worthless in body, weak in strength, and sluggish in running, even if not in good condition, because of the mark they are honoured and notable; while those that do not have the royal seal, even if nimble, swift, impossible to overtake, even if of swift sires and notable, are driven out of the royal courts (and this picture is not a myth nor the tale of some inventor of stories, but history and a true account of plain facts) — in the same way, as many as have been sealed with the saving sign, as many as have engraved the almighty name on the tablet of their soul, as many as have judged their confession toward God stronger than their own sins — these have escaped the danger of the coming judgment; these have sailed unharmed past the Charybdis, as it is called, gazing with the eye of faith on the common radiance of salvation and the abundant redemption of the one who came to dwell among us. For as one who has put on a thick breastplate of chain-mail is unwounded in war and not taken prisoner when terrors stand round him, so one who has put on the confession of the Better does not fear the threat of the universal judgment. For as fire does not burn what is called amiantus, nor the sword, but brightens and tempers it, so neither fire nor judgment will ever affect those dipped in the undefiled name, but will flee from the name that is upon them. For as the sun fills with abundant light one who has sight able to see when his eye is open, but hands it over to darkness when it is shut — itself wronging or grieving the sight in nothing; the one who has the sight has harmed himself, wronged in nothing by the sun's ray, but from the very things by which he could have shown himself a fellow-worker with the light he has prepared darkness for himself, receiving the judgment of light in seeing the sun and having the judgment of darkness in not seeing it, becoming himself the arbiter and judge of both for himself — so one who believes in God and is devoted to him, who is intelligible and divine light, is found a sharer of God in whom he believes, having fled the darkness of ignorance and want of learning, and being nourished by the brightness of heavenly doctrines; he himself procures salvation for himself by seeing the Divine, himself having a sufficient and great safeguard in believing — the medicine of salvation. But one who is maimed by the voluntary blindness of unbelief, turning away from the common light of the radiance, swims in darkness like a beast in the deep, having only incomplete achievements of virtue. Even if he is chaste without the light, he does not have the praise; even if he shares with his neighbours, he does not receive dignity; even if he acts justly, not having acquired the light as the judge of the matter, he labours in what is blameworthy, not escaping reproach; even if he has trained his soul by natural justice, hating robbery and abstaining from theft, not adulterating the usages of others' marriages, not insulting or outraging his neighbour, fighting for his country, suffering hardship for his race, adorning himself with all kinds of beautiful works — he is unconsecrated and makes everything vanish, since he does not accept the indestructible lordship as judge of what he does. For as without light the beauty of what is beautiful has no praise, and without the measure the account of things measured does not reach completion, so a good deed and every virtue and disposition of works that does not accept as its tester the sleepless eye of the all-seeing gaze is a pearl covered with mud, whose beauty is hidden not in light but in filth. For tell me: who will crown the chastity of the chaste? Who will reward the soldier with pay after his valour? Who will deem the contestant worthy of prizes? Is not the race, in itself, open to reproach? Without a general, does not the soldier's achievement vanish? Without one who crowns, is not the contest of the chaste pitiable? Without the king, is not the tribute of the subjects useless? So the achievement of every kind of righteousness, if it is not done for the name and honour of the Creator, is stripped of the end of all goods. On the contrary, one who believes that there is an overseer and a sufficient judge of what is done and performed — even if he is accursed, even if he is a servant of unseemly practices, even if he has been a zealot of loathsome deeds — bringing the examination of his own deeds under the eye of the Creator, like a sick man who has laid bare the sufferings of his body to a kindly physician, is freed from all pain and turmoil and casts off countless bruises of offences. For the Saviour is able …