Cure of Greek Maladies

Theodoret of Cyrus

Cure of Greek Maladies

Graecarum affectionum curatio · Ἑλληνικῶν θεραπευτικὴ παθημάτων

Read the whole work on one page

0.1Theodoret explains that pagans have mocked Christian faith, the unlettered apostles, and the honoring of martyrs.
0.2He writes for simple believers who are being misled by these charges.
0.3The work has twelve discourses in a plain teaching style suited to the philosophical testimonies it quotes.
0.4The first discourse defends faith and the unlettered apostles.
0.5The second discourse sets Greek views of the first principle against Moses' theology.
0.6The third discourse compares pagan lesser gods with the angels of Scripture.
0.7The fourth discourse treats matter and the world's origin.
0.8The fifth discourse treats human nature.
0.9The sixth discourse treats providence against Diagoras, Epicurus, and Aristotle.
0.10The seventh discourse treats sacrifices, Greek and Jewish.
0.11The eighth discourse defends the honoring of martyrs.
0.12The ninth discourse compares Greek lawgivers with the apostles.
0.13The tenth discourse contrasts biblical prophecy with pagan oracles.
0.14The eleventh discourse treats the end and judgment.
0.15The twelfth discourse compares the lives of philosophers and apostles.
0.16Theodoret gives the title of the book.
0.17He asks readers to pray for the author and take profit from what is well said.
1.1Both body and soul need healing, but the soul's ills are mostly self-chosen.
1.2God has provided remedies and physicians for both body and soul.
1.3Bodily patients accept painful treatment without questioning the physician's methods.
1.4The sick in unbelief think themselves healthy and flee the cure.
1.5Like physicians with the frenzied, the healer of souls must bear abuse patiently.
1.6Even if the unbelievers are few, they must be cared for.
1.7Like a farmer, the Christian must deal with every thorn, but by transforming it.
1.8He resolves to work on the unbelievers with argument as with farming and medicine.
1.9The first ailment to heal is the conceit of the half-educated who scorn the fishermen apostles.
1.10People use craftsmen's skills without caring about their nationality or speech.
1.11Only in truth do the half-learned object to a barbarian teacher.
1.12The greatest Greek philosophers traveled widely to learn the truth.
1.13Political obstacles did not stop the Greek sages from learning from barbarians.
1.14Plutarch, Porphyry, and Numenius say the Greek sages learned of God from Egyptians and Hebrews.
1.15Pythagoras' circumcision is traced through Egypt back to Abraham.
1.16Pharaoh's daughter recognized Moses as Hebrew, showing Egyptians did not then circumcise.
1.17Socrates did not disdain learning even from women such as Diotima and Aspasia.
1.18Today's critics know little literature yet scorn Scripture as barbarous.
1.19Greek histories show that the sciences came from barbarians.
1.20Trumpet, pipes, letters, medicine, and ships came from barbarians.
1.21Plutarch, Diodorus, and Demosthenes say Orpheus brought Egyptian rites to Greece.
1.22The cult of Rhea or Cybele also came from Phrygia.
1.23If the Greeks learned so much from barbarians, critics should not refuse truth from the apostles.
1.24Many famous sages were not born in Greece proper.
1.25The Greeks themselves admire non-Greek sages.
1.26Socrates, the best philosopher, was a stonecutter's son and practiced the craft.
1.27Porphyry's Philosophical History discusses Socrates' stonecutting.
1.28Theodoret considers whether Socrates was educated later in life.
1.29Porphyry says Socrates was almost unlettered.
1.30Plato's Apology shows Socrates disclaiming fine speech.
1.31Unlearned Socrates was more honored than eloquent Plato, who put his own works in Socrates' mouth.
1.32Plato himself urges attention to thought rather than words.
1.33Plato's Republic distinguishes true philosophers, lovers of truth, from those skilled in the arts.
1.34Theodoret draws the lesson that teachers of truth are the true philosophers.
1.35Plato's Laws calls wise those who know the essential things even if unlettered.
1.36Plato defines wisdom as knowledge of truth, not literary learning.
1.37Plato's Theaetetus tells of Thales falling into a well while stargazing.
1.38Plato's Theaetetus describes the ruler as a rustic herdsman.
1.39Plato says true wisdom is knowledge of God's justice.
1.40Even masters of speech knew truth is worth more than elegance.
1.41Theodoret asks why critics scorn apostolic speech when their own philosophers credit barbarians with truth.
1.42Porphyry admits that barbarians, including Hebrews, found the way to the gods while Greeks strayed.
1.43Theodoret urges the pagans to accept Porphyry's own witness and listen to the Hebrew prophets and apostles.
1.44The other peoples named by the oracle learned truth from the Hebrews.
1.45The Chaldeans learned from the Hebrew exiles through the miracles of the furnace and the lions.
1.46Cyrus learned from Daniel and passed the teaching to the Lydians.
1.47Porphyry also accuses Greek philosophers of ignorance.
1.48Porphyry admits Greek philosophy is conjecture and quarrel over words.
1.49Since philosophy is disputed, the critics should accept the teaching of men dear to God.
1.50Rejecting barbarians would mean rejecting many admired philosophers.
1.51Plato's Timaeus has an Egyptian priest call the Greeks children.
1.52Hebrew learning, being older and true, is to be preferred.
1.53Unpolished speech is no reason to refuse the apostles.
1.54The charge that Christians demand mere faith is slander, and turns against the critics.
1.55Pythagoras made his pupils keep five years' silence and simply believe.
1.56The Pythagoreans answered 'he himself said it' instead of proofs.
1.57God deserves at least the trust the Pythagoreans gave their master.
1.58Plato urges belief in poets, yet pagans object when Christians urge belief in God.
1.59Plato's Timaeus tells us to believe the poets about the gods without proof.
1.60Plato bids belief in mythmaking poets while mocking them elsewhere.
1.61It is far more just to believe the prophets and apostles than the poets.
1.62Followers of the philosophers chose among their opinions by faith.
1.63The philosophers contradict one another on soul and world.
1.64Each school's followers believed by faith.
1.65Plato's Socrates says he believes what he has heard about judgment in Hades.
1.66Socrates offered no proof of his belief and none was demanded.
1.67Plato's Laws forbids the young to question the laws.
1.68Plato wants laws received by faith.
1.69Theognis praises the faithful man as worth gold and silver.
1.70Heraclitus' saying about the deaf fits the critics.
1.71Empedocles says distrust is the mark of the wicked.
1.72Parmenides bids seeing absent things with the mind, which needs faith.
1.73Solon says the measure of judgment is hardest to grasp.
1.74Empedocles says the divine cannot be reached by eyes or hands.
1.75Antisthenes says God is invisible and like nothing.
1.76Faith is necessary to see what cannot be imaged; Xenophon agrees.
1.77Xenophon says God's power is evident but his form invisible.
1.78As eyes see visible things, faith sees divine things.
1.79Faith is to the mind what light is to the eye.
1.80Plato condemns those who believe only in what they can touch.
1.81Idol-worshipers are like those Plato condemns.
1.82Sensible people seek truth rather than clinging to custom.
1.83Socrates in the Crito follows reason, not prejudice.
1.84Socrates teaches Alcibiades that knowing one's ignorance comes first.
1.85Knowing one's ignorance and purging false teachings precede receiving the divine.
1.86Orpheus and Euripides show that divine teaching is for the initiated, and initiation requires faith.
1.87Euripides says the sick argument needs remedies and God helps those who toil.
1.88Epicharmus and Heraclitus point to faith and hope as the way to find truth.
1.89If gold-seekers toil for a little gold, one should seek truth much more.
1.90Aristotle and Epicurus both give faith a place in knowledge.
1.91Theodoret gives Christian definitions of faith.
1.92Faith leads to knowledge, knowledge to impulse, impulse to action.
1.93Even learning letters requires believing the teacher.
1.94A pupil who trusts the teacher quickly gains knowledge.
1.95Geometry also begins with definitions accepted by faith.
1.96Astronomy pupils believe their teachers despite disagreements.
1.97The astronomers also dispute about the sun.
1.98The philosophers' estimates of the sun's size differ absurdly.
1.99Pagans accept irrational beliefs yet fault Christian faith.
1.100An apprentice shoemaker learns by first trusting his master.
1.101A shipwright's pupil also learns through trust.
1.102The patient trusts the physician without understanding medicine.
1.103Passengers trust the helmsman.
1.104Faith is common to all; knowledge belongs to experts.
1.105We trust experts to test gold and gems.
1.106Buyers trust weavers and weighers.
1.107Faith is the foundation of knowledge, as the philosophers' own definitions show.
1.108It is absurd to demand knowledge before faith only in divine matters.
1.109Following Hebrews 11:6, the church teaches faith first and explains the mysteries to the initiated.
1.110In pagan mysteries too only the hierophant knows the meaning.
1.111Only the hierophant explains the meaning of Priapus.
1.112Priapus is explained as pleasure joined with drunkenness.
1.113The phallus rite derives from the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Isis.
1.114Since even pagan rites are known only to hierophants, it is madness to demand knowledge before faith in the Christian mysteries.
1.115Pindar, Plato, and Orpheus forbid revealing sacred teaching to all.
1.116Faith leads and the Lord gives knowledge to those who believe.
1.117Plato's Laws says the happy person must share in truth from the start.
1.118Heaven awaits those who live by the truth; unending punishment awaits the rest.
1.119Plato's Phaedo says the uninitiated lie in mire in Hades.
1.120The philosophers anticipate Christian truths without understanding them, like talking birds.
1.121The philosophers had only nature, whose witness God preserved through creation.
1.122Paul at Lystra says God left himself a witness in nature.
1.123Israel had law and prophets; other nations were guided by nature.
1.124God gives knowledge chiefly to the godly but some also to others, like rain on wild land.
1.125Pagan wisdom bears some good fruit, mixed with bitterness, from which the useful is picked.
1.126Bees make honey even from bitter flowers.
1.127Theodoret will use pagan writers as antidotes and as witnesses for Christian faith.
1.128Readers are asked to listen in Pythagorean silence and receive the teaching in faith.
2.1Light shows the world only to those who can see.
2.2Those who refuse truth are like bats and night birds.
2.3Those who choose darkness have no excuse now that the divine light shines everywhere.
2.4Since Christ, the Sun of righteousness, has risen, unbelief has no excuse.
2.5Conceit keeps the educated from seeing the truth.
2.6Plato banished Homer from his ideal city despite his eloquence.
2.7Plato charged Homer with teaching impiety to the young.
2.8The philosophers each took different paths of error.
2.9Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Diogenes held different first principles.
2.10Others named fire, the four elements, or earth as the first principle.
2.11Socrates mocked the natural philosophers for their contradictions, as Xenophon reports.
2.12In the Phaedo Socrates recalls his youthful zeal for natural philosophy.
2.13Socrates says natural philosophy blinded him.
2.14Plato's Theaetetus mocks the philosophers' endless quarrels.
2.15Plato notes that Parmenides and Melissus held the opposite view.
2.16Plato's Sophist also accuses the philosophers; the accuser is not an apostle but the chief philosopher.
2.17Plato's Sophist describes the philosophers' rival accounts of being as children's myths.
2.18Plato describes the materialists' battle of giants over being.
2.19Plato and Socrates, not the apostles, made these charges.
2.20Timon of Phlius ridiculed the philosophers in his Silloi.
2.21Timon long ago charged the philosophers with conceit; guessing is not knowing.
2.22Anaxagoras first spoke of Mind ordering the world; Pythagoras of the monad.
2.23Anaxagoras and Pythagoras learned of God in Egypt from Egyptians and Hebrews.
2.24Plutarch and a letter ascribed to Xenophon report Plato's journey to Egypt.
2.25The letter accuses Plato of leaving Socrates for Pythagorean wisdom and Sicilian luxury.
2.26Why believe those who learned imperfectly rather than their teachers?
2.27Plato's Cratylus says the first Greeks worshiped only the heavenly bodies.
2.28Hesiod's genealogy of the gods shows ignorance of the Creator.
2.29Homer too erred, yet Plato bids belief in the poets.
2.30Plato calls poets inspired; Orpheus learned in Egypt of the one invisible God.
2.31Orpheus describes the one God enthroned and holding beginning, middle, and end.
2.32Orpheus mixed his truths with the rites of pagan cult.
2.33Plato's Timaeus distinguishes eternal being from becoming.
2.34Plato says only 'is' fitly belongs to eternal being.
2.35Theodoret approves Plato's distinction, illustrating becoming by the stages of human life.
2.36In the Crito Socrates speaks of the one who knows, to be feared above all.
2.37Socrates says we must heed the one who knows and the truth itself.
2.38Socrates and Plato honored one God and mentioned many only because of the Athenian crowd.
2.39Socrates died for less; Plato's letter to Dionysius shows the same caution.
2.40Plato's thirteenth letter distinguishes serious letters beginning with 'God' from others.
2.41Plato's letter shows he spoke of many gods only for the crowd's sake.
2.42Plato speaks of the ineffable Maker yet elsewhere of many gods.
2.43Moses is older than all Greek writers, as even Porphyry attests.
2.44Porphyry cites Sanchuniathon as a reliable early historian of the Jews.
2.45Porphyry dates Sanchuniathon to the time of Semiramis, before the Trojan War.
2.46Moses is thus older still than Sanchuniathon.
2.47Orpheus lived one generation before the Trojan War; Homer and Hesiod long after.
2.48The sons of the Argonauts fought at Troy, as Homer shows.
2.49Linus, Musaeus, Thamyris, and Philammon also lived about the time of Troy.
2.50Since Moses is oldest of all, one should turn to him, the ocean of theology.
2.51Moses heard God's own voice, which commanded the worship of one God.
2.52God forbade other gods and any image of himself.
2.53Moses forbids idols since Israel heard God's voice but saw no form.
2.54Moses proclaims that the Lord is one.
2.55Moses, Joshua, and the prophets all taught the worship of the one Creator.
2.56Pagans object that Christians worship a Trinity, which the Jews reject.
2.57Theodoret laments that the Jews, taught Scripture from birth, miss the Trinity.
2.58God taught the Trinity only obscurely to Israel lest they fall into polytheism.
2.59Deut 6:4 hints at the Trinity by naming God three times while affirming oneness.
2.60The angels' threefold 'holy' and single 'Lord' show the Trinity's three properties and one lordship.
2.61Moses speaks more clearly of the Trinity in 'Let us make man'.
2.62Gen 1:26–27 names God as both maker and model, though the Trinity's nature is one.
2.63Genesis 9 again speaks of God making man in God's image.
2.64Gen 9:6 and the tower of Babel again show distinct persons.
2.65'Let us go down' at Babel shows the equality of Father, Son, and Spirit.
2.66As at creation, God works with the Son and Spirit at Babel.
2.67The destruction of Sodom shows two who are called Lord.
2.68David's psalms also speak of the Word, the Spirit, and the Son.
2.69The other prophets teach the same, but more proofs are needless for those not yet believing.
2.70Theodoret will show that Plato borrowed theology from the Hebrew prophets.
2.71Plato's sixth letter speaks of the leader of all and the Father of the leader.
2.72Plato's words mix truth with mythology.
2.73Plato's distinction of cause and Father reflects truth; his 'gods' reflect error or pretense.
2.74Gods that come to be in time cannot be gods by nature.
2.75Scripture calls no created thing god by nature.
2.76Scripture gives the name 'god' to judges and saints only by courtesy; Plato knows the Father and the cause.
2.77The Epinomis says the most divine Word ordered the cosmos.
2.78Plato's second letter speaks in riddles of a first, second, and third.
2.79Plato spoke in riddles out of fear of the crowd.
2.80In the Timaeus Plato declines to speak of the first principle.
2.81Numenius distinguishes the first god from the creator god.
2.82Plotinus wrote of three principal hypostases.
2.83Plotinus says Mind is the image of the One, separated only by otherness.
2.84Later philosophers borrowed from Christian theology.
2.85Plotinus and Numenius find three eternal principles in Plato, paralleling the Trinity.
2.86The triad was taken from David's psalm on the Word and Spirit.
2.87Amelius admired the prologue of John's Gospel.
2.88Amelius paraphrases John's prologue about the Word who became flesh.
2.89Even a Platonist confessed the Word's divinity and incarnation as John teaches.
2.90John 1:14 teaches that the incarnate Word still showed his divine glory.
2.91If truth shines even among pagan errors, it is far more admirable on its own.
2.92Truth separated from error is like a pearl in a diadem.
2.93Truth shines brighter unmixed.
2.94Theodoret lists writers of pagan mythology: Sanchuniathon, Philo of Byblos, Manetho.
2.95Further sources of pagan theology: Diodorus, Hesiod, Cornutus, Plutarch, Aëtius, Porphyry.
2.96Christian teaching differs from pagan myth as heaven from Tartarus; some myths will be shown in the next discourse.
2.97Eusebius's Preparation gives the full comparison; pagans deified elements or benefactors.
2.98Christians worship only the Father, Word, and Spirit, honoring saints as human beings.
2.99Christians name God by many names, positive and negative.
2.100God is named negatively: without beginning, invisible, incomprehensible.
2.101Each negative name denies a limitation of God.
2.102Positive names signify what God has and does.
2.103The names Son, Word, and Radiance express the Son's eternal birth.
2.104If Plato makes matter and ideas from God and with God, the Word and Spirit can be so too.
2.105Christian teaching is more reasonable, for Son and Spirit share God's one being.
2.106The mode of the Son's and Spirit's existence is no harder than that of the unbegotten Father.
2.107Belief in an uncaused God makes belief in the Word's begetting and the Spirit's procession reasonable.
2.108Timaeus of Locri, Parmenides, and Plutarch speak of an unbegotten principle.
2.109From the unbegotten God the Word is begotten and the Spirit proceeds.
2.110The Word and Spirit are not breath or speech, but subsistent, united in nature and distinct in properties.
2.111These truths are learned from Scripture by grace.
2.112Reading both prophets and apostles reveals their harmony and exposes atheists.
2.113Plutarch names atheists; the Stoics and Protagoras also erred about God.
2.114Numenius called Plato 'Moses speaking Attic'.
2.115Plato's piety was taken from Moses.
2.116Like miners following grains of gold, readers should seek the source of truth.
2.117Those who learn from Scripture will worship the one God and become guides of others.
3.1Bodies lacking or exceeding their natural parts are called monstrous.
3.2Monarchy is praised, as in Homer's maxim.
3.3Polytheists, like atheists, are maimed in their theology.
3.4Homer, Hesiod, and the philosophers are as godless as the declared atheists.
3.5Some even deified the passions they condemned.
3.6Diodorus says the Egyptians first deified sun and moon.
3.7Plato's Cratylus says the first Greeks deified the heavenly bodies.
3.8God, needing nothing, made the visible world for human use and enjoyment.
3.9Sun, moon, and stars serve human needs.
3.10Humans worshiped the gifts instead of the Giver, as Paul says.
3.11God gave the elements weaknesses to prevent their worship.
3.12Clouds and eclipses show the weakness of sun and moon.
3.13The sun's harmful heat shows it is only God's servant.
3.14The air gives life but also brings plague, so it is no god.
3.15The earth's many weaknesses show it is no god.
3.16The created world leads the wise to its invisible Maker, as Wisdom 13:5 says.
3.17'Correspondingly' means God infinitely surpasses his works.
3.18Paul in Romans confirms the teaching of Wisdom 13:5.
3.19As works point to their craftsman, creation points the mind to its Maker.
3.20Paul says those who worship creation instead of its Maker are without excuse.
3.21Paul describes the folly of idolaters.
3.22Idolaters worshiped images of men, beasts, and even venomous creatures.
3.23Plato, Diodorus, and Plutarch say the first gods were the elements.
3.24Later the pagans deified human benefactors.
3.25Sanchuniathon says Cronus, Rhea, Zeus, and Hera were deified humans.
3.26Heracles, Asclepius, and Apis were deified for their deeds.
3.27Yet the Greeks admit Heracles and Asclepius died as men.
3.28Diodorus records these deaths, yet the Greeks still call these men gods.
3.29The Dioscuri, Heracles, and Orpheus were Argonauts, a generation before Troy.
3.30Dionysus and even Aphrodite, a courtesan, were deified.
3.31Ganymede and adulterous Helen were taken to heaven, the poets say.
3.32The Romans deified even unjust emperors.
3.33Nero, Domitian, and Commodus were counted among the gods.
3.34The third source of gods is the poets' myths, which Plato bids us believe.
3.35Plato then sets out Hesiod's genealogy of the gods.
3.36The poets' gods are parricides and child-killers.
3.37Plato bids belief in tales of Zeus's incest only because of custom.
3.38In the Republic Plato calls Hesiod's tales the greatest lie.
3.39Plato forbids telling the young that the gods did such things.
3.40Plato forbids tales of wars among the gods.
3.41Plato bans Homer's tales of quarrels among gods from his city.
3.42Plato contradicts himself about the poets.
3.43In the Cratylus Plato allegorizes the names of Cronus, Rhea, and Hera.
3.44Poseidon, Demeter, and the Egyptian gods are explained as natural elements.
3.45Other natural allegories of the gods.
3.46Some philosophers allegorized the myths; the Romans rejected that mythology.
3.47Dionysius of Halicarnassus says the Romans rejected the Greek myths.
3.48The fourth form of making gods deifies the irrational passions.
3.49Desire, anger, and drunkenness are made into gods.
3.50Pagans punish vices yet worship the passions that cause them.
3.51If passions are gods, virtue becomes impiety.
3.52Allegory is worse than the myths: out of the smoke into the fire.
3.53Antisthenes despised Aphrodite and called love a disease.
3.54The philosophers disagree even in their allegories.
3.55Plato's Epinomis admits earlier theology was badly described.
3.56Plutarch compares Greek tales of deified humans with Egyptian myths.
3.57Plutarch reports that the Solymi deified men killed by Cronus.
3.58Porphyry says Egyptians worship a living man at Anabis.
3.59The fifth form deifies the wicked demons, as Porphyry admits.
3.60Porphyry describes the evil demons who seek to be gods and feed on sacrifices.
3.61Homer's gods, who also love libation and savor, are Porphyry's wicked demons.
3.62Porphyry names Serapis, identified with Pluto, as ruler of the evil demons.
3.63Porphyry says Serapis and Hecate rule the demons, symbolized by Cerberus.
3.64Porphyry, an enemy of truth, himself calls the pagan gods rulers of evil demons.
3.65Like Samson's riddle and Balaam's blessing, Porphyry unwillingly testifies for truth.
3.66Porphyry's letter to Anebo lists contradictions in the conduct of the gods.
3.67Porphyry mocks magicians who threaten the gods and the gods who fear them.
3.68Porphyry concludes that these beings are neither gods nor good demons.
3.69Porphyry himself exposes the pagan gods as deceivers.
3.70Plato says the gods are not immortal by nature; Homer says they are.
3.71A fragmentary sentence on the disagreement about the gods' title.
3.72Xenophanes mocks the making of gods in human form.
3.73Xenophanes says each people draws gods in its own likeness.
3.74Zeno forbade temples and statues; Plato did not dare.
3.75Plato's Laws permits only wooden or stone offerings in temples.
3.76Plato allowed only cheap materials so people would not revere the images.
3.77Isaiah mocks the craftsman who makes a stable idol.
3.78Isaiah mocks the man who burns half a log and worships the other half.
3.79Modern pagans call the myths false yet worship images made from them.
3.80Statues show Aphrodite naked and Europa on the bull.
3.81Images display the gods' lusts as the poets tell them.
3.82If the myths are false, why honor images of them?
3.83Consistency would demand burning the poems and banning the images.
3.84Pagans praise the poets and artists and worship obscene images.
3.85Egyptian cities worshiped goats, bulls, wolves, and other animals.
3.86Christ has freed the world from this error.
3.87Pagans object that Christians too honor angels, as they honor lesser gods.
3.88Christians do not call angels gods nor worship them.
3.89Angels are fellow servants without sex, since immortals need no procreation.
3.90God made humans in a pair, but angels all at once.
3.91Angels are holy servants sent for human salvation, as Hebrews says.
3.92Ascetics imitate the angels by renouncing marriage and family.
3.93Monks live everywhere, in communities, small groups, or alone.
3.94If ascetics live so, the angels' life is beyond words.
3.95Pagan myths ascribe to their gods vices worse than any human's.
3.96Even the worst men do not commit all the crimes ascribed to Zeus.
3.97Zeus married his sister and lay with his mother and daughter.
3.98Zeus's other affairs are too shameful to tell.
3.99Comparison shows that pagan gods are demons, not angels.
3.100Theodoret explains the names Satan and devil.
3.101Demons fell by their own choice through pride; God guards humans but permits the struggle.
3.102God uses the devil's wickedness for good, permitting only temptation of thought.
3.103Plato's Laws posits two world-souls, a good and an evil one.
3.104Plato absurdly gives equal power and heaven's management to an evil soul.
3.105The Holy Spirit sanctifies angels and the godly; demons rule only those who choose them.
3.106The devil works through pleasure as bait, but the wise avoid his snares.
3.107It is more fitting to hold that evil comes from choice, not from God.
3.108Reading Scripture would show how far it surpasses human reasoning.
4.1Democritus compares good teaching to nature, which reshapes the soul.
4.2Teaching can reshape character, as Socrates and the converts of Christ show.
4.3Through the apostles Christ changed the whole world; so the author persists with unbelievers.
4.4Theodoret now turns to the philosophers' conflicting views of the visible world.
4.5Xenophanes contradicts himself on the eternity of the world.
4.6An eternal world cannot have earth as its cause.
4.7Parmenides agreed with Xenophanes but added fire as a cause.
4.8Melissus held the world infinite, against his teachers.
4.9Democritus, Metrodorus, and Epicurus taught atoms and the void.
4.10Atoms are compared to motes in a sunbeam.
4.11Plato and Aristotle name different first principles.
4.12Xenocrates, Zeno, Hippasus, Heraclitus, and Diogenes give other principles.
4.13The philosophers disagree on the nature of matter.
4.14They disagree also about the void.
4.15Some held one world, others infinitely many.
4.16They disagree on the world's shape, soul, origin, and end.
4.17Thales, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, and Anaximander explain the stars differently.
4.18Diogenes and Plato on falling stars and fiery stars.
4.19Aristotle and Xenophanes on the stars.
4.20Some Pythagoreans thought each star a world.
4.21The philosophers' contradictory views about the sun.
4.22They disagree on the sun's size and shape.
4.23They disagree about the moon.
4.24They claim to measure the heavens while ignorant of the sea's depth.
4.25Such inquiry is useless and impossible, like drawing water with a sieve.
4.26Xenophon says Socrates turned from natural philosophy to ethics.
4.27Xenophon: Socrates avoided cosmology and called its students fools.
4.28Socrates noted that cosmologists contradict one another like madmen.
4.29Xenophon compares the cosmologists' contradictions to madness.
4.30Xenophon and Socrates, not Christians, made this charge.
4.31Aëtius, Plutarch, and Porphyry confirm the philosophers' disagreements.
4.32Theodoret will praise and criticize Plato's Timaeus.
4.33Plato says the good God made the world from goodness, not envy.
4.34God made the world without need of honors.
4.35God needs nothing; the 'gods' are angels serving him.
4.36Plato's Republic says the Good gives being and is beyond being.
4.37Plato's Timaeus says the world came to be and has a cause.
4.38Plato says the Maker is hard to find and impossible to declare.
4.39Plato says the sun, moon, and planets came from God's reason to mark time.
4.40Plato and Euripides show the heavenly bodies serve humans.
4.41Pagans worship the sun and moon that serve them.
4.42Plato's Timaeus says time and heaven began together and may end together.
4.43Plato's Statesman says the bodily cosmos must undergo change.
4.44Plato's Statesman myth of the helmsman releasing the world.
4.45Plato's account of the world's change mixes truth with error about matter and fate.
4.46Plato makes matter coeternal with God and evil.
4.47Plato's view makes evil matter stronger than its Maker.
4.48Such views contradict Plato's nobler theology.
4.49A heaven made after a divine model cannot do injustice.
4.50Scripture teaches that God made all from nothing by his will alone.
4.51Human crafts depend on one another.
4.52God's will alone suffices to create, as Psalm 135 says.
4.53God's power is united to his will, but he made only what he willed.
4.54God made intelligible beings for heaven and sensible ones for earth.
4.55Fallen spirits were cast down to air and earth to learn the cost of wickedness.
4.56Animals revolt against humans as humans revolt against God, to teach them.
4.57The sea keeps the bounds God set for it.
4.58Rivers, springs, and seasons keep their order.
4.59Day and night share time without strife.
4.60Earth and sea stay constant despite constant use.
4.61The sun consumes water, shrinking rivers in summer.
4.62The Nile floods in summer; one should praise God rather than pry into causes.
4.63The air is never used up.
4.64God gave creatures power to endure and reconciled contrary elements.
4.65The order of the heavens should lead us to hymn their Maker.
4.66Faith sees God in nature's gifts; we should hymn him, not pagan deities.
4.67Birdsong should move us to worship God, not the Muses.
4.68Of all accounts, creation from nothing alone befits God.
4.69God still creates daily, forming bodies from matter and human souls from nothing.
4.70At first the earth and waters brought forth life at God's command.
4.71God made the elements from nothing and steers creation.
4.72The whole of Scripture teaches one Maker of the universe.
4.73Theodoret urges his readers to embrace Scripture's truth and worship God.
5.1The magnet draws iron alone and can hold it suspended invisibly.
5.2Scripture draws only the faithful, as Paul says of the word of the cross.
5.3Unlike the magnet, Scripture does not compel; free choice decides.
5.4God made rational nature free and does not compel it.
5.5The prophets appeal to free will with promises.
5.6God threatens and invites, through prophets and in person in the Gospels.
5.7Theodoret urges his readers not to delay their salvation, quoting Hesiod.
5.8The fifth discourse turns to human nature.
5.9The poets' myths of human origin are set aside; only philosophers are compared.
5.10The philosophers disagree on the origin of humanity.
5.11Homer and Theognis call human life miserable.
5.12Euripides and Solon in Herodotus also lament human life.
5.13Pythagoras and Plato teach the soul's fall into the body as punishment.
5.14Philolaus calls the body a tomb; Plato elsewhere says the body helps the soul live rightly.
5.15Plato's view that the body aids the soul refutes the soul's preexistence and the body-tomb.
5.16Theodoret will list the philosophers' views on the soul from Plutarch, Porphyry, and Aëtius.
5.17The philosophers define the soul differently.
5.18More conflicting views of the soul's substance.
5.19Pythagoras, Plato, and Xenocrates divide the soul differently.
5.20Aristotle and the Stoics divide the soul into five or eight parts.
5.21The Pythagoreans give five powers of the soul.
5.22They disagree on where the soul's ruling part is.
5.23Views on the soul's survival after death.
5.24Some held the soul mortal; Plato and Aristotle differ about plants.
5.25Zeno held the soul transmitted in seed and therefore corruptible.
5.26Numenius reports the Stoic view of the soul's limited survival.
5.27Longinus condemns the Stoic view of the soul as an exhalation.
5.28Some say the mind is free; others enslave it to fate and the stars.
5.29Plato's Laws teaches that the soul is free and can master itself.
5.30Plato's image of the passions as cords and reason as the golden cord.
5.31Plato shows that sin is not by nature, fate, or stars, but by free choice.
5.32Plato's Laws says each person's character depends on his own will.
5.33Free choice determines the soul's character and its final place.
5.34Plato's Republic says God, being good, causes no evil.
5.35Plato's Republic says God causes only good, rejecting Homer's two jars.
5.36Plato makes it law that God is not the cause of evil.
5.37Plato banishes those who make God the author of evil.
5.38Moral evil comes from us, not from God.
5.39Plato's Alcibiades calls the rational soul godlike.
5.40In the Phaedo Socrates likens the body to the visible.
5.41The soul is like the invisible.
5.42The soul is like the divine and nearly indissoluble.
5.43Plato's Phaedo argues that the soul goes to God and does not perish.
5.44The philosophers' disputes came from vainglory.
5.45Each philosopher overturned his teacher.
5.46Aristotle attacked Plato in his lifetime.
5.47Aristotle denied the soul's immortality and providence below the moon.
5.48Falsehood fights itself; truth agrees with itself.
5.49All the biblical writers agree about human nature.
5.50Scripture teaches with one voice that the soul was created after the body, as Gen 2:7 says.
5.51God's breath means the soul's spiritual nature, not a bodily breath.
5.52The law on miscarriage shows the soul is created when the body is formed.
5.53Job describes God forming him in the womb.
5.54Job's words describe conception, the soul's creation, and God's care.
5.55All humanity descends from one man and one woman.
5.56God made all from one pair, and the woman from the man, to show one human nature.
5.57Men and women share the same soul, laws, sacraments, and prizes of virtue.
5.58Virtue is found among all peoples, as the Greeks admit.
5.59Homer and Xenophon praise the virtue of barbarians.
5.60The unlettered prophets and apostles filled the world with teaching on virtue.
5.61Now all read the apostles and forget the philosophical schools.
5.62The patriarchs are famous while the Seven Sages are forgotten.
5.63Even the ancients disputed who the Seven Sages were.
5.64The apostles' names are known to all; the few remaining pagans cling to error.
5.65The philosophical schools have no successors left.
5.66Scripture has been translated into all the world's languages.
5.67The apostles persuaded all nations of the soul's immortality and freedom.
5.68Even laborers and servants know Christian doctrine.
5.69Even simple Christians know more of the soul and of virtue than Plato and Aristotle.
5.70Barbarism is relative, as Anacharsis and Paul say.
5.71All peoples share one nature and have skill and courage.
5.72The Persians reason sharply with nature alone as teacher.
5.73Indians and the desert Arabs are also wise.
5.74Egyptians and Romans also excel.
5.75Theodoret does not despise Greek but rebukes those who boast of style over truth.
5.76Scripture teaches truly about body, soul, reason, and the useful passions.
5.77Desire leads us to God and also sustains life and lawful procreation.
5.78Anger restrains desire, and together they make virtue.
5.79Reason must hold the reins of desire and anger.
5.80Punishment by God and by human law proves that sin is freely chosen.
5.81The senses, memory, and knowledge show God's wisdom in human nature.
5.82Human nature surpasses all description; the psalmist confesses this in praise.
6.1Seafarers have various roles and some are shipwrecked through folly.
6.2Some praise the Helmsman of creation; others complain at everything.
6.3Critics of providence replace it with fate and necessity.
6.4Homer shows Zeus unable to save his son from fate.
6.5Homer's Poseidon too is subject to fate.
6.6Diagoras denied God; Protagoras doubted; Epicurus made God indifferent.
6.7Aristotle limits providence to the heavens and leaves the rest to fate.
6.8Oenomaus attacks Democritus, Chrysippus, and the oracle for destroying free will.
6.9Oenomaus mocks fate derived from God or from atoms.
6.10Oenomaus tells the oracle it does not know what lies in human power.
6.11Chrysippus' etymologies of fate and destiny.
6.12The Stoic etymologies of the Fates, Providence, and Adrasteia.
6.13Many philosophers made necessity rule all things.
6.14The Stoics' definitions of fate.
6.15Definitions of fortune by Plato, Aristotle, and others.
6.16Philemon mocks belief in Fortune and omens.
6.17Menander mocks a superstitious man over a broken sandal strap.
6.18Antiphon jokes about a supposed omen.
6.19Bion mocks the omen of a mouse gnawing a sack.
6.20Diogenes mocks portents and protective inscriptions.
6.21Pagans themselves explained omens as natural events.
6.22Epicharmus urges fear of God, the overseer of all.
6.23Diphilus speaks of Justice's all-seeing eye and judgment in Hades.
6.24Because justice is incomplete here, a coming judgment is foretold.
6.25Pindar proclaims God's all-powerful might.
6.26Plato's Laws describes God followed by Justice, who punishes the proud.
6.27Plato shows God's patience and final punishment of the wicked.
6.28Plato's Gorgias: punishment either reforms or makes an example.
6.29Plato's teaching echoes God's punishment of Pharaoh as an example.
6.30God uses tyrants like executioners, then punishes them.
6.31God punished Israel through Assyria, then Assyria in turn.
6.32Plato's Philebus affirms that mind rules heaven and earth.
6.33Plato's ordering wisdom echoes Prov 3:19.
6.34Plato's Laws ranks divine goods (virtues) above human goods.
6.35Plato says the so-called goods are good only for the just.
6.36Theodoret praises Plato's distinction between true and so-called goods.
6.37External goods help the virtuous and harm the wicked; virtues help all who have them.
6.38The rich and powerful are not happy if they misuse their goods.
6.39Neither the prosperity of the wicked nor the poverty of the good disproves providence.
6.40God judges the heart, not appearances.
6.41The just man turns misfortune into training in virtue.
6.42Plato says God is perfectly just; the Laws addresses deniers of providence.
6.43Plato's Laws answers those who think the gods neglect human affairs.
6.44Plato argues the gods care for small things too.
6.45God, unlike a lazy craftsman, cares for great and small alike.
6.46Plato says the part exists for the whole.
6.47The prosperity of the wicked does not show divine neglect.
6.48Providence orders each part for the good of the whole.
6.49God assigned wealth and poverty so that people would serve one another's needs.
6.50Rich and poor depend on one another.
6.51Inequality is like the varied colors of a painting or strings of a lyre.
6.52Variety is necessary, as in geometry and arithmetic.
6.53Universal wealth would destroy humanity by want.
6.54No one could supply all his needs alone.
6.55The rich who complain most enjoy the most.
6.56Denying providence and asserting fate serve as excuses for vice.
6.57Plato teaches that virtue is free, God blameless, and the good man cared for.
6.58Atticus says denying providence encourages wickedness.
6.59Plotinus rejects chance and says the universe comes from Mind and Logos.
6.60Plotinus, later than the apostles, borrowed from John's Gospel.
6.61Plotinus learned of the Word from the apostles.
6.62Plotinus says one must judge the world as a whole, not by its parts.
6.63Plotinus's world speaking of its maker echoes Psalm 19; he ranks beings.
6.64Plotinus ranks stones, plants, animals, humans, and spirits.
6.65Plotinus says vice comes from the soul's own turning and justice follows.
6.66Plotinus says poverty and sickness harm only the wicked.
6.67Plotinus says God uses evil for good ends.
6.68Plotinus: evil is lack of good; do not demand perfection in the mixed world.
6.69Plotinus says God helps those who strive, not those who only pray.
6.70Plotinus says the good will have a good life laid up hereafter.
6.71Plotinus defends the usefulness of animals.
6.72Plotinus compares the world to a painting and a drama needing varied parts.
6.73Theodoret ends his citations on providence.
6.74Providence makes the incarnation fitting.
6.75All creation serves humanity.
6.76The heavenly bodies divide day and night for humans.
6.77God took human form to rescue humanity from sin and death.
6.78God chose the incarnation to show the justice of providence, not mere power.
6.79God saved humanity by being born of a virgin, eternal and newly human.
6.80The two natures of Christ remain unconfused: one suffers, the other works miracles.
6.81It is folly to claim to know a better way of salvation than God.
6.82God's love in the incarnation is so great that unbelievers cannot credit it.
6.83People admire physicians who treat the sick with their own hands.
6.84People admire kings who share their soldiers' dangers.
6.85Like physicians, God kept the strongest remedy for last.
6.86After nature and the law, God gave the final remedy of salvation.
6.87The spread of the church, martyr shrines, and monasteries prove the gospel's power.
6.88Prophecies and Gospels confirm each other.
6.89The prophecies of salvation and of the Jews' fate are fulfilled.
6.90Theodoret urges belief in prophecy, judging the unseen by the evident, as Euripides says.
6.91Orators too teach judging the unseen and future by evidence.
6.92Theodoret uses the orators so that his readers may accept the incarnation.
6.93End of the discourse on providence.
7.1Most people love ease, so the devil leads them down the easy road.
7.2The devil enslaved people by permitting vice.
7.3The devil replaced knowledge of God with false gods as a basis for corrupt living.
7.4To dull conscience, the devil devised a remedy.
7.5The devil taught that the gods themselves were vicious.
7.6The devil spread these myths through writers and other means.
7.7Images spread the myths to the unlettered.
7.8Images show the gods in animal forms pursuing lusts.
7.9Myths of Apollo, Daphne, and Persephone are told by poets and allegorized by philosophers.
7.10The demon instituted festivals for every god.
7.11The festivals encouraged every licentiousness.
7.12The processions were more shameless than private vice.
7.13Great sacrifices were offered to these gods.
7.14Homer's gods delight in sacrifice, not virtue.
7.15The gods are mocked for loving the stench of burnt bones.
7.16God permitted Israel sacrifice as a concession, ordering them to offer the animals Egypt worshiped.
7.17Israel was told to sacrifice the very animals Egypt worshiped.
7.18Sacrifice taught Israel that Egypt's sacred animals were not gods.
7.19Pork was forbidden and Egypt's sacred animals eaten to discredit them.
7.20God used Israel's appetite against its superstition.
7.21Sacrifice and music were concessions; the perfect law would have been too much for Israel at first.
7.22Psalm 50 shows God needs no sacrifices.
7.23God's ownership of all shows he needs nothing.
7.24God asks a sacrifice of praise instead of animals.
7.25God accepts praise and repays it with help.
7.26Other psalms too prefer praise to sacrifice.
7.27Isaiah 1 too rejects sacrifices.
7.28Isaiah shows the sacrificial law was a concession.
7.29Isaiah, like David, replaces sacrifice with something better: baptism.
7.30Isaiah's 'wash yourselves' points to baptism.
7.31Isaiah 43 says God did not demand sacrifices.
7.32God promises forgiveness, given through baptism by faith, not works.
7.33Salvation is by grace, as Paul says; Jeremiah also rejects sacrifices.
7.34Jeremiah and Amos also reject sacrifices and music.
7.35God ordered sacrifices for Israel's healing, not his need.
7.36Porphyry, who studied the prophets, also rejected sacrifice.
7.37Porphyry borrowed from Scripture without accepting its truth.
7.38Porphyry cites Theophrastus on the first bloodless sacrifices.
7.39Porphyry says bloody sacrifices arose as human lawlessness grew.
7.40Porphyry and Theophrastus condemn animal sacrifice.
7.41Porphyry says only harmless offerings should be made and recalls human sacrifice at Rhodes.
7.42Porphyry lists human sacrifices in many places.
7.43Historians and tragedians also record human sacrifices.
7.44Scripture condemns child sacrifice in Psalm 106 and Ezekiel 16.
7.45Human sacrifice ended with Christ's coming.
7.46Sophocles is cited for one God and against idols.
7.47Socrates' cock offering refuted the charge of atheism; he knew God needs nothing.
7.48God made the world without need; sacrifices are mere smoke.
7.49Theodoret urges readers to offer the sacrifice of praise, persuaded by truth.
8.1Pythagoras's preference of Muses to Sirens means plain truth over ornate speech.
8.2God could have made the apostles eloquent, but chose not to.
8.3God wished all people, learned and unlearned, to be saved.
8.4God served the wine of wisdom in the plain cups of the apostles.
8.5The unlettered apostles became lights to all nations.
8.6After death the apostles benefit all nations.
8.7The apostolic writings are plain in style and in subject.
8.8The Gospels tell of a lowly birth and a shameful death.
8.9The apostolic message persuaded many to die as martyrs.
8.10Martyrs' souls are in heaven; their relics are honored and their intercession sought.
8.11Even a small relic carries the martyr's grace, which pagans mock.
8.12The Greeks, who deify dead heroes like Heracles, cannot object.
8.13Plato calls Heracles son of Amphitryon.
8.14Though Heracles was a man, all Greece built him temples.
8.15Heracles was worshiped in Asia too, though a licentious man.
8.16Heracles' lust led to his death.
8.17Deianira's potion killed Heracles, who burned himself.
8.18Pagans still invoked Heracles as savior.
8.19Apollodorus tells of Asclepius's birth and training.
8.20Asclepius was a man, killed by Zeus, taught by Chiron.
8.21Asclepius lived in heroic times and died as a mortal.
8.22Asclepius is still secretly worshiped with his serpent symbol.
8.23Homer knew Asclepius only as a physician.
8.24Dionysus, son of Semele, was deified despite his shameful deeds.
8.25The Dioscuri were worshiped in Sparta and Athens.
8.26The Pythia ordered the boxer Cleomedes to be honored as a hero.
8.27Cleomedes killed his opponent and crushed a school of boys.
8.28Hadrian deified Antinous; the Spartans honored Hyacinthus.
8.29Christians honor martyrs, not deify them, and tombs do not pollute.
8.30Greek temples held tombs, yet were not thought polluted.
8.31Homer's Achilles handled Patroclus's body without fear of pollution.
8.32Thucydides describes Athenian honors for the war dead.
8.33Homer shows Odysseus offering libations to the dead.
8.34Christians offer martyrs no sacrifices but honor them as friends of God.
8.35Pindar says the souls of the godly dwell in heaven.
8.36Pindar and Empedocles support the heavenly lot of the godly.
8.37If seers and physicians are honored, the martyrs, who had every virtue, deserve more.
8.38The martyrs showed wisdom and courage.
8.39Martyrs protect against demons; Heraclitus honored those slain in war.
8.40Not everyone slain in war deserves honor, as the sons of Oedipus show.
8.41Only those who die for godliness merit honor; Heraclitus says the dead meet the unexpected.
8.42Plato's Phaedo says the holy go to pure dwellings above.
8.43Plato forbids suicide.
8.44Plato says the purified soul wins eternal life.
8.45Plato calls philosophy a practice of death.
8.46Plato's Republic says the tombs of the good should be honored.
8.47Plato and Hesiod say the good dead become guardian spirits.
8.48Christians call the martyrs friends of God, not divinities, as Greek writers themselves honored the good dead.
8.49Plato's Epinomis agrees with Scripture that the righteous are blessed after death.
8.50Plato foresaw the sufferings of the just man.
8.51Plato's Laws says the souls of the dead care for human affairs.
8.52If Plato says the holy dead care for us, the martyrs most of all deserve this.
8.53Plato's Apology says one must hold one's post at any cost.
8.54Socrates in the Apology says death is not to be feared.
8.55Socrates says the unjust cannot truly harm the just.
8.56Socrates died unjustly but did not receive martyrs' honors.
8.57Brave pagans like Anaxarchus and Zeno of Elea received no such honor.
8.58Other philosophers also bore torture bravely.
8.59Famous generals received no lasting honor like the martyrs.
8.60Even great kings and emperors are forgotten after death.
8.61Only the tombs of godly emperors are honored.
8.62Self-deified rulers lost their honor; martyrs' shrines are splendid.
8.63Christians visit martyrs' shrines, praying to God and asking the martyrs' intercession.
8.64Votive offerings at shrines testify to healings.
8.65The martyrs' power reveals the true God; they were not famous people.
8.66The martyrs were common people: slaves, women, actors, even former pagan priests.
8.67Martyrs' names are known to all and given to children.
8.68Pagan temples have vanished and their stones used for martyr shrines.
8.69Martyrs' feasts have replaced pagan festivals and are kept soberly.
8.70Theodoret urges his readers to follow the martyrs to God.
9.1The pagans want only elegant speech.
9.2Precious things lie in cheap coverings, like pearls in shells.
9.3Gems must be cut free of worthless stone.
9.4Metals hide in earth, and coins in plain boxes.
9.5The great treasure of truth comes in plain words.
9.6The apostles' laws spread farther than any Greek or Roman lawgiver's.
9.7Minos's laws held only Crete, and not lastingly.
9.8Charondas's laws did not spread and have lapsed.
9.9Zaleucus's laws were rejected by neighbors.
9.10The Delphic oracle praised Lycurgus as near-divine.
9.11Even Sparta's allies did not adopt Lycurgus's laws.
9.12Even Solon's laws were not adopted by Athens's neighbors.
9.13Roman law replaced Greek law, but only by conquest.
9.14Even subject peoples keep their own laws.
9.15The apostles brought the gospel laws to every nation by persuasion.
9.16They spread the gospel amid dangers.
9.17Persecution only strengthened the gospel laws, while Greek laws vanished.
9.18Athenian and Spartan institutions have disappeared.
9.19Lycurgus allowed wife-sharing for procreation, which Plato admired.
9.20Lycurgus's laws died at Rome's command; the apostles' laws survived Nero.
9.21Emperors who conquered nations could not destroy the gospel.
9.22Hadrian, Antoninus, and Verus could not suppress the faith.
9.23The Great Persecution killed believers by the thousands.
9.24Persecutors burned churches and destroyed all of them at Easter.
9.25Even Julian and the great emperors could not overcome simple believers.
9.26Persecution was like pouring oil on a fire.
9.27Like the burning bush, the church grew under persecution; martyrs' blood watered new believers.
9.28The church has vastly increased while paganism is forgotten.
9.29Monks now inhabit the mountains, praising the Trinity.
9.30Christian emperors' conversion itself shows the strength of the gospel.
9.31Past persecutions prove the church's power is divine, not imperial.
9.32Persian persecution cannot destroy the faith.
9.33Persian Christians abandoned incest and exposure of the dead despite punishment.
9.34The Persians honor the apostolic writings as from heaven.
9.35The Massagetae gave up killing and eating the old.
9.36Other barbarian customs ended through the gospel.
9.37Plato could not persuade even Athens to adopt his laws.
9.38Plato's law of naked exercise for women is cited.
9.39Plato wanted women trained like men, against nature's division of roles.
9.40Homer distinguished men's and women's work; Plato did not.
9.41Plato's marriage inspection ignores the modesty taught by Candaules's wife.
9.42Plato's Laws has boys and girls dance naked to choose spouses.
9.43Such nakedness breeds shamelessness and lust.
9.44Plato's Republic makes wives and children common.
9.45Plato's guardians will be drawn by erotic necessity to common intercourse.
9.46Plato clearly prescribed sexual community.
9.47Plato's interlocutor names the 'erotic necessities'.
9.48Modern interpreters wrongly deny that Plato meant sexual community.
9.49Interpreters should remember that truth is dearer than the teacher.
9.50Plato fixes ages for bearing children for the state.
9.51Plato's Republic orders that children conceived after the set age not be raised.
9.52Theodoret condemns Plato's law as enjoining abortion and exposure.
9.53Plato's Phaedrus promises bliss to lovers.
9.54Theodoret says Plato praised what even the most dissolute did not praise.
9.55Plato's penalties for murder are lenient.
9.56Plato persuaded no one to follow his laws.
9.57Christ condemns even the lustful look.
9.58Christ forbids divorce except for sexual immorality, which alone breaks the marriage.
9.59A husband must bear his wife's faults but may end the marriage for adultery.
9.60Paul's law of one husband and one wife contrasts with Plato's community of wives.
9.61Paul forbids spouses to withhold themselves without mutual consent.
9.62Paul allows abstinence for prayer only for a time, lest Satan tempt.
9.63Paul commends celibacy by advice, not law.
9.64Christ punishes even anger and insult.
9.65Christ commands love of enemies.
9.66Christ forbids oaths, commends poverty, and promises persecution.
9.67Christ promised rewards after life and persecution in it.
9.68The apostles believed unseen promises and spread the gospel.
9.69Those who accepted the gospel also gave up their customs and faced danger.
9.70The tombs of those who died for the faith are revered.
9.71Persecutors failed to destroy the gospel; Greek laws died on their own.
9.72No one died for Greek laws, but myriads died for the gospel.
9.73Theodoret urges readers to accept the God-given laws of the gospel.
10.1Tyrants seize power and are overthrown for their cruelty.
10.2The demons usurped the name of gods and claimed to foretell the future.
10.3The demons set up oracles and divination everywhere.
10.4The oracles fell silent after Christ came, proving they were demonic.
10.5Plutarch, a Greek near Delphi, wrote on the failure of oracles.
10.6Plutarch says demons, not gods, preside over oracles.
10.7A pagan, not a Christian, says oracles are given by demons for pay.
10.8Introduction to a further quotation of Plutarch.
10.9Plutarch says wild rites appease wicked demons in place of human sacrifice.
10.10Plutarch's speakers note that almost all oracles have failed.
10.11Plutarch wrote after Christ; Porphyry admits demons cannot know the future.
10.12Porphyry, the Christians' enemy, says oracular demons lie.
10.13Porphyry says the gods' predictions come from astrology.
10.14Porphyry criticizes an oracle of Apollo on sacrifice.
10.15Porphyry and Theophrastus say animal sacrifices suit demons, not gods.
10.16Porphyry warns that bloody sacrifices draw evil demons.
10.17The Pythian oracle orders offerings to an evil demon, contradicting Porphyry.
10.18Porphyry admits correcting the oracles' errors and faulty verse.
10.19Diogenianus says seers mostly fail.
10.20Diogenianus says seers' occasional successes are by chance.
10.21Porphyry says the gods are compelled to give oracles.
10.22Oracles show Hecate and Apollo complaining of being compelled.
10.23The 'gods' are weaker than the magicians who compel them.
10.24An oracle demanded human sacrifice to Minos.
10.25Ambiguous oracles misled Aristomachus to his death.
10.26The ambiguous oracle to Croesus shows the Pythian ignorant or ungrateful.
10.27A passage on an oracle to Julian, which the editor deletes as an addition.
10.28The oracle to Athens before Salamis called the victors wretched.
10.29The Athenians won, so the oracle was wrong.
10.30The oracle contradicted itself about Athena and the wooden wall.
10.31The oracle concealed ignorance in ambiguity.
10.32The Salamis oracle was vague; Themistocles' skill won the day.
10.33The oracle claimed to give Lycurgus his laws.
10.34The oracle endorsed Lycurgus's immoral laws and showed ignorance.
10.35The oracle praises Spartan women.
10.36The oracle praised the shameful poet Archilochus.
10.37The oracle praised Homer's poetry, which Plato banished.
10.38The oracle honored the murderous boxer Cleomedes.
10.39Apollo ordered the Methymnaeans to honor an obscene image of Dionysus.
10.40Apollo could not save his temple and blamed the Fates.
10.41Porphyry and Oenomaus collected Apollo's oracles.
10.42For Christians, the facts suffice to refute the oracles.
10.43When Christ came, the demons fled like robbers at dawn.
10.44Demons confessed Christ and his apostles.
10.45The demons fled before the spread of the gospel.
10.46All the famous oracles have fallen silent.
10.47God silenced the oracles; Apollo of Daphne was struck by lightning after the martyr was moved.
10.48The martyr's relics silenced Apollo as Paul silenced the spirit of Python.
10.49Theodoret will cite biblical prophecies for comparison.
10.50Isaiah foretold the nations coming to the Lord's mountain and peace.
10.51Isaiah's prophecy is clear and fulfilled.
10.52The church's growth, the monks, and peace fulfill Isaiah.
10.53In Isaiah's time many kings ruled the region.
10.54At Christ's birth Augustus united the world, as foreseen.
10.55Isaiah foretells people hiding their idols in caves.
10.56The pagans themselves fulfill this prophecy.
10.57Pagans buried their idols, which Christians dug up.
10.58The unearthed idols, images of vermin, were mocked in public.
10.59Isaiah foretells people turning from idols to their Maker.
10.60Isaiah foresaw events a thousand years ahead; the oracles not even three months.
10.61Isaiah mocks idol-makers and foretells the casting away of idols.
10.62Isaiah 42 foretells the gentle Servant, light of the nations.
10.63The Servant is Christ, named Israel according to the flesh.
10.64The blind and bound are those in ignorance and sin.
10.65Isaiah foretells God ending his long silence to overthrow idols.
10.66God's patience and love explain the timing of his action.
10.67God leads the blind nations into the way of truth through the apostles.
10.68God turns darkness to light and makes a new chosen people of believers.
10.69Isaiah speaks of salvation for the islands and nations.
10.70The prophecies foretold the gospel; God's 'arm' means his strength.
10.71Isaiah foretells the nations calling on Christ.
10.72Isaiah 65:1 foretells God found by the nations.
10.73Jeremiah foretells the nations gathering to the Lord.
10.74Pilgrims to Jerusalem fulfill Jeremiah's words.
10.75Jeremiah says Israel refused the good way and the nations heard.
10.76Rejected by the Jews, the gospel went to the nations; Christ is the good way.
10.77The prophets lead to Christ, the way.
10.78The apostles turned to the nations when the Jews refused.
10.79Jeremiah foretells the nations renouncing their idols.
10.80Jeremiah wrote as if he saw the nations' conversion.
10.81Amos foretells Israel's dispersion.
10.82Amos foretells the rebuilding of David's tent for the nations.
10.83The tent of David is the Word made flesh.
10.84Zephaniah foretells worship of God in every place.
10.85Zephaniah's prophecy is fulfilled in the apostles' tongues at Pentecost.
10.86Zechariah foretells God dwelling among the nations.
10.87In Zechariah the Son speaks of being sent by the Father.
10.88Zechariah foretells the humble king on a colt.
10.89Zechariah's prophecies are clear and fulfilled.
10.90Malachi foretells a pure sacrifice offered everywhere among the nations.
10.91Malachi is fulfilled in the church's spiritual sacrifice everywhere.
10.92God promised Abraham that the nations would be blessed in his seed.
10.93The blessing promised to the patriarchs is fulfilled in the mission to all nations.
10.94Jacob and Moses foretold the nations' hope and joy.
10.95Psalms 2 and 8 foretell Christ's rule over the nations.
10.96Psalm 9 asks for a lawgiver for the nations.
10.97Psalm 22 foretells the nations turning to the Lord.
10.98Psalms 45 and 46 foretell rule over the earth and exaltation among the nations.
10.99Psalm 47 calls all nations to praise God.
10.100The psalms foretell the whole story of Christ and the church.
10.101The prophecies cited suffice to show the truth of all.
10.102Prophecy compared with fulfillment is like a portrait compared with its subject.
10.103Fulfilled prophecy is seen, not merely heard.
10.104Theodoret urges comparison: light has nothing to do with darkness.
10.105Theodoret ends with the psalm against idols and a prayer for his readers.
11.1Theodoret opens his discourse on the end of life with the younger Aristippus, taught philosophy by his mother.
11.2Aristippus learned from his mother alone, but the Greeks will not learn the truth from prophets, apostles and teachers.
11.3The Greeks think Christian teaching profitless because it promises toil, not luxury and wealth.
11.4The Greeks see the toil but not its unseen end, for they lack the eyes that faith creates.
11.5Theodoret proposes to compare the philosophers' definitions of the end with the promises of the Gospels.
11.6Epicurus made pleasure the end, and Democritus, his forerunner, called the same thing cheerfulness.
11.7Heraclitus made contentment the end, which, being undefined, amounts to whatever pleases each person.
11.8Pythagoras, Hecataeus, Antisthenes and Anaxagoras each named a different final good; Anaxagoras's contemplation and freedom is the most fitting.
11.9Plato's definition of the end, likeness to God as far as possible, is admirable, because no creature can be like God in every respect.
11.10We cannot imitate God's nature, power or wisdom, but can imitate his goodness and kindness, as Christ taught.
11.11Socrates called the just man happy and held that only the just is truly advantageous.
11.12The orators who separated justice from advantage contradicted themselves, for the unjust is harmful.
11.13Aristotle departed from Plato by requiring bodily and external goods, besides virtue, for happiness.
11.14Aristotle's view echoes Simonides on health, beauty and wealth, and Theognis's advice to flee poverty at any cost.
11.15The Stoics defined the end as life according to nature, treated bodily goods as indifferent, and boldly held that human and divine virtue are the same.
11.16Epicurus defined happiness as freedom from hunger and thirst and boasted that one who had it could rival Zeus, a blasphemy aimed, Theodoret says, at God himself.
11.17Epicurus's atomism denied providence and judgement, but Plato describes the judgement and punishments after death.
11.18Theodoret quotes Plato's myth of Er on the punishment of the wicked tyrant and others.
11.19Plato's Phaedo describes the fiery river that winds beneath the earth into Tartarus.
11.20Plato's Phaedo describes Pyriphlegethon and the Stygian river and their courses into Tartarus.
11.21Theodoret refers readers to the Phaedo for Plato's account of graded punishments and quotes a few lines.
11.22Plato distinguishes incurable sinners, cast into Tartarus for ever, from curable ones who are released after a year.
11.23Plato describes the curable sinners begging their victims for pardon, and then turns to the abodes of the righteous.
11.24Plato's Phaedo promises the holy a pure dwelling above and the philosophers still finer abodes, as the prize of virtue.
11.25In the Gorgias Plato tells as true the account of the righteous going to the Isles of the Blessed and the unjust to punishment.
11.26Plato says the dead must be judged stripped of everything by a judge who looks at the bare soul, so that the judgement may be just.
11.27Theodoret claims Plato learned of judgement after death from the Hebrew prophets in Egypt, citing Daniel's river of fire and Isaiah's undying worm and fire.
11.28Plato mixed what he took from the prophets with Greek myth, as in the Gorgias passage on Rhadamanthys judging souls.
11.29Plato's Socrates resolves to present a healthy soul to the judge and urges Callicles to the contest of a good life.
11.30Plato warns Callicles of his helplessness before the judge Aeacus and says no one can show a better life than the just one.
11.31Plato urges care for what frees from punishment hereafter, and in the Crito the laws tell Socrates to put justice first so as to answer for himself in Hades.
11.32In the Apology Plato's Socrates argues that death is either nothingness or a migration of the soul, and so may be a good.
11.33Plato's teaching on judgement deserves praise, though mixed with myths and with the error that souls are punished without bodies, which he may be pardoned for lacking the apostles' teaching.
11.34Plato's doctrine of reincarnation, borrowed from Pythagoras, is laughable, as the Phaedo shows.
11.35Plato's Phaedo says gluttons become asses and the unjust become wolves, hawks and kites.
11.36Plato even has the civically virtuous reborn as bees, wasps and ants, which contradicts his own account of judgement.
11.37Theodoret sets Plato's punishments in the rivers of the underworld against his reincarnations into animals, mocking the 'reward' of becoming insects.
11.38Plato contradicts himself: the virtuous go to the Isles of the Blessed, yet are reborn as stinging and thieving insects.
11.39Wasps, bees and ants harm people, so the 'reward' is a punishment; Plato followed the fame of the doctrine's author without thinking.
11.40In the Phaedrus Plato says souls regain their wings only after ten thousand years, except philosophers and philosophic lovers of boys, who return after three thousand.
11.41Theodoret ridicules the Phaedrus myth for its invented reckoning of years and for giving lovers of boys the same reward as true philosophers.
11.42Plato's Republic has Orpheus reborn as a swan and Agamemnon as an eagle; Theodoret concludes Plato was joking about reincarnation, since he elsewhere teaches punishment in Hades.
11.43Theodoret turns to Plato's serious teaching, the myth of Er, who returned to life and reported what he saw after death.
11.44In the myth of Er, judges send the just upward to the right and the unjust downward to the left, marked with their deeds, and Er is made a messenger to men.
11.45Plato's myth of Er, sending the good to heaven and the wicked to Hades, is worthy of philosophy and shows that his reincarnation tales were jest.
11.46Plutarch's On the Soul tells of Antyllus, brought before the judge by mistake for the shoemaker Nicandas and sent back, which shows belief in judgement after death.
11.47Theodoret sums up the philosophers' views on the end and on judgement after death, some base, some nobler but mixed with myth.
11.48Scripture makes the fear of the Lord the beginning of good things and a life ordered by God's law the end.
11.49Christ in the Beatitudes calls blessed not the rich but the poor in spirit, the meek and the persecuted, and promises them the kingdom.
11.50Theodoret quotes the Beatitudes.
11.51The Beatitudes show that Christ directs us not to wealth or health but to the toils of virtue and its unspeakable rewards.
11.52The heavenly kingdom is beyond words; even Paul, who saw it, could not describe it.
11.53Paul makes eternal life the end for those freed from sin and enslaved to God.
11.54Theodoret explains Paul: freedom from sin would suffice, but God generously adds eternal life, showing the difference between sin and righteousness.
11.55Paul names the greatest gift: adoption as God's children and heirs with Christ through the Spirit.
11.56Paul repeats the promise of sonship and life with Christ in Galatians and to Timothy.
11.57Paul looks to reign with Christ and to the crown of righteousness laid up for all who love his appearing.
11.58Paul teaches the resurrection of the body, sown in corruption and raised incorruptible.
11.59Paul on the trumpet, the incorruptible resurrection, and the transformation of our body into the likeness of Christ's glorious body.
11.60Christ himself foretold that all in the tombs will hear his voice and rise, to life or to judgement.
11.61Christ's prophecy of the signs of the end and of the mourning of the tribes of the earth, which Theodoret takes as the lament of unbelievers.
11.62Theodoret recalls the parables of the virgins and of the talents before Christ's account of the last judgement.
11.63Theodoret quotes Christ's account of the last judgement and the blessing of those who served him in the needy.
11.64The righteous modestly deny their good deeds, but Christ counts what they did for the least as done for him, and sends the cursed into eternal fire.
11.65The condemned did none of the works of mercy, and unlike the modest righteous they claim to have done them, so they are refuted and punished.
11.66Theodoret invites the Greeks to compare the Gospel with Plato, whose better teachings resemble it.
11.67Plato's judges, Aeacus, Minos and Rhadamanthys, were flawed men; Christians await as judge their Creator, who knows even their thoughts.
11.68Christ will judge in the human nature he assumed, since the Godhead is invisible; hence he calls himself Son of Man, and Paul told the Athenians God will judge by a man raised from the dead.
11.69Theodoret argues that Christ's fulfilled predictions about this life prove his predictions about the life to come.
11.70Christ foretold the siege of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple and the dispersion of the Jews.
11.71The Jews' exile and the ruin of the temple, which Theodoret saw himself, fulfil Christ's prediction.
11.72Theodoret turns to Christ's prediction of the apostles' sufferings.
11.73Christ foretold that the apostles would be sent like sheep among wolves, handed over, scourged and hated.
11.74Christ foretold that his followers would be reviled and that the gospel would divide families.
11.75The apostles' mission amid dangers and the shrines of the martyrs everywhere show Christ's predictions fulfilled.
11.76Christ also foretold the Church's victory, and households divided by faith, where believing spouses strive to win the others, also fulfil his words.
11.77Christ's prediction that the anointing woman's deed would be told wherever the gospel is preached is fulfilled everywhere.
11.78Christ's fulfilled predictions are proofs that his promises about the life to come will also be fulfilled.
11.79Christ has even given honours he never promised, such as the veneration of the martyrs, which strengthens belief in what he did promise.
11.80If masters of games and employers keep their promises, God, who created out of goodness and brought the incarnation, will certainly keep his.
11.81God's true promises make Christian teaching profitable: the kingdom and endless life for the obedient, eternal punishment for unbelievers.
11.82Christ's explanation of the parable of the tares: the lawless cast into the furnace, the righteous shining like the sun.
11.83Theodoret ends the discourse by urging, not compelling, his readers to accept God's gifts.
11.84The discourse closes with Christ's call to hear.
12.1Theodoret opens his discourse on practical virtue with the image of a tree, whose roots are useless without branches, leaves and fruit.
12.2The body needs not only eyes but also feet and hands.
12.3Cloth needs woof as well as warp.
12.4These images show that knowledge of God, though the greatest good, does not by itself make a person perfect.
12.5Knowledge of truth and faith are the root, eye and warp of the soul, to which good action must be joined.
12.6As craftsmen learn in order to practise, lovers of piety must not only learn theology but also live by the laws of practical virtue.
12.7One who lives by God's laws becomes a living image of the Lawgiver, as Paul and Christ bid us imitate God.
12.8We imitate God by loving what he loves and hating what he hates, as his laws teach.
12.9David says God hates lawlessness, falsehood and violence.
12.10In Psalm 101 David portrays a man who shares God's hatred of evil and love of the faithful.
12.11We cannot imitate God's creative power or nature, but we can imitate his loves and hatreds.
12.12The Psalms show the prophet honouring God's friends, hating his enemies, and loving his law.
12.13Moses and all the prophets taught what God loves and what he hates.
12.14Christ requires doing God's will and keeping his commandments, not words alone.
12.15The parables of the talents, the virgins and the wedding garment show that God requires works as well as the gift received.
12.16Paul warns that wilful sin after knowing the truth leaves only fearful judgement.
12.17Hebrews argues from the law of Moses to the worse punishment of those who trample on the Son of God.
12.18Paul warns of falling into God's hands and of standing before Christ's judgement seat to be repaid for deeds.
12.19Plato in the Laws agrees that one must become like God to be dear to him, and that the temperate man is like God.
12.20Plato agrees that the virtuous imitate God; by 'temperate' he means one who keeps reason sound.
12.21Plato's Theaetetus urges flight from the evils of this world by becoming like God as far as possible.
12.22Plato's 'flight' means freedom from earthly affairs, not leaving the earth.
12.23Plato wisely limits likeness to God to what is possible for humans and joins justice and holiness to wisdom.
12.24Plato describes the true philosopher as ignorant of the agora, courts, political intrigue and revels.
12.25Plato's philosopher lives in the city only in body, while his mind ranges over earth and heaven.
12.26Plato's portrait of the philosopher fits Christian ascetics, not Greek philosophers: even Socrates lived amid the city's business, wars, feasts and theatre.
12.27Plato's ideal fits the Christian monks, who live on mountains and in deserts in contemplation, free of family and property, shaping their souls by God's laws.
12.28Plato's philosopher, living like a herdsman with a fold on a mountain and despising large estates, resembles the monks.
12.29No Greek philosopher lived on a mountain, and the Greeks resent the monks who do, though Plato praised that life.
12.30Plato's Republic pictures the truly just man who wishes to be, not to seem, good, stripped of all reputation.
12.31Plato's just man must be stripped of everything but justice and keep it until death while thought unjust.
12.32Christian ascetics, unlike the Cynics, pursue virtue for its own sake, hiding it from all but God.
12.33The Greeks ignore true ascetics and condemn the whole monastic life because of a few unworthy monks, like hating humans because of an ape that mimics them.
12.34Plato too says it is unsound to condemn a whole kind because of those badly led.
12.35Plato said true philosophers are few, as the Orphic saying has it, and Christ said many are called but few chosen.
12.36In the Epinomis Plato says few can be blessed in this life.
12.37The Greeks should admire ascetics who live above nature and pardon those who fall through innate passions, rather than the reverse.
12.38Virtue is hard for beings of flesh, as Homer and Plato's Cephalus, whose bodily pleasures faded with age, acknowledge.
12.39Plato's Cephalus rejoices to have escaped bodily pleasures as from a raging master.
12.40Plato's Gorgias praises the rare man who lives justly though he has power to do wrong.
12.41Plato's Gorgias concludes that doing wrong is worse than suffering it and that one must be, not seem, good.
12.42In the Crito Socrates teaches that one must never return wrong or harm for harm.
12.43Socrates' and Plato's moral teaching accords with nature, for God placed knowledge of good and evil in human nature, and so many Greeks and barbarians hated injustice.
12.44Barbarian examples of justice and simplicity: the Hyperboreans and the Brahmans.
12.45The Scythian Anacharsis showed self-control even in sleep, guarding his tongue more carefully than his body.
12.46Chiron was a teacher of justice; Hesiod and Simonides describe virtue's path as steep and hard.
12.47The poets urged the virtue Homer saw in Chiron and the Hippemolgi; Antisthenes preferred madness to pleasure.
12.48Diogenes the Cynic, Antisthenes' pupil, professed philosophy but was a slave of pleasure, coupling in public.
12.49Crates praised freedom from pleasure and prescribed hunger or a noose against lust, yet married Hipparchia publicly in the Cynic manner.
12.50Aristippus kept company with the courtesan Lais, and the Peripatetics praised virtue while honouring pleasure, as they themselves report of Aristotle.
12.51Aristocles reports the charge that Aristotle bathed in oil he then sold and travelled with dozens of bronze dishes.
12.52Aristotle made happiness depend on bodily and external goods, as the Platonist Atticus showed.
12.53Plato, unlike Aristotle, says the body should be cared for only for the sake of the soul's harmony.
12.54Paul likewise bids Christians put off the works of darkness and make no provision for the flesh.
12.55The body should be cared for only so that it serves the soul, in which Plato agrees with Christian teaching.
12.56Desire begins with sight and grows by hope, memory and habit, as virtue grows from its first shoot; Socrates warned against needless eating and drinking and the kisses of the beautiful.
12.58Theodoret charges that Socrates' words were not matched by deeds, for Plato's dialogues show him seeking out beautiful youths in the gymnasia.
12.59Theodoret declines to repeat Alcibiades' speech about Socrates in the Symposium as harmful.
12.60The Symposium shows Socrates drinking all night while the others slept.
12.61Porphyry, citing Aristoxenus, says Socrates was quick-tempered.
12.62Aristoxenus found Socrates uniquely persuasive in voice, bearing and appearance.
12.63When angry, Socrates was said to restrain neither word nor deed, and Porphyry also shows him a slave to pleasures.
12.64Porphyry, after Aristoxenus, reports that Socrates had two wives at once, Xanthippe and Myrto.
12.65Socrates' two wives quarrelled and turned on him because he laughed at them; he was also quarrelsome in conversation.
12.66Porphyry reports that Socrates as a boy disobeyed his father.
12.67Porphyry says that Archelaus, pupil of Anaxagoras, became Socrates' lover and teacher.
12.68Porphyry's reports show that the philosophers praised virtue in word but served pleasure.
12.69From Porphyry's and Plato's reports Theodoret concludes that Socrates' philosophy did not govern his life.
12.70A letter ascribed to Xenophon accuses Plato of seeking Egyptian and Pythagorean lore and the favour of tyrants.
12.71Plato lived in luxury at the court of Dionysius in Syracuse, was imprisoned and sold as a slave, and, says Plutarch, traded oil in Egypt.
12.72Despite these faults, Theodoret admires and urges others to profit from what Plato said well.
12.73Greek women such as Lysidice, Philotera and Theano were praised for their modesty and chastity.
12.74Theodoret approves Plato's praise of marriage as a means of continuing the race, and blames Democritus and Epicurus for rejecting marriage and children for the sake of pleasure.
12.75The Stoics counted marriage indifferent, but Scripture praises chosen celibacy, ordains chaste marriage, and condemns sexual immorality.
12.76Paul honours marriage, permits it to those without self-control, and forbids sexual immorality.
12.77Christian teachers prescribed a life fit for rational beings, while Plato wrote licentious laws on marriage and pederasty, and Hippodamus grounded friendship partly on benefits.
12.78Christ taught a love that lays down life for friends and loves enemies, while Hippodamus based friendship on benefits.
12.79Friendship does not come from benefits; rather benefits come from friendship.
12.80Theodoret urges the Greeks to move from human teachings to the perfection of the divine, without excuses.
12.81The Greeks praise the Gospel's laws but use Christians who break them to discredit the laws.
12.82As no one condemns a craft because of bad craftsmen, the Greeks should blame transgressors, not the Gospel's laws.
12.83Blaming the laws for those who break them is as absurd as blaming sight for blindness.
12.84As a carpenter's mistakes are not the fault of his straight line, transgressions are not the fault of the laws.
12.85The laws are a straight rule; those who stray from them, not the laws, are to blame.
12.86A patient who disobeys his doctor, not the doctor, is to blame for his worsening illness.
12.87The Greeks should praise the Lawgiver and his laws, honour those who keep them, and judge transgressors with distinction.
12.88Not all transgressions are alike: some are involuntary, like accidental killings, which Herodotus too records.
12.89The law pardons involuntary acts such as a flying axe-head, and among voluntary acts distinguishes killing in sudden anger from premeditated murder.
12.90Some fall into lust suddenly and unwillingly, others make a life of seeking it.
12.91Some struggle against appetite and lose; others feed and inflame it deliberately.
12.92Weak sinners should be helped and healed, while the openly swinish should be lamented and given Sardanapalus's epitaph.
12.93Theodoret quotes the epitaph of Sardanapalus.
12.94Sardanapalus's epitaph is false: the dead keep nothing of their pleasures, only the stench of a lawless life that torments the soul.
12.95Theodoret concludes: the Greek philosophers' teachings are forgotten, while the Gospel flourishes everywhere and the false gods have been driven out.
12.96Porphyry himself complained that since Jesus has been honoured the gods, Asclepius among them, no longer help the city.
12.97Porphyry's complaint concedes that faith in Jesus after the cross has put the gods to flight, like bats before the light.
12.98Theodoret ends by inviting the Greeks to share the light and offering his work as a healing remedy.

About this work

Author: Theodoret of Cyrus
Attribution: authentic · Ascribed to Theodoret in the manuscripts; his authorship is not disputed (not yet checked).
Standing: Honoured by the Orthodox tradition. Honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by: Orthodox.
Date: ca. 437 (approximate) · An early work of Theodoret, written after he became bishop of Cyrrhus in 423 and before his Eranistes (447); a date near 437 is often proposed (not yet checked).
Written at: Cyrrhus, Syria (probable)
Language: Greek
Genre: apology
Reference system: discourse.section: 0 = the prologue (Προθεωρία), 1-12 = the twelve discourses (λόγοι, called διαλέξεις in the prologue); section numbers are Raeder's, printed in the margin of the Teubner edition, and restart in each discourse. Pages are Raeder's. Prologue and discourses 1-10 staged; 11-12 not yet.
SBL abbreviation: Graec. aff. cur.Not yet checked
Clavis: CPG 6210 (not yet checked)
Text from: J. Raeder, ed., Theodoreti Graecarum affectionum curatio, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Leipzig: Teubner, 1904) (Printed edition in the public domain (1904); Greek text from our own Tesseract OCR of the archive.org page images (item MN41741ucmf_6); Raeder's apparatus not reproduced)
Critical editions: P. Canivet, ed. and trans., Thérapeutique des maladies helléniques, 2 vols., Sources chrétiennes 57 (Paris: Cerf, 1958); cited only; J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca 83 (Paris, 1864), with the Latin of J. Sirmond; cited only (cited, not reproduced)

Cure of Greek Maladies

Contents

About this work