Letters

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.7 · 2.1–2.11 · 3.1–4.4 · 5.1–7.1

1. 1.1Antony describes three ways by which souls come to God: by the law implanted at creation, as Abraham did, by the written law, and by afflictions that bring hard hearts to repentance.
2. 1.2Antony says the Spirit leads those who fight with their whole heart, setting measures of repentance so that body and soul are both sanctified.
3. 1.3Antony describes the Spirit of repentance opening the eyes of the soul and teaching the mind to bring the body back to its original condition.
4. 1.4Antony distinguishes three bodily movements, natural, from overeating, and from evil spirits, and says the soul that holds to the Spirit's teaching is healed of all three.
5. 1.5Antony describes how the Spirit teaches the mind to heal the soul's sicknesses, member by member, beginning with the eyes, the ears, and the tongue.
6. 1.6Antony continues with the hands, the belly, sexual desire, and the feet, which the Spirit sanctifies, so that the body already shares something of the spiritual body of the resurrection.
7. 1.7Antony lists the soul's own sicknesses, such as pride and envy, and promises that God will help the soul that perseveres in repentance despite the demons' resistance.
8. 2.1Antony greets the brothers of the Arsinoite region and urges them to know their immortal spiritual essence and how it fell into humiliation.
9. 2.2Antony tells how the law through Moses could not heal humanity's wound, and how at the saints' prayer the Son emptied himself and healed it by his wounds.
10. 2.3Antony says that because Christ became weak and poor for us, we must pray without sleeping until God goes with us.
11. 2.4Antony grieves over the confusion that has come on all and urges his hearers to learn the hidden arts of the devil, who seeks their destruction.
12. 2.5Antony prays that the brothers may discern the demons' hidden attacks, which sow unbelief, anger, self-justification, judging of others, and pride.
13. 2.6Antony warns that the body is a house full of wars, where hidden demons work through a soul that welcomes their suggestions, and urges the brothers to give them no place.
14. 2.7Antony explains that angels, demons, and saints all come from one Creator and received their names from their works, and urges self-knowledge and mutual love, since to know oneself is to know all.
15. 2.8Antony urges the brothers to make their bodies an altar on which, as at Elijah's sacrifice, God's fire may fall, and to love one another as beings of one immortal substance.
16. 2.9Antony teaches that Christ, the true mind of the Father, is the head of the body, sent to heal the incurable wound, and that all are members of one another.
17. 2.10Antony urges unceasing prayer, warns that the demons' chief weapons are pride, vainglory, and enmity among brothers, and points to Christ's washing of feet as the example of humility.
18. 2.11Antony closes his second letter by praying that the brothers may know his love and their own condition, and hopes to see them soon.
19. 3.1Antony begins his third letter with Christ's poverty that makes us rich, and explains that the natural law grew cold through sin, so that God visited his creatures through the saints.
20. 3.2Antony recalls the gifts of God, the sun, moon, and stars, the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and above all the Son given for us, and urges the brothers to hasten to their Creator.
21. 3.3Antony explains that Christ, like us in all but sin, became a slave, poor, foolish, and weak so as to free, enrich, and strengthen us, and that his coming is a judgment on the world.
22. 3.4Antony fears that monks wear the habit of the saints without their power, and comforts the brothers with Christ's words that persecution is the lot of those who live according to the spirit.
23. 3.5Antony urges self-knowledge, recalls that God in his goodness turned us back from sin by handing over his Son, and confesses that he spends his life mourning over what he can render to God.
24. 3.6Antony ends his third letter by contrasting John's baptism with the Spirit's sanctification in Christ, urging purity for the baptism of Jesus and worship in spirit and truth.
25. 4.1Antony's fourth letter recounts God's visits to his creatures through the natural law, Moses, the prophets, and John, and finally through the Son, whose coming is judgment to those who do not amend.
26. 4.3Antony urges the brothers to set their minds on the form Christ took for them, rejoices over those ready for his coming, and mourns over monks who keep only the outward habit.
27. 4.4Antony closes his fourth letter with greetings.
28. 5.1Antony urges his children, sons of Israel in spirit, to cry to God day and night, and tells them that their negligence grieves the saints while their progress gladdens them and God.
29. 5.2Antony recounts how Moses and the prophets could not heal humanity's wound, so that the saints prayed and the Father gave his Only-begotten to heal it.
30. 5.3Antony warns against keeping only the form of godliness, and urges each to strip off attachment to matter and ask God for the invisible fire that cleanses.
31. 5.4Antony fears that the brothers are swept along by their own wills, and teaches that all creatures, angels and demons alike, are from one origin, except the Trinity alone.
32. 6.1Antony teaches that the rational man must know himself, interprets Israel as 'a mind seeing God', and recalls God's visits through the natural and the written law.
33. 6.2Antony again recounts how Moses and the prophets could not heal the wound and prayed for the Only-begotten, who emptied himself and was exalted.
34. 6.3Antony urges the brothers to know the great dispensation by which the Son became like us, freeing us as servants who are led on to the adoption of sons.
35. 6.4Antony teaches that knowing oneself leads to knowing God, asks God to send the fire Christ came to cast on earth, and warns that hard times reveal the true helmsman.
36. 7.1Antony's seventh letter calls the brothers from servitude to sonship and self-knowledge, and condemns Arius for assigning a time, an end, and movement to the timeless Only-begotten.