Greek Questions to Christians 1.0–2.10

Greek questions to the Christians, on the incorporeal, on God, and on the resurrection of the dead.

[1] … [2] Whence is it clear that it can exist by itself, apart from body? [3] Whence is it clear whether the incorporeal is better than body? [4] What is the incorporeal: the soul, or something higher than the soul, such as God? [5] And in what does the soul differ from God? [6] And whence is it clear whether God exists at all? [7] And if God exists, we must inquire whether he makes, or made at some time, or will make anything whatever. [8] … [9] And what he makes, and how he makes, whether with will or without will. [10] And if with will, whether using an instrument or without an instrument. [11] … whether without thought and consideration, or with some … [12] And if with deliberation, through lack of what does he need deliberation? And if without deliberation, by what reasoning does he decide? [13] And if we grant that something comes into being from him, … perishable, we are at a loss whether what has come into being at all can be imperishable, and by what reasoning. And if it perishes, … in what would the works of the immortal differ from those of … since many of these often last many times longer after their maker has perished, being imperishable for a time, as with the works of builders … and the like? [14] And if what comes into being from God perishes, by whose badness does it perish: that of the maker, that of the thing made, or that of something outside that has come to oppose the maker? Whichever of these we suppose, clearly the badness is the maker's. For if the thing made must perish because of some inborn badness of its own, the maker is responsible, since he made it such that some evil remained in it; if there is something outside opposed to the maker, then too the badness is the maker's, since he cannot master his opponents; and if the badness comes from the maker, plainly he himself is bad.

So much on these matters for now, a few out of many; for if we wished, we should also inquire what body is, and of what body is composed, and the difficulties that attach to these. But leaving these aside for now … let us turn meanwhile to the nobler difficulties, which are thought worthy of wonder, from the arguments about the resurrection. For this too is one of the cheap difficulties raised among the stony-hearted: “If the dead must rise whole,” he says, “how, if it happened that a man died at sea, and then was eaten by fish, and again was eaten by other men by way of the fish, how would he recover the flesh that was consumed into other men? For either this man must rise without the flesh that the other men ate by way of the fish, as has often been said; or those men, when asked for members of their own flesh, must give them up and become deficient, in order to fill up what is lacking in those whom they unjustly devoured.” And the stony-hearted say such things as if laughing. But I ask to learn, apart from difficulties, a constructive argument for the resurrection, one that shows of necessity, by demonstrative and true arguments, that there must be a resurrection. For when the demonstrations are made strong by the truth, be assured that I will make no account of the difficulties; for it is absurd and contentious to wish to quarrel with a strong demonstration.

Christian answers to the questions set out above, from the piety of natural reasoning.

[Answer 1] These arguments are not logical difficulties but artless questions. For an argument that constructs logical difficulties draws an absurdity from statements that follow one another, for example: “Only man is capable of laughter; everything capable of laughter is an animal; therefore only man is an animal”; arguments in which the premises follow but the conclusion is absurd. In the arguments put forward, nothing absurd was drawn by consequence; hence they were not reasonably called difficulties … for the solution of the difficulties.

If it is impossible for the same person both to be ignorant of and to know the same things (for in every case either the affirmation or the denial must be true), how does one who is ignorant whether there is an incorporeal know will and deliberation, thought and consideration, mind and reason, which are activities of the incorporeal? For to know the activities of the incorporeal while ignorant of the existence of the incorporeal belongs to those who do not know what they are saying. To construct a difficulty and to solve a difficulty is not the work of sense, nor of body. What is not of body must belong to the incorporeal. Why then do we look for evidence of the existence of the incorporeal? For if inquiring about something, whether it is or is not, belongs to reason, and reason is the activity of what is rational, while body by itself is irrational, then clearly there is something incorporeal, to which inquiring and judging properly belong.

Another. For one who does not admit that there is something incorporeal, it is inappropriate to inquire and judge by reason whether there is something incorporeal; for it is irrational to use the activities of the incorporeal and be ignorant of the existence of the incorporeal.

Another. There are in us two powers that apprehend things, sense and intellect, whose activities differ from one another as much as … what is apprehended by the one cannot be apprehended by the other. But since all powers are powers of essences, there must be two essences, to one of which perceiving properly belongs, and to the other understanding. And if this is so, there is an incorporeal essence to which understanding properly belongs, as perceiving belongs to body.

Another. If there is something ensouled, there must be soul; for what is ensouled is ensouled by participation in soul. If knowledge does not exist by itself but in the soul, the soul must exist by itself, the soul in which knowledge exists.

Another. If the body needs the soul in order to live and perceive, but the soul does not need the body either to live or to understand, then the soul is other than the body.

Another. If the soul commands the body and the body serves the soul's commands, then the soul is something other than the body.

Another. If the soul holds the place of a craftsman and the body that of an instrument, and the instruments are not the same as the craftsman, then the body is not the same as the soul.

Another. If the reason comes first and what is according to the reason afterward (for the reason is in the soul, and what is according to the reason is in matter), then matter is something other than the soul. And what is other than matter is other than body too.

Another. If what is not body is not an essence either, how is essence divided into body and incorporeal, when what is divided must exist in the things into which it is divided?

Question. If there is something incorporeal, whence is it clear that it can exist by itself?

Answer. That by whose presence the body, which of itself has no share in life, sense, and thought, comes to have them, and by whose absence it becomes again dead, insensible, and without thought, must exist by itself, as being by its own nature imperishable.

Another. To construct logical difficulties with knowledge, and to solve them likewise with knowledge, is not the work of sense. For it is agreed that sense cannot attain the knowledge of essence and truth. If this is so, attaining the knowledge of essence and truth belongs to knowledge, not to sense; and what does not belong to sense does not belong to body either; so there must be something incorporeal existing by itself, in which knowledge exists.

Another. If essence must exist by itself, and essence is divided by the first division into body and incorporeal, how is the incorporeal not an essence existing by itself?

Another. What can separate itself from being affected along with the body, and not perish, can also be separated from the body and not perish; hence it is finer and more honorable than the body, being the cause of the body's beauty by its presence. Such, we say, is the rational soul, which is a spirit, intellectual, living, knowing, and self-moving; and we say that the angels and the demons are of the same essence with it. And, generally speaking, everything that has an essence and cannot be held by anything is body to that which holds it. And we say that the Divine is incorporeal, not because it is incorporeal (for God in his essence is beyond the incorporeal as he is beyond body, being the Creator of each of these; for God did not make what he himself is), but as we are accustomed always to honor the Divine with the more precious of the material things among us, so we do with names too, not because God needs them, but because by them we show our notion of him. In this manner, then, we name him incorporeal, though we know that he is beyond the incorporeal, as its Creator. Let this too be laid down in the argument as showing that there is something incorporeal. If there were nothing incorporeal among the things that exist, neither would there be body. But since there is something incorporeal, as there is something that is body, we must distinguish opposites from one another by opposite names. For we call God uncreated, distinguishing him from created things by the name “uncreated”; and if there were no created things, God would not be distinguished from them by the name “uncreated.” By this distinction, made by the name “uncreated,” God is shown to be beyond both bodies and incorporeal things. For if the name “created” comprises altogether both bodies and incorporeal things, clearly he who is distinguished from created things by this name is necessarily distinguished from both bodies and incorporeal things. And what belongs to the other incorporeal things, not to be held by bodies, belongs also to God, not as to something incorporeal, but as to what is beyond the incorporeal. And since not having a creator and master is more honorable than having a creator and master, we therefore call God uncreated; for what is uncreated can have neither creator nor master. Likewise, since not to be held by anything is more honorable than to be held, we therefore call him incorporeal.

Question. Whence is it clear whether God exists at all?

Answer. From the constitution and the continuance of the things that exist. For the things that exist would not exist if God did not exist before them, who established all the parts of creation usefully, for the benefit of the whole creation; the God who has been made known to us through the prediction and teaching of the prophets, and of the Lord and the apostles, words attested by divine powers.

Question. Whether God makes, or has made, or will make, with will or without will?

Answer. God made, and makes, and will make, by his own will. For he made the creation, which did not exist before, willing it himself; this he keeps in being by his providence, which is what “he makes” means; and this he will also re-create and bring into a better state through the re-creation, which is what “he will make” means, in order to cleanse it of every disorder that has come upon it from the negligence of rational beings. He did not find the better course later, by deliberation and consideration; rather, from above and before the making of the world, the making had been decided by him. For nothing can be added to God later, either in knowledge or in power, that he did not have before. A proof that God makes the world by will is this: although God could make several suns, he did not make several, but made only one. For one who cannot make several suns cannot make one either; and one who can make one sun can necessarily make several. Why then did God not make several suns, which he could make, unless he did not will to make several suns? And if he did not make by will the suns that he did not make, clearly the one he made he made by will; and as with the sun, so with all the other parts of creation, both the imperishable and the perishable, which have from God's will both their being and their being of such a kind.

Question. Whether the incorporeal is better than body?

Answer. … becomes beautiful, not by the presence of another body but by that of the incorporeal, how is the incorporeal not better than body?

Another. If every bodily essence is composed of matter and form, and the form does not come from matter but comes to matter from elsewhere, how is the incorporeal, from which the form comes to matter, not better than matter?

Another. If the equal cannot be known while the unequal is unknown, how can body be known while the incorporeal is unknown?

Another. If all bodily things exist in a body as images but in the soul as concepts, how is the soul not incorporeal?

Another. If the soul can act according to mind, and the soul acts according to mind when it separates itself from all sense, how does the soul not exist by itself?

Question. In what does God differ from the soul?

Answer. As being Creator and Master differs from having a Creator and Master; and as what is beyond being differs from what is.

Question. If God makes with will, does he use an instrument or make without an instrument?

Answer. God has no need of anything outside his own nature; and as he wills without an instrument, so he also makes without an instrument. For if, at the same moment as he wills something to come into being, it comes to subsist because he has willed it, how is the use of instruments for the things that come into being not superfluous?

[8] … whether he makes irrationally, without thought and consideration, or with some deliberation? And if with deliberation, through lack of what does he need deliberation? And if without judgment, by what reasoning?

Answer. If God's works are known to God, and what is known is known by reason, how does God not know by reason what he makes? But to make something with thought, consideration, and deliberation is proper to the craftsmen among us, who by these means reach a better end for the things they make; but God, since he neither acquires knowledge nor loses knowledge, needs none of these.

Question. Whether what has come into being at all can be imperishable, and by what reasoning?

Answer. Things whose imperishability depends on the will of another cannot be imperishable as unoriginated things; therefore we say that God alone has immortality, because these attributes belong to him from his own nature and not from the will of another.

Another. If God is above the imperishable beings, as their maker, but is not above the unoriginated, since he is not the creator of unoriginated things, then “unoriginated” does not follow from “imperishable.”

Another. If God is imperishable by his own nature, and the soul too is imperishable, but by the will of its Creator, how, with so great a difference in imperishability, does “unoriginated” follow from “imperishable,” as you hold?

Another. If, then, the imperishable contributes anything to the constitution of perishable things, how are imperishable things not servants of perishable things, since the cause of their imperishability leads them to such service? But if this is so, clearly one can have imperishability because of some useful purpose, but not unoriginatedness; for the unoriginated must be unoriginated apart from any cause of usefulness.

… a body composed of elements; but a body composed of elements cannot be unoriginated, for nothing unoriginated can be later than what is originated. How then, if bodies composed of elements are imperishable, will they not be originated imperishable things?

Another. If all the elements are originated, how is it not nonsense to call the things composed of elements unoriginated? For if matter by itself is neither an element nor an essence, but becomes an element and an essence when it has taken on quality and quantity, how can the things produced from such elements be unoriginated, even if it should happen that they are imperishable?

Another. If body is one thing, imperishable body another, and perishable body another, and body is divided into imperishable and perishable body according to the difference between imperishability and perishability, how is it not necessary that originated or unoriginated be proper to the body that is divided? And if neither of these is proper to it, … the body that is divided is neither originated nor unoriginated? But if it is impossible for the body that is divided to be neither, it must be laid down that the body that is divided is the very body that is imperishable and perishable, into which the divided body is divided.

Question. If what comes into being from God perishes, by whose badness does it perish: that of the maker, that of the thing made, or that of something outside that has come to oppose the maker?

Answer. The things that perish perish neither from the badness of their maker nor from that of an opponent, but by the limit set by the Creator, who works perishing in individual things but imperishability in the universal. For if the things that perish perished from the badness of any of those mentioned, the whole kind would perish, both the individual and the universal. For if we grant that perishing comes from some badness, the kind of the things that come into being would not have been preserved imperishable among the things that perish, since the badness would rule the universal as it rules the individual. But if it is impossible for the universal to perish by anyone's badness, neither does the individual perish by anyone's badness, but by the limit set by God. For if there is no badness among the things that exist that can prevent coming into being, neither then is there any badness among the things that exist that destroys the kind.

[Answers on the resurrection,] to the questions set out above about it.