Letters 8

To the Caesareans: a defense of his withdrawal, and on the faith. 1. I have often wondered what you can have felt toward us, and why you are so taken with our littleness, small and slight as it is and perhaps having nothing lovable about it, and urge us with words, reminding us of friendship and homeland, trying with fatherly affection to turn us back to you like fugitives. I confess that I have become a fugitive, and I would not deny it; but you may now learn the cause, since you long to. Above all, struck at the time by what I did not expect, like those who are suddenly stunned by sudden noises, I did not keep hold of my reasonings, but “I fled far away” and lodged a considerable time away from you; and then a certain longing crept into me for the divine doctrines and for the philosophy concerned with them. “For how,” I said, “could I master the evil that dwells with us? Who will be a Laban to me, freeing me from Esau and training me for the highest philosophy?” But since, with God, we have reached our aim as far as we could, having found a vessel of election and a deep well, I mean Gregory, the mouth of Christ, grant us, I beg you, a little, a little time. We ask it not because we welcome life in the cities (for it has not escaped us that the evil one contrives his deceit against men through such things), but because we judge association with the saints most profitable. For by speaking often about the divine doctrines and hearing about them, we acquire a habit of contemplation that is hard to lose. So much for our own affairs. 2. But you, my divine and of all most beloved heads, beware of the shepherds of the Philistines, lest one of them secretly stop up your wells and muddy the purity of the knowledge of the faith. For this is always their care: not to teach the simpler souls from the divine Scriptures, but to falsify the truth by outside wisdom. For he who brings “unbegotten” and “begotten” into our faith, and teaches that he who always is once was not, and that he who is Father by nature and always became Father, and that the Holy Spirit is not eternal, is he not plainly a Philistine? He envies the sheep of our patriarch, so that they may not drink from the pure water that springs up to eternal life, but may draw upon themselves the prophet's saying: “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug for themselves broken cisterns, which will not be able to hold water.” Whereas one ought to confess God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, as the divine words and those who have understood them more loftily have taught. To those who reproach us with tritheism let this be said: that we confess one God, not in number but in nature. For everything that is called one in number is not truly one, nor simple in nature; but God is confessed by all to be simple and uncompounded. Therefore God is not one in number. What I mean is this. We say that the world is one in number, but not one in nature, nor anything simple; for we divide it into the elements of which it consists, fire, water, air, and earth. Again, a man is called one in number, for we often say “one man”; but he is not anything simple, being composed of body and soul. Likewise we shall call an angel one in number, but not one in nature nor simple; for we conceive the hypostasis of the angel as essence together with sanctification. If, then, everything one in number is not one in nature, and what is one in nature and simple is not one in number, and we say that God is one in nature, how do they bring number in against us, when we banish it altogether from that blessed and intelligible nature? For number belongs to quantity, and quantity is joined to bodily nature: number belongs to bodily nature. But we have believed our Lord to be the Creator of bodies. Therefore every number signifies the things that have been allotted a material and circumscribed nature, while the monad and unity signify the simple and incomprehensible essence. So whoever confesses the Son of God or the Holy Spirit to be a number or a creature unwittingly introduces a material and circumscribed nature. And by circumscribed I mean not only what is contained by place, but also what is encompassed by the foreknowledge of him who was about to bring it from non-being into being, and what can be comprehended by knowledge. Everything holy, then, that has a circumscribed nature and an acquired holiness is not incapable of evil. But the Son and the Holy Spirit are the source of sanctification, by which all rational creation is sanctified in proportion to its virtue. 3. Yet we, according to the true account, say that the Son is neither like nor unlike the Father. For each of these is equally impossible. Like and unlike are said with respect to qualities, and the divine is free of quality. But confessing identity of nature, we both accept the “same in essence” and avoid composition, since the God and Father who is God by essence has begotten the God and Son who is God by essence. From this the “same in essence” is shown; for he who is God by essence is of the same essence as him who is God by essence. Since, however, a man too is called god, as in “I said, You are gods,” and a demon is called god, as in “The gods of the nations are demons,” the former are so named by grace, the latter falsely. But God alone is God by essence. And when I say “alone,” I indicate the holy and uncreated essence of God. For “alone” is said both of a particular man and of a universal nature as such. Of a particular one, as, say, of Paul, that he alone was caught up to the third heaven and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter; of the universal nature, as when David says, “Man, his days are as grass.” For here he indicates not a particular man but the universal nature; for every man is transient and mortal. So also we understand these to be said of the nature: “who alone has immortality,” and “to the only wise God,” and “No one is good but one, God” (for “one” here means the same as “alone”), and “who alone stretched out the heaven,” and again, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve,” and “There is no God besides me.” For “one” and “alone” are said of God in Scripture not to distinguish him from the Son or the Holy Spirit, but in contrast to those who are not gods but are falsely so called, as in “The Lord alone led them, and there was no foreign god with them,” and “The children of Israel put away the Baals and the groves of Astaroth, and served the Lord alone”; and again Paul: “As there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” But here we ask why, having said “one God,” he was not content with that word (for we said that “alone” and “one,” said of God, indicate the nature), but added “the Father” and made mention of Christ. I suppose, then, that Paul, the vessel of election, did not think it enough here merely to proclaim God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, which he indicated by the phrase “one God,” unless by adding “the Father” he also indicated him from whom are all things, and by mentioning the Lord he signified the Word through whom are all things, and again, by including “Jesus Christ,” he announced the incarnation, set forth the passion, and made the resurrection manifest. For “Jesus Christ” conveys such ideas to us. That is why before the passion the Lord Jesus Christ declines to be proclaimed, and charges the disciples to tell no one that he is Jesus the Christ. For he purposed, when he had completed the economy, after the resurrection from the dead and the taking up into heaven, to allow them to preach him as Jesus the Christ. Such also are “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” and “Believe in God, and believe in me,” the Holy Spirit everywhere making our thought secure, lest, approaching the one, we fall away from the other, and, attending to theology, we despise the economy, and impiety arise in us through what is lacking. 4. The words of divine Scripture, then, which our opponents take and twist to suit their own conscience and bring against us to destroy the glory of the Only-begotten, let us examine thus, unfolding their meaning as far as we can. First let “I live because of the Father” be set before us. For this is one of the arrows shot at heaven by those who use it impiously. Here the saying does not, I think, name the life before the ages (for everything that lives through another cannot be life itself, just as what is heated by another cannot be heat itself; and Christ our God has said, “I am the life”), but this life in the flesh that came to be in this time, which he lived because of the Father. For by his will he came to dwell in the life of men. And he did not say, “I lived because of the Father,” but “I live because of the Father,” clearly indicating the present time. He can also mean by “life” the life that Christ lives having the Word of God in himself. And that this is what is meant we shall know from what follows: “and he who eats me,” he says, “will live because of me.” For we eat his flesh and drink his blood, becoming partakers, through the incarnation and the perceptible life, of the Word and of Wisdom. For by “flesh and blood” he named his whole mystical sojourn, and indicated the teaching made up of the practical, the natural, and the theological, by which the soul is nourished and is meanwhile prepared for the contemplation of realities. And this is perhaps what is meant by the saying. 5. And again: “My Father is greater than I.” For this saying too is used by the ungrateful creatures, the offspring of the evil one. But I believe that even from this word it is shown that the Son is of the same essence as the Father. For I know that comparisons are properly made between things of the same nature. We say that an angel is greater than an angel, a man more just than a man, a bird swifter than a bird. If, then, comparisons are made between things of the same kind, and the Father is said to be greater than the Son by comparison, the Son is of the same essence as the Father. But there is also another meaning contained in the saying. What wonder is it if he confessed the Father greater than himself, being the Word and having become flesh, when he was seen to be less than the angels in glory and than men in form? “You made him a little lower than the angels,” it says; and again, “him who was made a little lower than the angels”; and “We saw him, and he had no form nor beauty, but his form was failing beyond all men.” All these things he endured because of his great love for the creature he had formed, to save the lost sheep and bring it back to join the saved, and to lead back healthy to his own homeland the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and so fell among robbers. Or will the heretic reproach him with the manger, in which he who was without reason was fed by the Word? And will he bring up his poverty, that the carpenter's son had no little bed? This is why the Son is less than the Father: because for your sake he became dead, to free you from deadness and make you a partaker of heavenly life. It is as if someone were to blame the physician because, bending over sufferings, he shares in their stench in order to heal the sufferers. 6. For your sake he is also ignorant of the hour and the day of the judgment, though nothing escapes the true Wisdom, for all things came to be through it, and no man is ever ignorant of what he has made. But he arranges this because of your weakness, so that sinners may not fall into despondency at the shortness of the appointed time, as though no time for repentance were left, nor, again, those who are waging a long war against the opposing power desert their post because of the length of time. So by his assumed ignorance he provides for both: for the one, shortening the time for the sake of the good contest; for the other, storing up a time for repentance because of their sins. In the Gospels, then, he numbered himself among the ignorant, as I said, because of the weakness of the many; but in the Acts of the Apostles, conversing privately with them as with the perfect, he speaks excepting himself: “It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father has set in his own authority.” Let these things be said rather broadly, according to the first approach. Now the meaning of the saying must be examined more loftily, and the door of knowledge must be knocked, if perhaps I may rouse the master of the house, who gives spiritual loaves to those who ask him, since those whom we wish to feast are friends and brothers. 7. The holy disciples of our Savior, having gone beyond contemplation as far as is possible for men, and having been purified by the Word, seek the end, and long to know the final blessedness, which our Lord declared that both his angels and he himself do not know: calling “day” the whole exact comprehension of the purposes of God, and “hour” the contemplation of the One and the Monad, the knowledge of which he assigned to the Father alone. I suppose, then, that God is said to know concerning himself that which he is, and not to know that which he is not. For God is said to know justice and wisdom, being justice itself and wisdom itself, but not to know injustice and wickedness, for the God who created us is not injustice and wickedness. If, then, God is said to know concerning himself that which he is, and not to know that which he is not, and our Lord, according to the aspect of the incarnation and the more elementary teaching, is not the final object of desire, then our Savior does not know the end and the final blessedness. “But not even the angels know,” he says: that is, neither the contemplation that is in them nor the principles of their ministries are the final object of desire. For their knowledge too is coarse in comparison with “face to face.” “But the Father alone,” he says, “knows,” since he himself is the end and the final blessedness. For when we no longer know God in mirrors, nor through things other than himself, but approach him as the one and only, then we shall know the final end. For they say that the kingdom of Christ is all material knowledge, while that of God the Father is immaterial knowledge and, as one might say, the contemplation of the Godhead itself. But our Lord too is himself the end and the final blessedness, according to the aspect of the Word. For what does he say in the Gospel? “And I will raise him up on the last day”: calling “resurrection” the passage from material knowledge to immaterial contemplation, and calling “the last day” this knowledge after which there is no other. For then our mind is raised up and roused to a blessed height, when it contemplates the One and the Monad of the Word. But since our mind, grown coarse, has been bound to the dust and mixed with the clay, and cannot gaze steadily in bare contemplation, it is guided through the worlds akin to its body and observes the workings of the Creator, and meanwhile knows them from their effects, so that, growing little by little in this way, it may one day be strong enough to approach the naked Godhead itself. In this sense too, I think, it was said, “My Father is greater than I,” and “It is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by the Father.” For this is also what is meant by Christ's handing over the kingdom to God the Father, he being the first fruits and not the end, according, as I said, to the more elementary teaching, which is considered with respect to us and not to the Son himself. And that this is so: when the disciples asked again in the Acts of the Apostles, “When will you restore the kingdom to Israel?” he says, “It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father has set in his own authority”; that is, the knowledge of such a kingdom does not belong to those bound to flesh and blood. For this contemplation the Father has laid up in his own authority: by “authority” meaning those under his authority, and by “his own” those who are not held by ignorance of lower things. And do not think of times and seasons as perceptible, but as certain intervals of knowledge brought about by the intelligible Sun. For that prayer of our Master must be brought to fulfillment; for it is Jesus who prayed, “Grant them that they too may be one in us, as I and you are one, Father.” For God, being one, coming to be in each, makes all one; and number is destroyed by the coming of the Monad. This is how I approached the saying in my second attempt. If anyone speaks better, or corrects what is ours in a godly way, let him both speak and correct, and the Lord will repay him on our behalf. For no envy lodges with us, since we have not entered on this examination of the words out of contentiousness or vainglory, but for the benefit of the brothers, so that the earthen vessels that hold the treasure of God may not seem to be led astray by stony-hearted and uncircumcised men armed with foolish wisdom. 8. Again, through the wise Solomon in the Proverbs he is created: “The Lord,” it says, “created me.” And he is named the beginning of the ways of the gospel that lead us to the kingdom of heaven, not a creature in essence, but having become a way according to the economy. For “to have become” and “to have been created” mean the same. For as he became a way, a door, a shepherd, a messenger, a sheep, and again a high priest and an apostle, the names being applied according to different aspects, … What again would the heretic say about the God who is unsubjected, and about him who became sin for our sake? For it is written: “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who subjected all things to him.” Are you not afraid, man, of God being called unsubjected? For he makes your subjection his own, and when you resist virtue he calls himself unsubjected. So too he once said that he himself was the one persecuted: “Saul, Saul,” he says, “why do you persecute me?” when Saul was hurrying toward Damascus, wishing to bind the disciples of Christ. And again he calls himself naked when one of the brothers is naked: “I was naked,” he says, “and you clothed me.” And when another was in prison, he said that he himself was the one shut up. For he himself took away our sins and bore our diseases. And one of our weaknesses is insubordination; this too he bore. Therefore the Lord makes his own the hardships that befall us, taking up our sufferings because of his fellowship with us. 9. But the fighters against God also take “The Son can do nothing of himself” to overthrow their hearers. To me this saying too proclaims above all that the Son is of the same nature as the Father. For if each of the rational creatures is able to do something of itself, having a free inclination toward the worse and the better, but the Son cannot do anything of himself, then the Son is not a creature. And if not a creature, he is of the same essence as the Father. And again, no creature can do whatever it wills; but the Son did all that he willed in heaven and on earth; therefore the Son is not a creature. And again, all creatures either consist of opposites or are receptive of opposites; but the Son is justice itself and immaterial; therefore the Son is not a creature; and if not, he is of the same essence as the Father. 10. Let this examination of the sayings put forward suffice us, as far as our power goes. Now let us advance in argument also against those who oppose the Holy Spirit, pulling down every lofty thought raised up against the knowledge of God. You say that the Holy Spirit is a creature. But every creature is the servant of its creator: “For all things,” it says, “are your servants.” If it is a servant, it also has an acquired holiness; and everything that has an acquired holiness is not incapable of evil; but the Holy Spirit, being holy by essence, has been called the source of sanctification; therefore the Holy Spirit is not a creature. And if not a creature, it is of the same essence as God. How, tell me, do you call a servant the one who through baptism frees you from slavery? “For the law of the Spirit of life,” it says, “has freed me from the law of sin.” Nor will you ever dare to call its essence changeable, when you look at the nature of the opposing power, which fell like lightning from heaven and fell away from the true life because it had an acquired holiness, and change followed upon its evil will. Therefore, having fallen from the Monad and cast off the angelic dignity, he was named devil from his conduct, his former blessed state having been quenched and this opposing power kindled. Further, if he calls the Holy Spirit a creature, he makes its nature limited. How then will these stand: “The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world,” and “Where shall I go from your Spirit?” Nor, it seems, does he confess it to be simple in nature, for he calls it one in number. But everything one in number, as I said, is not simple. And if the Holy Spirit is not simple, it consists of essence and sanctification; and such a thing is compound. And who is so senseless as to call the Holy Spirit compound, and not simple, and, by reason of its simplicity, of the same essence as the Father and the Son? 11. If we must go further in argument and look upon greater things, let us consider the divine power of the Holy Spirit above all from this. We have found three creations named in Scripture: the first, the bringing from non-being into being; the second, the change from worse to better; the third, the resurrection of the dead. In these you will find the Holy Spirit working together with the Father and the Son. The heavens are brought into being: and what does David say? “By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the Spirit of his mouth.” Again, man is created through baptism: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” And what does the Savior say to the disciples? “Go, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” You see here too the Holy Spirit present together with the Father and the Son. And what would you say about the resurrection of the dead, when we have passed away and returned to our dust? For we are earth, and to the earth we shall go; and he will send the Holy Spirit and create us, and renew the face of the earth. For what holy Paul called resurrection, David called renewal. Let us hear again the one who was caught up to the third heaven. What does he say? “You are a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you.” But every temple is a temple of God. If, then, we are a temple of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is God. It is called Solomon's temple too, but as its builder. If we are a temple of the Holy Spirit in this sense, the Holy Spirit is God; for he who built all things is God. But if as of one who is worshiped and dwells in us, let us confess it to be God; for “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.” If they object to the word “God,” let them learn what this name signifies. For God is named from having set all things or from beholding all things. If, then, he is called God from having set or beholding all things, and the Spirit knows all the things of God as the spirit in us knows ours, then the Holy Spirit is God. And again, if the sword of the Spirit is the word of God, the Holy Spirit is God; for the sword belongs to the one whose word it is also called. And if he is also named the right hand of the Father (for “The right hand of the Lord has wrought power,” and “Your right hand, O Lord, has shattered enemies”), and the Holy Spirit is the finger of God, according to the saying “If I by the finger of God cast out demons,” which in another Gospel is written “If I by the Spirit of God cast out demons,” then the Holy Spirit is of the same nature as the Father and the Son. 12. Let this much be said by us for the present about the worshipful and holy Trinity; for it is not now possible to examine the account of it more broadly. But you, taking seeds from our lowliness, cultivate for yourselves a ripe ear of grain, since, as you know, we are also asked for interest on such things. And I trust in God that you will bear fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold, because of the purity of your life; for “Blessed,” he says, “are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” And do not think, brothers, that the kingdom of heaven is anything other than the true understanding of realities, which the divine Scriptures also call blessedness. For “the kingdom of heaven is within you.” And concerning the inner man nothing other than contemplation subsists; so contemplation would be the kingdom of heaven. For of the things whose shadows we now see as in a mirror, we shall later, freed from this earthly body and having put on the incorruptible and immortal, see the archetypes. And we shall see them if we steer our life straight and take care for the right faith, without which no one will see the Lord. “For into a malicious soul,” it says, “wisdom will not enter, nor dwell in a body enslaved to sin.” And let no one object, saying, “You do not know what lies at your feet, and you philosophize to us about the incorporeal and wholly immaterial essence.” For I judge it absurd to let the senses fill themselves without hindrance with their own matter, and to bar the mind alone from its own activity. For as perception apprehends perceptible things, so the mind apprehends intelligible things. And at the same time this must also be said: God who created us made our natural faculties of judgment untaught. For no one teaches sight to apprehend colors or shapes, nor hearing sounds and voices, nor smell fragrant and foul vapors, nor taste flavors and juices, nor touch soft and hard, or hot and cold things. Nor could anyone teach the mind to apprehend intelligible things. And just as these, if they suffer something, need only care, and easily fulfill their own activity, so the mind too, bound to the flesh and filled with the images that come from it, needs faith and a right way of life, which make its feet like a deer's and set it upon the heights. This very thing the wise Solomon also recommends: sometimes he sets before us the ant, the worker that need not be ashamed, and through it sketches for us the practical way; sometimes the wax-molded workmanship of the wise bee, and through it he hints at natural contemplation, in which the doctrine of the holy Trinity too is blended, since from the beauty of created things the Creator is proportionately seen. But giving thanks to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, let us put an end to the letter, since “every measure is best,” as the proverb says. [Letter 9] … the first to supply men with the seeds. The cause, I think, was not wickedness of intention, but his strong wish to oppose Sabellius. I am accustomed to compare him to a gardener straightening the crookedness of a young plant who, by pulling too hard the other way, misses the middle and draws the shoot to the opposite side. We find that something of this sort happened to this man. For in opposing vehemently the impiety of the Libyan, he was carried away unawares by excessive zeal into the opposite evil. It would have been enough for him to show that the Father and the Son are not the same in their underlying subject, and so to carry off the victory over the blasphemer; but he, in order to prevail quite clearly and by a wide margin, posits not only a difference of hypostases but also a difference of essence, a diminution of power, and a variation of glory. So it came about that he exchanged one evil for another and missed the correctness of the doctrine. That is why he is so inconsistent in his writings, now rejecting the “same in essence” because of the one who used it badly to deny the hypostases, now accepting it where he defends himself to his namesake. Besides this he also uttered words about the Spirit most unbecoming to the Spirit, banishing it from the worshiped Godhead and numbering it somewhere below with the created and ministering nature. Such, then, is the man. 3. As for me, if I must state my own view, I accept the phrase “like in essence” if it has “without difference” added to it, as amounting to the same as the “same in essence,” that is, according to the sound sense of the “same in essence.” This is what those at Nicaea had in mind when, having called the Only-begotten “light from light,” “true God from true God,” and the like, they consistently added the “same in essence.” For it is not possible to conceive any variation of light toward light, or of truth toward truth, or of the essence of the Only-begotten toward that of the Father. If anyone, then, takes it in this way, as I said, I accept the phrase. But if anyone cuts off “without difference” from “like,” as those at Constantinople have done, I suspect the expression as belittling the glory of the Only-begotten. For we are accustomed often to think of likeness even in faint resemblances that fall far short of their archetypes. Since, then, I think the “same in essence” less open to misuse, I myself adopt it. But why do you not come to us, my excellent friend, so that we may discuss such things face to face and not entrust such great matters to lifeless letters, especially as we have decided not to publish our views at all? So that you may not say to us what Diogenes said to Alexander, that it is as far from you to here as from here to you: we, because of our illness, are kept almost like plants always in the same place, and we count “living unnoticed” among the first of goods; but you are in good health, as they say, and since you have made yourself a citizen of the world, it would be right for you to come here too, as to a part of your own. For even if peoples and cities suit you men of action, in which you display your virtuous deeds, yet for contemplation and the activity of the mind, through which we are joined to God, quiet is a good fellow-worker; and we cultivate it in abundance in this remote place, with God, be it said, who has granted it to us. But if you must by all means pay court to the powerful and look down on us who lie on the ground, at least write, and so make us happier.