Greek Questions to Christians

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.

[1] For a human being to be or become food for fish, and a fish food for a human being, does not dissolve the human being into a fish or the fish into a human being; rather, the dissolution of each takes place into the elements from which they were composed in the beginning, even if the manner of the dissolution of the one comes about through their eating one another. The end of every dissolution, in whatever manner it takes place, is that the things dissolved go back into the elements. So one should not, because of a sophistical argument about human being and fish eating one another, look away from the power of God, who not only promises to bring about the resurrection of the dead, but has also given us a firm faith in it through the resurrection of our Savior Christ, which has already begun it. But if the elements underlie both the creation of the things that come into being and the re-creation of the things that have perished, how, if one considers the re-creation of the things that have perished incredible and impossible, will not the creation of the things that came into being in the beginning also be incredible and impossible? Which is absurd.

[2] The Greeks believe neither in the creation of the world nor in its re-creation. Whether they speak truly about the first would become clear as follows. They say that time is eternal. But if time is … that is, the hours, the days, the months, and the year. And if these are not eternal, because among them some are earlier and some later, neither then can the world, which exists in time, be unoriginated.

[3] There are two reasons why one might disbelieve the resurrection of the dead: either because God cannot raise the dead, or because it is not profitable for those who rise to be imperishable. Of these, the first is impious and the second ridiculous. But if this is so, how is the argument of those who disbelieve the resurrection of the dead not made up of obscurity and ridicule?

[4] What God makes by his own working he makes by command; and the existence of the things he makes is simultaneous with God's command. “You thought,” it says, “and it stood before you.” But if this is fittingly said of God, how does one who disbelieves the resurrection not also disbelieve that God has such power? For those who rise from the dead need nothing else than the command of God.

[5] If the saying “For things unlooked-for God has found a way” is true, as indeed it is true, how does one who disbelieves the resurrection of the dead not make the saying false?

[6] If, when the re-creation takes place, all the discord among human beings about the Creator of the world, arising from his works, is necessarily removed, how will the re-creation of the world not be finer than the creation of the world? For because of the re-creation the creation too is good; but if the re-creation is disbelieved as impossible, how will the creation of the world not be the worst of things?

[7] What is impossible in every way is one thing, and what is impossible for someone another. Impossible in every way is, for example, that the diagonal be commensurable with the side; impossible for someone is, for example, that nature should make an animal without seed. To which of these impossibilities do those who disbelieve the resurrection assign it? If to the first, the argument is false; for it is not by re-creation that the diagonal becomes incommensurable with the side, but those who rise rise by re-creation. If to the second, all things impossible for someone are possible for God.

[8] If in the present life the pious man differs from the impious by hope alone, how does one who does away with the hope of things to come not do away with the difference between the pious and the impious?

[9] If the universal cannot exist apart from the individual, how, if the individual is created, will the universal not also be created? But if this is so, how is it not false that the human being and the other parts of creation are co-eternal with God? For example, if Plato is created, how is the human being not created?

[10] How did the Greeks, having supposed that the world is eternal, lay down the things that follow necessarily from that supposition? If the world were eternal, according to them, they would reasonably say that there will be no re-creation of the world; for re-creation belongs to the created world and not to the uncreated. But that the world is not eternal is clear from the fact that the human being is not co-eternal with God. For if the universal is co-eternal with God, the individual necessarily is too; and if the individual is not, neither is the universal.

[11] To bring all human beings at once through the re-creation into imperishable being is far more divine, in its … , than to bring them into this mortal state in which we now are. And he kept for us the fitting and more divine thing for later, as if our very subsistence then lay in it. If, as those who disbelieve the resurrection hold, we had been deprived of this, would it not have been far better for us not to be than to be? For everything deprived of what is proper to it is useless.

[12] Is it possible for anyone to prefer death to his own life for the sake of a thing that does not exist? How, if, as you hold, the teaching about the resurrection is not true, did the martyrs prefer their own death to their own life for its sake? And by what other religion has the teaching of its religion been confirmed by tortures and deaths of many kinds, I mean the teaching of the Christians about the resurrection of the dead?

[13] If what the Greeks do not believe neither is nor will be, then the existence of the things that are lies in the knowledge of the Greeks. How then are they shown to be at war with themselves and with one another in most of their chief doctrines? Such a war does not allow the existence of the things that are to lie in the knowledge of the Greeks.

[14] They disbelieve the tradition of those who saw the author of the resurrection risen from the dead to immortal life, and they are too weak to overturn the teaching of the resurrection by an irrefutable demonstration. For that a human being should become food for fish involves a difficulty, but not a demonstration. For it is impossible that the same thing should both fall under … and be shown to have happened; and when a thing has been demonstrated in its reality by power, no syllogism can bring about its overthrow.

[15] When the sun is above the earth, it is not below the earth; and when it is below the earth, it is not above the earth. How then is it eternal, as you hold, when it does not have its being above the earth or below the earth eternally? And if the Greeks suppose what is not eternal to be eternal, how will they be trustworthy lawgivers when they lay down that there will be no resurrection of the dead?

[16] Being now above and now below belongs to things that once were not, neither above nor below. How then is the sun eternal, when before being above or below it did not exist? To those, then, who do not understand that the sun is begotten by its own nature, how is it not absurd to trust them about the dead not rising, when the author of their resurrection has already become the firstborn among them from the resurrection?

[17] When the power of the maker prevails, then the matter too is fit for the making of what comes into being. But if any dead person is fit for God to raise, then necessarily every one is; and if not every one, then none. We must not measure God's works by our own reasonings; for God's works are beyond mind, sense, and reason. Among them is this, that the dead man who has been eaten by fish must come into being again, even if it happened that he was destroyed by something.

[18] How is it true that the Lord is Lord of the living and the dead, if, as you hold, he does not have the power …

[19] If God is the maker of worse things but not of better ones, how is this not a sign of God's weakness? And that is impious to say. But if God's power for making each is equal, why do you disbelieve the resurrection of the dead who rise to imperishability?

[20] If it is not impossible for God to do it, and it is profitable for us to have it happen, to be led out of a life full of groaning and perishable into a blessed and imperishable state through the resurrection, rather than for the Greek philosophers to be led up by transmigration from the labors of philosophers to the industry of ants, what is more ridiculous than to disbelieve the one, which has been attested, and to believe and teach the other without foundation? So that the philosopher who once played the Athenian, Pla-

[21] If, according to the Greeks, God makes human beings by his being and not by his willing, how is Plato at one time a rational animal and a human being, and at another time an irrational animal and an ant, through transmigration? If Plato's becoming a human being follows from God, then when Plato is changed from being a human being to becoming an ant, God too must be changed from being what he is. But if Plato is transferred, while God is not transferred from being what he is, how does God make human beings by his being and not by his willing?

[22] If the work of God does not perish, but the human being perishes, then according to those who say this the human being is not the work of God.

[23] If our race is brought into being through birth and brought out of being through perishing, how can God be the cause of both being and not being, not by willing but by being? …

[24] If what is composed of the elements becomes elements again, what seems … or impossible about things that come from their own elements existing again?

[25] If God is not under the limit but is master of every limit, how is it that God is master of human beings' coming to be and perishing, but is not master of our coming to be and not perishing?

[26] If God, in re-creating us for imperishability, does this, as you hold, out of repentance, how did he not rather allow us out of repentance to exist forever?

[27] If the gifts of God are irrevocable, and he has given us our being, how does God not fulfill his purpose for us from the beginning by re-creating us for imperishability?

[28] According to those who believe in the resurrection of the dead, it is by God's just judgment that we both die and are made alive again: the one through the disobedience of the human being, the other through the obedience of the human being. To those, then, for whom the cause of death is unknown, the Creator of human nature is also unknown. And since they do not know the cause of death and the Creator of human nature, how do they not say out of ignorance that there is no resurrection of the dead?

[29] What in no way is is one thing, and what is not of such a kind is another; for example, never to have come into being as a human being in the beginning is one thing, and to have perished after coming into being is another. And since for God no work is more laborious than another, how is it not unreasonable to believe God in the making of things that in no way were, but to disbelieve him in the remaking of things that have perished? [30] … a human being was in potency in the elements from which he came into being, so too after he has perished he is in potency in his elements; how then do the Greeks disbelieve God, who has promised to raise the dead, as if it were an impossible thing, when the human being is in potency in the elements, created now as he was created of old?

[31] If God could not make human beings imperishable from the beginning, clearly he cannot now either. But if he had from the beginning the power to make us imperishable, and has not lost it, how is it not unreasonable to refuse faith, as if in an impossible thing, to God, who has promised to make the rest of humankind imperishable too, after the likeness of him whom he raised from the dead to imperishable life?

[32] The animal is in potency in the seed, for nature; the bed is in potency in the wood, for art; those who rise are in potency in the elements, for God. But if this is so, how is it not absurd to believe nature in what is natural, and … , but to disbelieve God in what is divine?

[33] Nothing is disobedient to divine authority. If the sea and the earth at the divine command once gave what they had not received, how will they not now rather give back what they have received, when God commands?

[34] If, as nature cannot make the animal from seed that has perished, and art cannot make the bed from wood that has perished, so neither can God make an imperishable human being from a human being who has perished, then the power of God will be limited, like that of nature and of art. But if it is absurd to say this, it is absurd also to disbelieve that God makes an imperishable human being from a human being who has perished.

[35] … the resurrection to come into being, so it is impossible for God to bring about the resurrection; then God differs in nothing from a human being in this. But if he differs infinitely, as indeed he does differ, how is it not absurd to disbelieve that God will make what he has the power to make?

[36] Since God has power for making beyond nature, how is it not absurd to disbelieve him in remaking beyond nature?

[37] If we must suppose that the making of what does not come into being according to nature is incredible and impossible, how will the making of the first human being, who did not come into being according to nature, not also be incredible and impossible? For it is impossible for a human being to come from a human being according to nature unless the first human being came into being beyond nature.

[38] If I do not become again what I was, how do I receive the rewards of virtue or of vice, which I did not obtain in the present life? For if there is no resurrection of the dead, how will they not be equal to one another, those who carry out the martyrs' contests and those who endure them? But if this is unjust, how is it not unjust that the resurrection of the dead should not take place, in which alone the judgment between those who have done injustice and those who have endured it can take place, by the difference of honor and punishment?

[39] If what the human being was and is … how has he, having died, departed from the knowledge of God, so as not to be able to be again what he was? For the works of God are known to him and possible for him; and if they were not possible for him, neither would they be known to him.

[40] If it is good for us to be mortal in the present life, but better for us to be immortal in the life to come, how is it not absurd to say that God has power to make the good but not to make the better?

[41] If it is impossible for God to make the mortal body immortal, how will death not be stronger than God, if he cannot rescue from it those who are subject to it?

[42] If God has the power to give life to the dead, how are those who rise not fit for the resurrection? And since God is able to raise the dead, and those who rise are fit to rise, what room is left for the unbelief of those who disbelieve the resurrection?

[43] … how will our becoming immortal not come from the same mastery of his? But if our becoming immortal stands outside God's mastery, how will God be … of our not being …?

[44] If immortal and mortal things have the nature they have from the will of God, how is it not possible for the dead to be made immortal, if God wills it?

[45] Things whose opponents are weak have a firm standing. But if the Greeks, though they have used every kind of opposition to do away with the teaching of the resurrection, have not been able to do away with it, since the teaching is kept unshaken by the power of God who brings about the resurrection, guarded through oppositions of many kinds, in what respect is the resurrection of the dead incredible, when the teaching about it has been overcome neither by hands nor by …?

[46] If the greatest proof of God's invincible and uncircumscribed power is that the thoughts and deeds, good and bad, of all human beings, living and dead, are present to him, how is the resurrection of the dead not a demonstration of God's uncircumscribed power and knowledge, by which he restores human beings to being again? But if this is so, how will one who deprives the dead of the resurrection not deprive God of such a demonstration?

[47] If the Greeks, who hoped to do away with the teaching about the resurrection by their own opposition, failed in their hope, how will they not fail in their hope again when they hope again that there will be no resurrection of the dead?

[48] The Greeks, having fought against the teaching about the resurrection, ought either not to have been defeated in the fight, or, having been defeated, not to have disbelieved the resurrection … Otherwise their first fruitless labor will be a refutation of their irrational unbelief.