Against Porphyry (complete)

The Son of God, Christ, came to dwell, by the commands of the Father, in the visible creation, in order to overthrow the dominion of the demons who were ruling as tyrants and to set souls free from their bitter bondage. For on their account the whole of nature, bewitched by the draughts of injustice, had been filled with tumult and disorder, no longer able in any way to run back to the remembrance of what was good for it. Therefore it was easily drawn to idols, since evil had flooded everything and spread over all generations, through the alteration that came upon our fleshly tabernacles from the disobedience, until the Lord Christ, through the flesh in which he appeared, blunted in his life the assaults of the pleasures, by which the powers below were armed against us to enslave our mind, and showed the human being free from all evils. For this reason the Lord Jesus wore flesh, became a human being, and was nailed to the cross in the divine plan: so that, through the flesh by which the demons had boasted that they showed themselves gods, catching souls on the hook of their deceits and drawing them to death, through this same flesh they might be overthrown and be seen to be no gods. For, to prevent their arrogance from being lifted up any further, he became a human being, so that through the body by which they had ruined the rational race, estranging it from the worship of the God who is, through this body, which contained the Word by the unspeakable arts of wisdom, they might be proved to be destroyers and not benefactors of souls.

It would have been nothing remarkable for the Christ of God to weaken the hostile natures of the demons by the terror and greatness of his unchangeable power. But since this would have brought them … (for they would rather have chosen to be conquered by the stronger), for this reason he arranged the outcome for the salvation of all through a human being: so that human beings, since the life itself and the truth had come upon them in bodily form, might run back to their original form and receive the illumination of the Word, passing beyond the charms of sin; and the demons, conquered and despised by the weaker, might cease from their boldness, bound in the burning as Typhon was. For this above all the cross was brought in, set up as a trophy against injustice and as a thing to strike terror, so that from then on the human being should no longer be liable to wrath, having reversed in a return bout the defeat suffered through the disobedience, having conquered the powers below lawfully, and having been shown free of every debt by the gifts of God. For thus the firstborn Word of God, having armed the human being in whom he dwelt with the armor of righteousness, overcame the powers that had enslaved us through the figure of the cross, as has been said, showing the human being, who had been held under the power of corruption, free with outstretched hands.

For this, if one must give a definition, is the vehicle of victory, the stronghold, the descent of God to the human being, the trophy against the material spirits, the deliverance from death, the foundation of the ascent to the true day, and the ladder for those who hasten to enjoy the light there; the engine by which those who are fit for the building of the church are drawn up from below, like a squared stone, to be fitted to the divine Word. Hence the kings here, perceiving that the figure of the cross is used for the scattering of every evil habit, devised what are called in the Roman tongue vexilla. Hence the sea, yielding to this figure, makes itself navigable for human beings. For the whole creation, so to speak, has been clothed with this sign for freedom: the birds flying on high represent the figure of the cross by the spreading of their wings, and the human being himself, when he stretches out his hands, appears to be nothing else than this. Hence the Lord, having shaped him in the very figure with which he had been adorned from his making, tempered him with Godhead, so that from then on he might be an instrument, a temple of God, freed from all discord and disharmony. For once the human being has been tuned to piety, and has fitted to himself the pure song of the truth, by which he has contained the Godhead, tuned to the tree of life like strings and tones, it is no longer possible for him to fall into disproportion and corruption.

For since this was power in him; for it belongs to power to be contracted and made short among small things, and to be extended and made great among great things. If it were possible for him to be extended along with great things and made equal to them, but impossible to be made short and contracted among small things, it would not be power. For if you say of power that this is possible for it but that impossible, you strike it out from being power, as weak in what it cannot do. Nor, indeed, would it any longer have any pre-eminence of divinity over the things that change; for human beings and the animals that walk on the ground act in the things they are able to do and fail in those they are not able to do. Therefore the Son of God was contained in a human being in this way rather, because this was not impossible for him; because by his power he both suffered while remaining impassible and died while providing immortality to what is mortal. For a body struck or cut by a body is struck or cut as much as the striker strikes and the cutter cuts. For the blow takes place through the resistance of what lies under the striker, both being equally affected, the agent and the patient. Indeed, unless what is cut resists the cutter with some little firmness, the cutter will not be able to cut. For when the body beneath does not stand against the stroke of the sword but rather yields to it, the action has no effect, as is the case with the finer bodies of fire or air; for in such bodies the impulse of the more solid bodies is dissolved without effect. And if stone, or iron, or wood, or anything else that human beings use in killing one another, cannot strike and divide fire or air, because they are of a yielding and finer nature, how much more did Wisdom remain invulnerable and impassible, harmed in nothing by anything, even though it was united to the body as it was cut and nailed, being better and purer than every nature … being God?

Some suppose that God too, measuring him by the standard of their own disposition, considers the same things praiseworthy or blameworthy as the base do, using the opinions of human beings as a rule and measure; not perceiving, because of the ignorance that is in them, that all creation is, of course, in need of the beauty of God. For he draws all things to life by his own Word, out of all matter, essence, and nature. For whether he wills the good, being himself the good he abides in himself; or whether the beautiful is to be lovely to him, being himself the only beautiful he looks to himself, counting as nothing the things that human beings admire. For that must in truth be called most beautiful and praiseworthy which God himself considers beautiful, even if it is despised and mocked by all, and not what human beings think. Hence, even if he willed through this figure to free souls from the passions that destroy the spirit, putting to shame the multitudes of demons, one ought to accept it, not to speak ill of it, seeing that it has been given as a thing that sets free and a release from the bonds that the disobedience fashioned for us. For the Word suffered in the flesh, fixed to the cross, in order to stretch out the human being, who had been numbed by error, to the heavenly and divine greatness, making him equal to the tree of life, from which he had formerly been driven away; because by this figure the passions are blunted. He became the passion of passions by suffering, and the death of death by dying, not overcome by death nor pained by suffering. For neither did suffering drive him at all out of himself, nor did death harm him; but he remained impassible in what could suffer and immortal in what was mortal, having taken hold of all the air, both what lies between and what is above, and having tempered the mortal with immortal Godhead; and death was utterly defeated, the flesh having been crucified to be an image of incorruption.

Repentance becomes the blotting out of every sin when, upon a fault of the soul that has taken place, it admits no delay and does not let the passion run on into an interval of time; for in this way the evil will not be able to leave a trace in us, being torn out at the moment of its coming, like a newly planted shoot.

Our evil truly is unlikeness to God and ignorance of him; and how great a good, on the other hand, is likeness to him! It appears, then, that the truly proper good is turning toward and faith in what is incorruptible and divine, and evil is ignorance of it and indifference; if indeed the things that are in us and grow from us are ours, being productive of wickedness.