Letters 233–237

To Amphilochius, who had asked a question. 1. I know it myself, having heard it, and I recognize the constitution of men. What then shall we say to this? That the mind is a good thing, and in it we have what is according to the image of our Creator. And the activity of the mind is a good thing; and being ever in motion, it often forms images of things that are not as though they were, but often it goes straight to the truth. But since two powers are attached to it, according to the view of us who have believed in God, the one evil, that of the demons, drawing us along with them into their own apostasy, and the other more divine and good, opening the way for us to likeness to God, when the mind remains by itself, it sees small things, things commensurate with itself; but when it gives itself up to those who deceive it, having destroyed its own faculty of judgment, it consorts with monstrous fantasies. Then it thinks that wood is not wood but God, and judges gold to be not money but an object of worship. But if it inclines to the more divine side, and receives the graces of the Spirit, then it becomes able to grasp divine things, so far as is commensurate with its nature. There are, then, three conditions of life, as it were, and equal in number to these are the activities of our mind. Either our pursuits are evil, and clearly the movements of our mind are evil, such as adulteries, thefts, idolatries, slanders, strifes, outbursts of anger, rivalries, puffings up, and all that the apostle Paul enumerated among the works of the flesh; or there is an intermediate activity of the soul, which has nothing either condemned or praiseworthy, such as the acquisition of the mechanical arts, which we call intermediate, since by their own nature they incline neither to virtue nor to vice. For what vice is there in the art of steering, or in medicine? Yet neither are they virtues in themselves, but they incline to one or the other of the opposites according to the choice of those who use them. But the mind that has been blended with the Godhead of the Spirit is now a beholder of the great contemplations, and beholds the divine beauties; yet only so far as grace grants, and as its constitution can receive. 2. So let them leave those dialectical questions, and examine the truth, not maliciously but reverently. The mind's faculty of judgment has been given us for understanding the truth. And our God is truth itself. So the first task of the mind is to know our God; and to know him as the infinitely great can be known by the very small. For it is not the case that, because the eyes are appointed for perceiving visible things, all visible things are at once brought under our sight. For not even the hemisphere of the heaven is seen in one glance; an impression of sight surrounds us, but in truth there are many things in it, not to say all, that are unknown: the nature of the stars, their sizes, their distances, their motions, conjunctions, separations, their other relations, the very essence of the firmament, the depth from its concave circumference to its convex surface. Yet we would not say that the heaven is invisible because of what is unknown, but visible because of our moderate perception of it. So too concerning God. If the mind has been harmed by demons, it will practice idolatry, or be turned aside to some other form of impiety; but if it has given itself up to the help of the Spirit, it will know the truth and come to know God. But it will know him, as the Apostle said, in part, and in the life after this more perfectly. "For when the perfect comes, what is in part will be done away." So the mind's faculty of judgment is both good and given for a useful end, the perception of God; yet it works only so far as it can contain.

To the same, in answer to another question. 1. "Do you worship what you know, or what you do not know?" If we answer, "What we know, that we worship," their reply comes quickly: "What is the essence of the one worshiped?" And if we confess that we do not know the essence, they turn on us again and say, "So you worship what you do not know." But we say that "knowing" has many meanings. For we say that we know the greatness of God, and his power, and his wisdom, and his goodness, and his providence by which he cares for us, and the justice of his judgment; not the essence itself. So the question is a captious one. For he who says that he does not know the essence has not confessed that he does not know God, since our notion of God is gathered from the many things we have listed. "But God is simple," he says, "and everything about him that you might list as knowable belongs to his essence." But this is a sophism containing countless absurdities. When so many things have been listed, are all of these names of one essence? And are his fearfulness and his love for humankind equivalent to one another, his justice and his creative power, his foreknowledge and his recompensing, his majesty and his providence? Or whichever of these we name, do we declare his essence? For if they say this, let them not ask whether we know the essence of God, but let them inquire of us whether we know God to be fearful, or just, or loving to humankind. These we confess that we know. But if they say that the essence is something else, let them not mislead us by appealing to his simplicity. For they themselves have confessed that the essence is one thing and each of the things listed another. The activities are various, but the essence is simple. We say that we know our God from his activities, but we do not undertake to draw near to his essence itself. For his activities come down to us, but his essence remains inaccessible. 2. "But if you do not know the essence," he says, "you do not know him." But you, turn it back on him: "If you say that you know the essence, you do not know him." For the man bitten by a mad dog, who sees the dog in his cup, does not see more than the healthy; rather he is pitiable because he thinks he sees what he does not see. Do not then admire him for his claim, but judge him pitiable for his derangement. Know, then, that the saying is a jest: "If you do not know the essence of God, you worship what you do not know." But I know that he is; what his essence is, I consider to be beyond understanding. How then am I saved? Through faith. And faith is content to know that God is, not what he is; and that he rewards those who seek him. Knowledge of the divine essence, then, is the perception of his incomprehensibility; and what is worshiped is not that whose essence has been comprehended, but that whose essence is known to exist. … [The believer] knows from the things he believes; and conversely, from the things he knows he also believes. And we know God from his power. So we believe in him who is known, and we worship him who is believed.

To the same, in answer to another question. 1. Which comes first, knowledge or faith? We say that, in general, in the case of learning, faith precedes knowledge; but in our teaching, if anyone says that knowledge comes before faith, we do not disagree; knowledge, however, commensurate with human comprehension. For in learning one must first believe that the letter is called alpha, and, having learned the shapes of the letters and their pronunciation, afterwards gain also the exact understanding of the force of the letter. But in faith concerning God, the notion that God exists comes first; and this we gather from his works. For we recognize him as wise and powerful and good, and all his invisible attributes, perceiving them from the creation of the world. So too we accept him as our Master. For since God is the Creator of the whole world, and we are a part of the world, God is our Creator too. Faith follows this knowledge, and worship follows such faith. 2. But now, since the word "knowledge" has many meanings, those who make fun of the simpler sort, and put on displays of paradoxes, like those who in theaters steal the pebbles before everyone's eyes, sweep up the whole by asking in general terms. For since the word "knowledge" extends widely, and something is knowable by number, by size, by power, by its mode of existence, by the time of its generation, by its essence, these men, taking in the whole in a single question, if they catch us confessing that we know, demand of us knowledge of the essence; and if they see us cautious in our answer, they turn the reproach of impiety upon us. But we confess that we know what is knowable of God, and also that there is something that escapes our comprehension. So if you ask me whether I know what sand is, and I answer that I know, you will plainly be slandering me if at once you demand its number too; because your first question bore on the kind of thing sand is, but the second, a slander, has been turned to its number. This sophism is like someone saying: "Do you know Timothy? Then if you know Timothy, you know his nature too. But you have admitted that you know Timothy; so give us an account of Timothy's nature." But I both know Timothy and do not know him; not, however, in the same respect and in the same way. For it is not in the respect in which I know him that I do not know him; I know him in one respect and am ignorant of him in another. I know him by his features and his other properties; but I do not know his essence. For by this reasoning I both know and do not know myself too. I know who I am; but I do not know myself, inasmuch as I am ignorant of my essence. 3. Then let them explain to us how Paul said, "Now we know in part." Do we know his essence in part, as though we knew parts of his essence? But that is absurd, for God is without parts. Or do we know it whole? How then, "when the perfect comes, what is in part will be done away"? And what are the idolaters charged with? Is it not that, "knowing God, they did not glorify him as God"? And why are the foolish Galatians reproached by Paul, when he says: "But now, having known God, or rather having been known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elements?" And how was God "known in Judah"? Was it because in Judah his essence, whatever it was, was recognized? "The ox knows its owner," it says; by your account, then, the ox knew the essence of its Lord; "and the donkey its master's manger": so the donkey knew the essence of the manger. "But Israel has not known me," it says. By your account Israel is charged with this: that it did not recognize the essence of God, whatever it is. "Pour out your wrath," it says, "on the nations that do not know you": that is, those that have not comprehended your essence. But knowledge has many senses, as we have said. For there is understanding of him who created us, and perception of his wonders, and the keeping of his commandments, and intimacy with him. But these men, thrusting all these aside, drag knowledge down to one meaning, the contemplation of the very essence of God. "You shall put it," it says, "before the testimonies, from where I will be known to you." Does "I will be known" mean "I will show you my essence"? "The Lord knew those who are his." Did he then know the essence of his own, and is he ignorant of the essence of the disobedient? "Adam knew his wife." Did he come to know her essence? And of Rebecca it says, "a virgin; no man had known her"; and, "How shall this be, since I do not know a man?" Did no one recognize Rebecca's essence? Does Mary mean, "I have perceived the essence of no man"? Or is it not the custom of Scripture to call marital union "knowing"? And God's being known from the mercy seat means that he will be manifested to those who worship him. And "the Lord knew those who are his" means that he received them, through their good works, into intimacy with himself.

To the same Amphilochius. 1. The Gospel saying about our Lord Jesus Christ's not knowing the day and the hour of the end has already been inquired into by many, and it is especially and constantly put forward by the Anomoeans to destroy the glory of the Only-begotten, as a proof of his unlikeness in essence and his inferiority in dignity; since one who does not know all things could neither have the same nature, nor be thought of in one likeness, with him who has encompassed the knowledge of all things by his foreknowledge and his grasp of what is to come. This has now been put before us by your understanding as though it were something new. What, then, we heard from the fathers from childhood, and accepted without examination because of our love for what is good, this we can say. It will not dissolve the shamelessness of the fighters against Christ (for what argument could appear stronger than their impulse?); but to those who love the Lord, and who possess a conviction from faith stronger than proof from argument, it may perhaps provide sufficient assurance. The word "no one" seems to be universal, so that not even one person is excepted by this term; but it is not used so in Scripture, as we have observed in the saying, "No one is good but one, God." For not even there does the Son say this putting himself outside the nature of the good. But since the Father is the first good, we believe that "no one" is said with "first" understood. And in "no one knows the Son except the Father," not even there does he charge the Spirit with ignorance; he testifies that the knowledge of his own nature belongs first to the Father. So too we think that "no one knows" is said by one who refers the first knowledge of things that are and of things that will be to the Father, and who in everything shows people the first cause. For otherwise how does the saying agree with the other testimonies of Scripture, or how can it accord with the common notions of us who have believed that the Only-begotten is the image of the invisible God, an image not of a bodily form but of the Godhead itself and of the majesties conceived in the essence of God; an image of power, an image of wisdom, inasmuch as Christ is called "the power of God and the wisdom of God"? And knowledge is clearly a part of wisdom; and he does not image it all, if he falls short in some things. And how did the Father, through whom he made the ages, not show him the smallest part of the ages, that day and hour? Or how does the maker of all things fall short of the knowledge of the smallest part of what he has created? And he who says that near the end such and such signs will appear in heaven and in places on earth, how is he ignorant of the end itself? For when he says, "The end is not yet," he defines it not as one in doubt, but as one who knows. Then too, for one who considers fairly, the Lord speaks to people of many things from the human side: for instance, "Give me to drink" is a word of the Lord meeting a bodily need; and yet he who asked was not soulless flesh, but Godhead using flesh endowed with a soul. So now too, if one takes the ignorance as belonging to him who accepted all things in the dispensation, and advanced with God and men in wisdom and grace, he will not go beyond a pious understanding. 2. It would be a task for your diligence to set out the Gospel sayings and to compare with one another those of Matthew and Mark. For these alone appear to agree with each other on this passage. Matthew's wording runs thus: "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but the Father alone"; and Mark's: "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father." What then is worth noting in these? That Matthew said nothing about the Son's not knowing, but seems to agree with Mark in sense by saying, "but the Father alone." We think that "alone" is said in contrast with the angels; but that the Son is not included with his own servants in the ignorance. For he does not lie who said, "All that the Father has is mine"; and one of the things he has is the knowledge of that day and hour. So in Matthew's wording the Lord passed over his own person in silence, as something agreed, and said that the angels do not know, but that the Father alone knows; saying tacitly that the Father's knowledge is his own too, because he said elsewhere, "As the Father knows me, so I know the Father." And if the Father knows the Son wholly and entirely, so as to know all the wisdom stored up in him, then clearly in equal measure he will also be known by the Son, with all the wisdom that is in him and the foreknowledge of things to come. This, then, is the explanation we think fit for what stands in Matthew: "but the Father alone." But Mark's saying, which seems plainly to exclude the Son too from the knowledge, we understand thus: no one knows, neither the angels of God; nor would the Son have known, except the Father; that is, the cause of the Son's knowing is from the Father. And this interpretation is not forced for one who listens fairly, since "alone" is not added, as it is in Matthew. So the sense in Mark is this: "But of that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels of God; nor would the Son have known, except the Father"; for the knowledge was given to him from the Father. And this is the most reverent thing, and the one most worthy of God, to say of the Son: that from him with whom he is of the same essence he has both his knowing and his being beheld in all the wisdom and glory befitting his Godhead. 3. Concerning Jeconiah, whom the prophet Jeremiah says was banished from the land of Judea, when he says: "Jeconiah was dishonored like a vessel for which there is no use"; and that he and his seed were cast out, and there shall not rise from his seed one sitting on the throne of David, a ruler in Judah: the meaning is simple and clear. For when Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the kingdom was dissolved, and there were no longer hereditary successions of rule as before. At first the descendants of David lived in captivity; and when those with Salathiel and Zerubbabel returned, they led the people in a more popular manner, the rule thereafter passing to the priesthood, because of the mingling of the priestly and the royal tribe. Hence the Lord is both king and high priest in things relating to God. And the royal tribe did not fail until the coming of Christ; yet the seed of Jeconiah no longer sat on the throne of David. For clearly the royal dignity is what is called the "throne." You surely remember from the history that all Judea was tributary to David, and the land of Idumea and of Moab, and the neighboring parts of Syria and those further off as far as Mesopotamia, and on the other side as far as the river of Egypt. If then none of those who came after appeared in so great a dignity, how is the prophet's word not true, that no one of the seed of Jeconiah will any longer sit on the throne of David? For no one from him appears to have attained this dignity. Yet the tribe of Judah did not fail until he came for whom it was reserved; and he himself did not sit on the bodily throne, the Jewish kingdom having then passed to Herod, the son of Antipater the Ascalonite, and to his sons, who divided Judea into four principalities, while Pilate was governor and Tiberius held the whole power of the Roman empire. But by the throne of David on which the Lord sat he means the kingdom that cannot be destroyed. For he is the expectation of the nations, not of the smallest part of the world. "For there shall be," it says, "the root of Jesse, and he who rises to rule the nations; in him the nations will hope." "I have given you as a covenant of the race, as a light of the nations." And: "I will establish his seed forever and ever, and his throne as the days of heaven." So he remained also a priest, even though he did not take the scepters of Judea; and God is King of all the earth; and the blessing of Jacob was confirmed: "And in his seed all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed, and all the nations shall call Christ blessed." 4. To the clever Encratites, with their solemn problem, "Why do we too not eat everything?", let this be said: that we also turn in disgust from excrement. For as to dignity, meats are to us like green herbs; but in discerning what is beneficial, just as among vegetables we separate the harmful from the suitable, so among meats too we distinguish the harmful from the useful. For hemlock too is a vegetable, just as vulture's flesh is meat; but no one in his senses would eat henbane, nor touch dog-flesh unless great necessity pressed him; yet he who did eat would not have broken the law. 5. As for those who say that human affairs are governed by fate, do not seek arguments from us, but pierce them with the weapons of their own rhetoric; for the problem is too long for my present weakness. About the rising up in baptism, I do not know what led you to ask, if you have accepted that the immersion fulfills the type of the three days. For it is impossible to be baptized three times without coming up as many times. And we accent φάγος ("glutton") on the next to last syllable. 6. Essence and hypostasis have this difference, which the common has to the particular: as "animal" stands to a particular man. Therefore we confess one essence in the Godhead, so as not to give a different account of its being; but a particular hypostasis, so that our notion of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit may be unconfused and clear. For if we do not conceive the distinct characteristics of each, such as fatherhood, sonship, and sanctification, but confess God only from the common notion of being, it is impossible to give a sound account of the faith. We must, then, add the particular to the common, and so confess the faith: the Godhead is common, fatherhood is particular; and joining them we must say, "I believe in God the Father." And again in the confession of the Son we must do the same, join the particular to the common, and say, "I believe in God the Son." Likewise also of the Holy Spirit, shaping the utterance in the same sequence, we must say, "I believe also in the divine Spirit, the Holy." So throughout, the unity is preserved in the confession of the one Godhead, and the particularity of the persons is confessed in the distinction of the properties conceived about each. But those who say that essence and hypostasis are the same are compelled to confess only different persons, and, in shrinking from saying three hypostases, they are found not to escape the evil of Sabellius, who himself, though he often confuses the notion, tries to distinguish the persons, saying that the same hypostasis changes its form according to the need that arises at each time. 7. And as to what you asked, how the intermediate and indifferent things that concern us are governed, whether by some spontaneous chance or by the just providence of God, we say this: that health and sickness, wealth and poverty, glory and dishonor, inasmuch as they do not make those who have them good, are not among the things that are good by nature; but inasmuch as they provide a certain ease to our life, the preferable ones are more to be chosen than their opposites, and are said to have some value. These things are given by God to some for stewardship, as to Abraham and Job and such men; to the worse they are a challenge to improve in character; so that he who after so great a welcome from God persists in injustice makes himself indisputably liable to condemnation. The just man neither turns to wealth when it is present nor seeks it when it is absent; for he is not one who enjoys what has been given, but a steward of it. And no one in his senses runs after the business of distributing other people's goods, unless he looks to the glory that comes from the many, who admire and envy those set in some authority. The just accept sickness as a contest, expecting great crowns for their endurance. To set anyone else over the governance of these things is not only absurd but impious.

[To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.] … but fond of heresy; and not so much loving them as being hostile to us. For he convened a synod of the godless in the middle of winter in Galatia; and he expelled Hypsis and set up Ecdicius in his place. He also ordered my brother to be arrested, on the accusation of one man, and an obscure one at that. Then, after being occupied for a little while at the court, he came back to us breathing anger and murder, and with a single word handed over all the clergy of the Church in Caesarea to the curia; and at Sebaste he sat for many days sorting people out, naming those in communion with us as curials and condemning them to public service, while treating those attached to Eustathius with the highest honors. Again he ordered a synod of Galatians and Pontics to be convened at Nyssa. They obeyed, and having gathered, sent to the Churches a man whom I cannot describe; but your wisdom can guess what sort of man is likely to serve the purposes of such people. And now, as I was writing this, this same assembly set out for Sebaste, to join with Eustathius and with him to overthrow the affairs of the Nicopolitans. For the blessed Theodotus has fallen asleep. So far they have repelled the first attacks of the vicar nobly and steadfastly; for he tried to persuade them to receive Eustathius and to accept a bishop through him; but when he saw that they would not yield, he is now trying to install the man they have chosen with a more violent hand. There is also a whispered expectation of a synod, at which they intend to summon us and either take us as communicants or treat us in their customary way. Such, then, are the affairs of the Churches. As for how I myself am in body …