The Conferences 7.28–8.12

“From this it is plainly judged that those whom we see handed over to various temptations or to these spirits of wickedness ought not to be abhorred or despised. For we must believe immovably these two things: first, that no one at all is tempted by them without God's permission; second, that everything brought upon us by God, whether it seems sad or joyful for the present, is inflicted for our benefit as by a most loving father and a most merciful physician. And therefore they are humbled as though handed over to tutors, so that when they depart this world they may either be transferred more purified to the other life or be punished with a lighter penalty, being, according to the apostle, handed over in the present to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Germanus: “And how is it that we see them not only despised and shunned by all, but even kept away permanently from the Lord's communion in our provinces, according to that saying of the Gospel, ‘Do not give what is holy to dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine,’ if we are to believe about them, as you say, that the humiliation of this temptation is given them for purification or benefit?”

Serenus: “If we have this knowledge, or rather faith, which I set out above, so as to believe that everything is done by God and all is arranged for the benefit of souls, we shall not only never despise them, but shall even pray unceasingly for them as for our own members, and suffer with them with our whole heart and full affection (for when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it), knowing that we cannot be made perfect in any way without them, since they are our members; just as we read that not even those before us could obtain the fullness of the promise without us, as the apostle declares of them: ‘And all these, approved by the testimony of faith, did not receive the promises, God providing something better for us, that they should not be made perfect without us.’ But we do not remember that holy communion was ever forbidden them; on the contrary, they judged that if it were possible it ought to be given them even daily. For, according to the saying of the Gospel which you have unsuitably applied to this meaning, ‘Do not give what is holy to dogs,’ holy communion must not be believed to become food for the demon, but rather to serve for the purification and protection of body and soul. Received by a man, it drives away, as by a kind of burning fire, the spirit that sits in his members or tries to hide in them. In this way we recently saw Abba Andronicus and many others cured. For the enemy will insult the possessed man more and more when he sees him separated from the heavenly medicine, and will attack him the more cruelly and frequently the farther he perceives him cut off from the spiritual remedy.”

“But those are to be judged truly wretched and pitiable who, while they defile themselves with all crimes and sins, not only show no visible sign of diabolical possession, but have no temptation brought on them worthy of their works, nor any scourge of correction. For they do not deserve the quick and ready medicine of this time, whose hardness and impenitent heart, going beyond the punishment of the present life, ‘treasures up for itself wrath and indignation in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God,’ in which ‘their worm will not die, and their fire will not be quenched.’ The prophet, as though distressed at the affliction of the saints, seeing them subject to various hardships and temptations, and on the other hand sinners not only passing through the course of this world without any scourge of humiliation, but even rejoicing in an abundance of riches and the greatest prosperity in everything, is inflamed with unbearable zeal and the ardor of his spirit and cries out: ‘But my feet were almost moved; my steps had well-nigh slipped. For I was jealous of the wicked, seeing the peace of sinners. For there is no regard for their death, nor firmness in their plague. They are not in the labors of men, and they will not be scourged with men’; that is, they will be punished in the future with the demons, who in the present did not deserve to be scourged with men in the lot and discipline of sons. Jeremiah too, disputing with God about this prosperity of the wicked, though he professes that he does not doubt the Lord's justice at all, saying, ‘You are indeed just, O Lord, if I dispute with you,’ yet, asking the causes of so great an inequality, adds: ‘Yet I will speak just things to you: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? It is well with all who transgress and act wickedly. You planted them, and they took root; they grow and bear fruit. You are near their mouth and far from their reins.’ When the Lord laments their ruin through the prophet and anxiously sends physicians and teachers to heal them, and in a way calls them to a similar lament, saying, ‘Babylon has suddenly fallen and been crushed; wail over her, take balm for her pain, if perhaps she may be healed,’ the angels, to whom the care of human salvation has been entrusted, answer in despair, or else the prophet in the person of the apostles or spiritual men and teachers, seeing the hardness of their mind and their impenitent heart: ‘We have tried to heal Babylon, and she is not healed; let us leave her and let us go each to his own land, because her judgment has reached to the heavens and been lifted up to the clouds.’ Of their hopeless sickness Isaiah speaks to Jerusalem in the person of God: ‘From the sole of the foot to the top of the head there is no soundness in her: wounds and bruises and swelling sores; they are not bound up, nor treated with medicine, nor soothed with oil.’”

“That there are as many pursuits among the unclean spirits as among men is proved without doubt. For it is plain that some of them, whom the people also call Plani, are such deceivers and jesters that, continually besetting particular places or roads, they take no delight at all in the torments of those passers-by whom they manage to deceive, but, content only with mockery and illusion, they try to tire them rather than harm them. Some only spend the night with men by harmless lying upon them. Others are so given to fury and savagery that they are not content to torment the bodies of those they have filled with cruel tearing, but hasten to rush upon those passing at a distance and inflict the most savage slaughter on them: such are those described in the Gospel, for fear of whom no one dared any longer to pass by that way. These, and those like them, no doubt rejoice in wars and the shedding of blood because of their insatiable ferocity. Others, whom the people also call Bacucei, we see have so infected the hearts of those they seized with a kind of empty swelling that, raising themselves beyond the height of their bodies, they now puffed themselves up in haughty airs and gestures, and now, as if bending down to a state of tranquillity and affability, they lowered themselves as friendly and flattering; and thinking themselves illustrious and admired by all, they now showed by bending their bodies that they were bowing to higher powers, and now believed themselves to be adored by others, and went through all the movements by which real duties are performed either proudly or humbly. Others we have found not only eager for lies but also inspiring blasphemies in men. We ourselves are witnesses of this, having heard a demon most openly confess that he had put forth the impiety of a sacrilegious doctrine through Arius and Eunomius. We plainly read one of these same spirits proclaiming this in the fourth book of Kingdoms too: ‘I will go out,’ he says, ‘and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ Of them the apostle, rebuking those who are deceived by them, says: ‘Giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, of those who speak lies in hypocrisy.’ The Gospels testify that there are also other kinds of demons, namely dumb and deaf ones. The prophet mentions that some spirits are instigators of lust and luxury: ‘The spirit of sexual immorality,’ he says, ‘deceived them, and they went whoring away from their God.’ The authority of the Scriptures likewise teaches that there are demons of the night, of the day, and of noon. It would take very long, if we wished to search all the volumes of the Scriptures and go through their variety one by one: what are meant by the prophet's onocentaurs, hairy ones, sirens, lamias, owls, ostriches, hedgehogs; what is called the asp and the basilisk in the psalm; what the lion, the dragon, and the scorpion in the Gospel; what the apostle names the prince of this world, the rulers of this darkness, and the spiritual forces of wickedness. We must not take these names as given to them by chance or accident, but understand that their ferocity and fury are distinguished by the meaning of these beasts, which among us are either less harmful or more deadly; and that they are called by their names from the likeness of their virulent wickedness or of the primacy which a certain excellence of malice gives these among other beasts or serpents. So one has received the name of lion for the violence of his fury and the rage of his ferocity; another that of basilisk for that deadly poison which kills before it is felt; another, for the lukewarmness of his malice, the name of onocentaur, hedgehog, or ostrich.”

Germanus: “We do not doubt that those orders which the apostle lists also refer to these: ‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.’ Yet we want to know where so great a difference among them comes from, or how such grades of wickedness came to exist. Were they created for this purpose, to be allotted these orders of malice and in a way to serve this wickedness?”

Serenus: “Although your questions so steal the whole time of the night's rest from our eyes that we do not feel the nearness of the approaching dawn, and we are tempted to go on weaving the words of this conference insatiably until sunrise, yet since the answer to the question put forward, once it begins to be investigated, leads us out into a very wide and deep sea of questions, which the shortness of the present hour does not allow us to cross, I think it more convenient to keep it for the investigation of the coming night. So, on the occasion of this question, spiritual joy and a richer fruit may come to me from your more eager conversation, and we may be able to penetrate the bays of the questions proposed more freely, the Holy Spirit giving us favorable winds. Therefore, tasting a little sleep, let us shake off the drowsiness that creeps over our eyes now that the light is near; and then, going to church together, as the solemnity of the Lord's day reminds us to do, and returning after the synaxis, we shall share with doubled joy what the Lord gives for our common instruction, according to your desire.”

When the things the solemnity of the day required had been completed and the congregation of the church dismissed, we returned to the old man's cell and were first treated to a most lavish meal. For instead of the brine, with a drop of oil poured over it, which was usually served at the daily meal, he mixed in a little fish sauce and poured over it rather more oil than usual. For each one, when about to eat, lets fall that drop of oil every day, not in order to receive some pleasure from tasting it (for its amount is so small that it is scarcely enough, I will not say to coat, but even to pass through the passage of the throat and gullet), but so that by this practice he may blunt the boasting of heart, which usually creeps in smoothly and secretly because of a stricter abstinence, and the goads of elation; because the more secretly abstinence itself is practised, and without any human witness, the more subtly it does not cease to tempt the one who hides it. Then he set before us fried salt and three olives each; after these he brought a basket holding roasted chickpeas, which they call trogalia, of which we took only five grains each, two myxaria each, and one dried fig each. For it is blameworthy in that desert for anyone to exceed this number. When this meal was over and we began to ask again for the promised answer to the question, the old man said: “Put forward your question, the investigation of which we had postponed to this hour.”

Then Germanus said: “Whence, we ask, has so great a variety of hostile powers against man arisen, and this diversity which the blessed apostle lists thus: ‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places’; and again: ‘Neither angels nor principalities nor powers nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’? Whence, then, has so great a rival hostility of malice arisen against us? Or must we believe that these powers were made by the Lord for this purpose, to fight against man in these grades and orders?”

Serenus: “The authority of the divine Scriptures has declared some of the things in which it wished to instruct us so clearly and plainly, even for those who lack sharpness of mind, that not only are they not veiled by any obscurity of a more hidden sense, but they do not even need any help of interpretation, and show their meaning and sense on the surface of the word and letter. Others, however, are so covered and obscured by certain mysteries that in discussing and understanding them it has reserved for us an immense field of exercise and care. It is clear that God arranged this for many reasons. First, so that the divine mysteries, with no veil of spiritual understanding drawn over them, might not be laid open to all people, that is, to the faithful and the profane alike, with equal knowledge and acquaintance, and so there would be no difference of virtue and prudence between the idle and the studious. Then, so that even among the household of faith, while immense spaces of understanding stretch before them, there might be things in which the emptiness of the slothful might be exposed and the eagerness and diligence of the studious proved. And so the divine Scripture is quite properly compared to a rich and fertile field, which produces many things that serve for human food without any cooking by fire, while some, unless first softened and tempered by the heat of flame so that they lose all the harshness of their rawness, will be found either unsuitable for human use or harmful. Some grow fit for both uses, so that they neither displease nor offend when uncooked in their rawness, and yet become more wholesome when cooked by the heat of fire. Many are also produced only as food for irrational beasts of burden and animals, or wild beasts and birds, of no use for human food, which, remaining in their harshness without any preparation by fire, give healthy life to the beasts. We see this principle quite plainly contained in this most fruitful paradise of the spiritual Scriptures. In it some things shine so plain and bright in the meaning of the letter that, needing no higher interpretation, they abundantly feed and nourish the hearers by the simple sound of the letter alone, such as: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord’; and: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.’ But some, unless they have been refined by allegorical explanation and softened by the testing of spiritual fire, will in no way reach the wholesome food of the inner man without the stain of corruption, and harm rather than any benefit will follow from taking them, such as: ‘Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning’; and: ‘Let him who has no sword sell his tunic and buy himself a sword’; and: ‘Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.’ Some of the strictest monks, having indeed a zeal for God but not according to knowledge, understanding this simply, made themselves wooden crosses and, carrying them constantly on their shoulders, brought not edification but laughter to all who saw them. Some things, however, are taken so suitably and necessarily in both senses, that is, the historical and the allegorical, that both explanations supply life-giving juices to the soul, such as: ‘If anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the other also’; and: ‘When they persecute you in this city, flee to another’; and: ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ It certainly produces hay for the beasts too, fodder with which all the fields of the Scriptures are filled: the simple and pure narrative of the historical reading, by which all the simpler people, and those less capable of perfect and complete understanding, of whom it is said, ‘Men and beasts you will save, O Lord,’ are made more vigorous and strong, according to the condition of their state and measure, only for the work and labor of the practical life.”

“Therefore, about those things which have been set out with plain explanation, we too can define firmly and give our opinion boldly. But those which the divine Spirit has placed covered in the holy Scriptures, reserving them for our meditation and exercise, and wishing them to be gathered by certain signs and conjectures, must be brought forward step by step and cautiously, so that their assertion or confirmation is left to the judgment of the one discussing or receiving them. For sometimes, when different opinions are put forward on one matter, both can be judged reasonable and be accepted either firmly or provisionally without harm to the faith, that is, so that neither full belief nor absolute rejection is assigned to it, and the later opinion ought not to detract from the former, since neither of them is found to oppose the faith. Such is the view that Elijah came in John and will again be the forerunner of the Lord's coming; and that the abomination of desolation stood in the holy place through that image of Jupiter which we read was set up in the temple at Jerusalem, and will stand again in the church at the coming of the Antichrist; and all those things that follow in the Gospel, which are understood both to have been fulfilled before the captivity of Jerusalem and to be yet fulfilled at the end of this world. Of these neither opinion attacks the other, nor does the former understanding make the latter void.”

“And therefore, although the question you have proposed seems not to have been discussed enough or often among men, and is not clear to most, and for that very reason what we shall say may perhaps seem doubtful to some, we ought so to temper our opinion, since it does not prejudice faith in the Trinity at all, that it may be counted among those things which are held provisionally; although it is not an opinion of the kind usually gathered only by guesses and conjectures, but everything is proved by clear testimonies of the Scriptures.”

“Far be it from us, then, to confess that God created anything that is evil in substance, since Scripture says: ‘All the things that God made were very good.’ For if these were created such by God, or made for this purpose, to hold these grades of malice and always to be busy with the deception and ruin of men, then, against the saying of the Scripture above, we shall defame God as the creator and inventor of evils, as if he himself had made the worst wills and natures, creating them for this, that, always persisting in wickedness, they could never pass to the disposition of a good will. We have received this explanation of this diversity, then, from the tradition of the fathers, out of the fountain of the holy Scriptures.”

“No one of the faithful doubts that before the creation of this visible creation God made the spiritual and heavenly powers, who, precisely because they knew they had been brought forth from nothing to such glory of blessedness by the kindness of the Creator, gave him perpetual thanks and clung unceasingly to his praises. For we must not think that God first began the beginnings of his creation and handiwork with the founding of this world, as if in those earlier and countless ages he had been idle of all providence and divine dispensation, and is to be believed to have been solitary, as though having none on whom to exercise the benefits of his goodness, and a stranger to all generosity. To think this of that immense, beginningless, and incomprehensible majesty is quite mean and unfitting, since the Lord himself says of those powers: ‘When the stars were made together, all my angels praised me with a loud voice.’ Those, then, who were present at the creation of the stars are most plainly proved to have been created before that beginning in which heaven and earth are said to have been made; since they are recorded to have praised the Creator with a loud voice and with wonder for all these visible creatures, which they saw come forth from nothing. Before that temporal beginning, then, which is spoken of by Moses, and which, according to the historical or rather the Jewish sense, marks the age of this world (saving, of course, our own sense, by which we interpret Christ to be the beginning of all things, in whom the Father created all things, according to the words, ‘All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made’), before that temporal beginning of Genesis, I say, there is no doubt that God created all those powers and heavenly virtues. The apostle lists them in order and describes them thus: ‘For in Christ all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether angels or archangels, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers. All things were created through him and in him.’”

“That some princes of their number fell is most plainly taught by the laments of Ezekiel and Isaiah, in which we recognize that the prince of Tyre, or that Lucifer who rose in the morning, is lamented with a mournful dirge. Of the former the Lord speaks thus to Ezekiel: ‘Son of man, raise a lament over the prince of Tyre, and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of likeness, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty; you were in the delights of the paradise of God; every precious stone was your covering: sardius, topaz, and jasper, chrysolite and onyx and beryl, sapphire and carbuncle and emerald; gold was the work of your beauty, and your openings were prepared on the day you were created. You were a cherub stretched out and protecting, and I set you on the holy mountain of God; you walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were perfect in your ways from the day of your creation, until iniquity was found in you. In the multitude of your trading your inner parts were filled with iniquity, and you sinned; and I cast you out from the mountain of God, and destroyed you, O protecting cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was lifted up in your beauty; you lost your wisdom through your beauty; I cast you to the earth; I set you before the face of kings, that they might look on you. In the multitude of your iniquities and in the iniquity of your trading you have defiled your sanctuary.’ Isaiah too says of another: ‘How you have fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who rose in the morning! You who wounded the nations have fallen to the earth. You who said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of God, I will sit on the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north; I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ Yet Scripture records that these did not fall alone from that summit of most blessed station, saying that the dragon drew a third part of the stars with him. One of the apostles also says more plainly: ‘But the angels who did not keep their own principality, but left their own dwelling, he has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.’ And what is said to us, ‘But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes,’ what else does it signify but that many princes have fallen? From these indications the reason for this diversity is gathered: the hostile powers are said to have these differences of orders, after the pattern of the holy and heavenly virtues, either because they still keep them now from the grade of that earlier order in which each had been created; or else because, having fallen from heaven, they have claimed for themselves these grades and titles of orders on the opposite side, in imitation of those virtues which remain there, according to the measure of the wickedness in which each grew in evil.”

Germanus: “Until now we believed that the cause and beginning of the devil's ruin or transgression, by which he was cast down from his angelic station, was chiefly envy, when he deceived Adam and Eve with spiteful cunning.”

Serenus: “The reading of Genesis shows that this was not the beginning of his transgression or fall, since before their deception it thought him fit to be branded with the mark of the name ‘serpent,’ saying: ‘Now the serpent was wiser,’ or, as the Hebrew books express it, ‘more cunning, than all the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made.’ You understand, then, that before that deceiving of the first man he had departed from angelic holiness, so that he not only deserved to be marked with the disgrace of this name but was even preferred to the other beasts of the earth in the evasiveness of wickedness. For Scripture would not have designated a good angel by such a word, nor said of those who remain in that blessedness: ‘Now the serpent was wiser than all the beasts of the earth.’ For this name could in no way be applied to Gabriel or Michael, nor would it even suit any good man. Most plainly, then, both the word ‘serpent’ and the comparison with beasts suggest not the dignity of an angel but the disgrace of a transgressor. In fact, the material of the envy and seduction by which he was urged to deceive man arose from the cause of his earlier fall: namely, that he saw one who had very recently been formed from the slime of the earth being called to that glory from which, being one of the princes, he remembered he had fallen. And therefore his first fall, by which he had fallen through pride and for which he had also deserved to be called a serpent, was followed by a second fall through envy. This second fall, finding him still having something upright in himself, so that he could even have a certain fellowship of conversation and counsel with man, cast him down, usefully, by the Lord's sentence into the depths, so that he would no longer go about lofty and looking up at anything high as before, but would crawl, cleaving to the ground, and, humbled, be fed on his belly with the earthly food and works of the vices. So the Lord made public an enemy who until then was hidden, and put between him and man a useful enmity and a saving discord, so that, while he is guarded against as a harmful enemy, he might no longer be able to harm man by deceitful friendships.”

“In this, however, the following ought especially to teach us to turn away from evil counsels: that although the author of the deception is struck with fitting punishment and condemnation, not even the one who is seduced is free from penalty, though it is somewhat lighter than that of the one who was the author of the deception. We see this expressed very plainly here. For Adam, who was seduced, or rather, to speak in the words of the apostle, who was not seduced, but seems to have come to a deadly consent by yielding to the one who was seduced, is condemned only to the sweat of his face and labor, which is decreed for him not by a curse on himself but by the curse and barrenness of the earth. But the woman, who was the persuader in this matter, earns a multiplication of groans, pains, and sadness, and is also bound to a perpetual yoke of subjection. And the serpent, who was the first instigator of this offence, is punished with an everlasting curse. Therefore we must guard with the greatest care and watchfulness against evil counsels, because, just as they punish the author, so they do not let the one deceived go free either of sin or of punishment.”

“This air which is spread between heaven and earth is so thickly crowded with spirits, which do not fly about in it quietly and idly, that divine providence has very usefully withdrawn them from human sight. For either men would be struck down and faint with unbearable fear at the terror of their onrush or the horror of the faces into which they transform and change themselves at will whenever they please, being quite unable to look at these things with fleshly eyes; or else they would become more wicked every day, corrupted by their constant example and by imitation. And so a harmful familiarity and ruinous union would arise between men and the unclean powers of the air; because those crimes which are now committed among men are hidden by the enclosure of walls, or by distance of place, and by a certain confusion of shame. If they saw them with constant open vision, they would be roused to a greater madness of fury, since no moment of time would intervene in which they would see the spirits ceasing from these crimes; for no bodily weariness, or occupation with household affairs, or care for daily food compels them, as it sometimes compels us even against our will, to cease from what we have begun.”