Miscellanies 6.11.84–6.13.107

Just as we have Abraham as an example in astronomy, so we have the same Abraham in arithmetic. For hearing that Lot had been taken captive, he numbered his own household servants, 318, and going out he overcame a very great number of the enemy. They say, then, that the letter that stands for 300 is by its shape a type of the Lord's sign, and that iota and eta signify the saving name; it is indicated, then, that Abraham's household in respect of salvation, those who had taken refuge in the sign and the name, became masters of the captors and of the very many unbelieving nations following them. Now the number 300 is three in the hundreds, and ten is acknowledged to be all-perfect; and eight is the first cube, equality in all dimensions: length, breadth, depth. “And the days of men will be,” it says, “120 years.” This number is the fifteenth by addition from unity, and the moon becomes full on the fifteenth day.

In another way, too, the number one hundred and twenty is triangular, and it is made up, by way of equality, of sixty-four, whose partial sums generate squares: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15; and, by way of inequality, of fifty-six, the seven even numbers starting from two, which generate the oblong numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14. According to yet another meaning, the number one hundred and twenty is made up of four numbers: one triangular, fifteen; another square, twenty-five; a third pentagonal, thirty-five; and a fourth hexagonal, forty-five. For in each kind the fifth is taken by the same proportion: of the triangular numbers counted from the unit the fifth is fifteen, of the square numbers twenty-five, and of the following ones proportionally. Now the number twenty-five, being the fifth from the unit, is said to be a symbol of the tribe of Levi; and thirty-five belongs to the arithmetical, geometrical, and harmonic diagram formed from double ratios, 6, 8, 9, 12, whose sum makes thirty-five. In these days, the Jews say, children born at seven months are formed. And forty-five belongs to the diagram formed from triple ratios, 6, 9, 12, 18, whose sum makes forty-five; and in these days likewise, they say, children born at nine months are formed.

This, then, is the kind of arithmetical example. As a testimony of geometry let there be the tabernacle that was built and the ark that was constructed, made with most rational proportions by divine designs, by the gift of understanding, which leads us from sensible things to intelligible ones, or rather from these to the holy things and the holy of holies. For the square timbers show security, because the square figure stands on right angles on every side. The length of the structure was three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty, and its height thirty; and the ark is finished off in a cubit at the top, tapering from its broad base in the manner of a pyramid, a symbol of those who are purified and tested by fire. This geometrical proportion serves to escort us to those holy dwelling places whose differences are indicated by the differences of the numbers set out here.

The ratios contained in them are sixfold, as three hundred to fifty; tenfold, as three hundred is ten times thirty; and one and two-thirds, for fifty is one and two-thirds of thirty. There are some who say that the three hundred cubits are a symbol of the Lord's sign; the fifty, of hope and of the forgiveness at Pentecost; and the thirty, or, as in some sources, twelve, they report as signifying the preaching, because the Lord preached in his thirtieth year and the apostles were twelve; and that the structure is finished off in one cubit because the progress of the righteous man ends in the unit and in the unity of the faith. The table in the temple was six cubits, and its four feet a cubit and a half each. So they make twelve cubits in all, in keeping with the revolution of the twelve months in the yearly cycle, in which the earth, adapting itself to the four seasons, brings all things forth and to maturity. The table, I think, shows an image of the earth, resting on four feet, summer, autumn, spring, and winter, through which the year makes its way. That is why it says that the table has twisted wave-mouldings: either because all things revolve in the cycles of the seasons, or perhaps it indicated the earth encircled by the ocean.

Further, as an example of music, let David be set before us, playing the harp and prophesying at once, singing praise to God melodiously. The enharmonic genus suits the Dorian mode very well, and the diatonic the Phrygian, as Aristoxenus says. The harmony of the barbarian psaltery, then, which displays the solemnity of its melody and is the most ancient, became above all a model for Terpander, who hymns Zeus in the Dorian mode somewhat as follows: “Zeus, beginning of all things, leader of all, Zeus, to you I send this beginning of hymns.” For the psalmist the lyre, understood allegorically, would be in its first meaning the Lord, and in its second those who strike the souls more immediately under the Lord, the leader of the Muses. And if the people that is being saved is called a lyre, it is heard glorifying God musically by the inspiration of the Word and by the knowledge of God, struck into faith by the Word. You may also take, in another way, as a musical symphony the church's concord of the law and the prophets together with the apostles and the gospel, and, below it, the harmony within each prophet as the speaking persons change.

But, it seems, most of those who bear the name treat the Word boorishly, like the companions of Odysseus: they pass by not the Sirens but rhythm and melody, having stopped their ears with ignorance, because they know that once they have lent their hearing to Greek learning they will not afterwards be able to achieve their return home. But the one who gathers the flower of what is useful for the benefit of the catechumens, especially if they are Greeks (“and the earth is the Lord's, and its fullness”), must not abstain from the love of learning like irrational animals; he must rather collect as many aids as he possibly can for his hearers. Only, he must by no means linger among these things, except for the sole purpose of what is useful in them, so that, having taken and acquired it, he may be able to go home to the true philosophy, having secured for his soul a firm mooring cable, the security that comes from every quarter. We must, then, take hold of music for the adornment and composure of character.

Indeed, even at a drinking party we pledge one another with psalm-singing, charming our desire to rest and glorifying God for the bountiful gift of human enjoyments, the foods for the growth of body and of soul that are supplied everlastingly. But superfluous music must be spat out, the kind that enervates souls and throws them into variety, now mournful, now licentious and voluptuous, now frenzied and mad. The same account holds for astronomy. For, through its inquiry into the heavenly phenomena, the shape of the universe, the revolution of the heaven, and the motion of the stars, it brings the soul nearer to the creating power, and it teaches one to be quick to perceive the seasons of the year, the changes of the weather, and the risings of the stars; for navigation and agriculture too are full of the use it provides, just as architecture and building are of the use of geometry. This study also makes the soul as attentive as possible, sharp to discern the true and to refute the false, able to find correspondences and proportions, so as to track down the like in the unlike; and it leads us to discover length without breadth, surface without depth, and the point without parts, and transfers us from sensible things to intelligible ones.

The branches of learning, then, are helpers of philosophy, and philosophy itself is a helper toward treating of the truth. For example, the cloak was at first a fleece; then it was carded and became woof and warp, and then it was woven. So the soul must be prepared beforehand and worked in various ways if it is to be made excellent. For one part of truth concerns knowing and another doing; the latter has flowed from the contemplative part, but it needs practice, much exercise, and experience. And of the contemplative part, too, one side is directed toward one's neighbors and another toward oneself. Therefore education must also be so arranged as to be fitted to both. It is possible, then, for one who has thoroughly learned the essentials of what leads to knowledge to remain thereafter at rest in quiet, directing his actions toward contemplation. But for the benefit of neighbors, some of whom are eager to write and others set on handing on the word, both general education is useful and the reading of the Lord's Scriptures is necessary for the demonstration of what is said, especially if the hearers come up from Greek education.

Such a church David describes: “The queen stood at your right hand, in a robe woven with gold, clothed in many colors,” that is, with Greek and superfluous learning as well; “in golden fringes, clothed in many colors.” But the truth comes through the Lord. “For who has known your counsel,” it says, “unless you have given wisdom and sent your Holy Spirit from the highest? And so the paths of those on earth were set straight, and men were taught what pleases you and were saved by wisdom.” For the one who knows, according to Scripture, “knows the things of old and conjectures the things to come; he understands the turns of speech and the solutions of riddles; he foreknows signs and wonders and the outcomes of seasons and times,” as we have said before.

Do you see the source of the branches of learning setting out from wisdom? To those who object, “What is the use of knowing the causes of how the sun moves, for instance, and the other stars, or of having studied geometrical theorems, or dialectic, or each of the other branches of learning? These are of no help toward the performance of duties; and Greek philosophy is human understanding, for it is not able to teach the truth,” we must say, first, that these people stumble concerning the greatest of things, that is, the choice of the mind. For “those who keep holy things holily,” it says, “will be made holy, and those who have been taught them will find a defense.” For the one who knows alone will with good reason do holily all that is to be done, as he has learned according to the Lord's teaching, having received it through men. And again one may hear: “For in his hand,” that is, in his power and wisdom, “are both we and our words, and all understanding and knowledge of crafts.” “For God loves nothing but the one who dwells with wisdom.” Next, they have not read what was said by Solomon. For, when he treats of the building of a ship, he says outright: “Wisdom the craftswoman built it; but your providence, Father, steers it.”

And how is it not absurd to think philosophy worse than carpentry and shipbuilding? Perhaps, too, the Lord fed that multitude reclining on the grass across from Tiberias with the two fishes and the five barley loaves as a hint of the preparatory training of Greeks and Jews before the divine wheat, the food cultivated by the law. For barley ripens earlier for the summer season than wheat. The fishes signified Greek philosophy, which is born and moves in the surge of the Gentiles, given as abundant nourishment to those still lying on the ground. They did not increase like the fragments of the loaves; but, having shared in the Lord's blessing, they were breathed into, receiving the resurrection of divinity through the power of the Word. But if you like subtlety, take one of the fishes to indicate general education and the other the philosophy that rises above it; and these indeed are … of the Lord's Word. “And a chorus of voiceless fishes splashed around,” as the tragic Muse has said somewhere. “I must decrease, and the Lord's Word alone must from now on increase,” in whom the law reaches its end, said John the prophet.

Understand now, I pray, the mystery of the truth, and pardon me if I hesitate to go further in working it out, proclaiming only this: “All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be.” Indeed he is called the cornerstone, “in whom the whole building, fitted together, grows into a holy temple of God,” according to the divine apostle. For now I pass over the parable in the Gospel that says: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who cast a net into the sea and from the multitude of fishes caught made a selection of the better ones.” And already our wisdom proclaims the four virtues outright, somewhat as follows, so that the springs of these too were given to the Greeks from the Hebrews. One can learn it from these words: “And if anyone loves righteousness, her labors are virtues; for she teaches self-restraint and prudence, righteousness and courage, than which nothing is more useful for human beings in life.” Above all, they ought to have known this too: that by nature we are born for virtue, not so as to have it from birth, but fitted to acquire it.

By this reasoning the difficulty the heretics raise against us is solved: whether Adam was formed perfect or imperfect. If imperfect, how is the work of a perfect God imperfect, and a human being above all? If perfect, how does he transgress the commandments? They will hear from us, too, that he was not perfect in his constitution, but fitted to receive virtue. For there is surely a difference between having been made fitted for virtue and the possession of it. And he wishes us to be saved by our own efforts. This, then, is the nature of the soul: to move of itself. Then, being rational, since philosophy is rational, we have a certain kinship with it. Aptitude is a tendency toward virtue, but it is not virtue. All, then, as I said, are naturally made for the acquisition of virtue; but one advances more and another less, in learning and in training. That is why some have attained perfect virtue and others have reached a certain point, while some, through neglect, even if otherwise well endowed, have turned to the opposite. Much more is knowledge, which surpasses all branches of learning in greatness and truth, the hardest of all to acquire, and it is won with much toil.

But, it seems, they did not know the mysteries of God: that God created man for incorruption and made him an image of his own proper being; and according to this proper being of the one who knows all things, the one who knows, righteous and holy with prudence, hastens to arrive at the measure of full maturity. And that in the one who knows not only actions and thoughts but also words are pure, is shown here: “You tested my heart, you visited it by night,” it says; “you tried me by fire, and no injustice was found in me, so that my mouth might not speak the works of men.” And what does it mean by “the works of men”? He recognizes sin itself, not only sin that has been brought to repentance (for that is common to the other believers too), but what sin is. For he does not condemn this or that sin, but simply all sin; nor does he set out what someone has done wrongly, but what must not be done. Hence repentance too is twofold: the one is common, for having transgressed; the other, having learned the nature of sin, persuades one to withdraw from sinning itself by a reason that goes before, which is followed by not sinning.

Let them not say, then, that the one who does wrong and sins transgresses through the working of demons; for then he would be innocent. Rather, by choosing the same things as the demons in sinning, unstable, light, and changeable in his desires like a demon, a man becomes demonic. For instance, the bad man, having become sinful in nature through vice, is established as worthless, having what he willingly chose; and being sinful, he also errs in his actions; conversely, the good man acts rightly. That is why we call good not only the virtues but also good actions. Of goods, we know that some are chosen for their own sake, like knowledge (for once it is present we seek nothing else from it except that it be present, that we be in unbroken contemplation, and that we strive toward it and for its sake); and others for the sake of other things, like faith, for the sake of the escape from punishment and the benefit of the reward that result from it. For fear is the cause of not sinning for the many, and the promise is the starting point for pursuing obedience, through which comes salvation.

Knowledge, then, is the most perfect good, being chosen for its own sake; and the good things that follow through it follow as consequences. Punishment is a cause of correction for the one punished, and for those able to see far ahead it becomes an example by which they check themselves from falling into the same faults. Let us, then, receive knowledge, not desiring its results, but embracing it for the sake of knowing itself. For the first benefit is the habit of knowing, which furnishes harmless pleasures and exultation, both now and hereafter. They say that exultation is gladness, being a reckoning of the virtue that accords with truth, through a certain feasting and expansion of the soul. The works that share in knowledge are good and noble actions. For true wealth is abundance in actions according to virtue, and poverty is want in respect of worldly desires. For the acquisition and use of necessities are not harmful in their quality, but in quantity beyond measure.

That is why the one who knows limits his desires both in acquisition and in use, not going beyond the boundary of necessities. Considering, then, life here necessary for the growth of understanding and the gaining of knowledge, he will value most highly not living but living well, preferring neither children nor marriage nor parents to love for God and righteousness in life. To such a man his wife, after the bearing of children, is regarded as a sister, as though of the same father; she is reminded of her husband only when she looks at the children, as one who will truly be a sister after the laying aside of the flesh, which separates and distinguishes the knowledge of spiritual beings by the peculiarity of their shapes. For souls in themselves are equally souls, neither masculine nor feminine, when they neither marry nor are given in marriage. And perhaps in this way the woman is changed into the man, becoming equally free of womanishness, manly, and perfect.

This, then, was the laughter of Sarah when she received the good news of the birth of a son: not, I think, that she disbelieved the angel, but that she was ashamed of that intercourse again, through which she was to become the mother of a child. And perhaps it was from then on that Abraham, when he was in danger before the king of Egypt because of Sarah's beauty, fittingly called her his sister, of the same father, but not of the same mother. To those who have repented of their sins and have not firmly believed, God grants their requests through prayers; but to those who live without sin and as knowers, he gives when they have only thought of them. For instance, to Hannah, when she had only thought of the child, the conception of Samuel was given. “Ask,” says Scripture, “and I will do it; think, and I will give.” For we have been taught that God knows the heart, judging not from the movement of the soul, as we humans do, nor from the outcome (it is ridiculous to think so); nor, as the architect praised the work once it was done, did God likewise, having made the light, then look at it and call it good. Rather, knowing even before he made it what it would be, he praised it. What came into being by the power of the maker was good from above, through the purpose that has no beginning, that which was to be good in actuality. For he declared beforehand that what was to be was already good, the transposition of the words concealing the truth.

The one who knows, then, prays even in thought at every hour, made intimate with God through love. And first he will ask for the forgiveness of sins; then, once he no longer sins, for the ability to do good, and to understand the whole creation and ordering according to the Lord, so that, having become pure in heart, he may through the knowledge that comes by the Son of God be initiated into the blessed vision face to face, having listened to the Scripture that says, “Fasting with prayer is good.” Fasts signify abstention from all evils absolutely, those of deed, of word, and of thought itself. Righteousness, then, it seems, is foursquare, equal and alike on every side: in word, in deed, in abstention from evils, in doing good, in the perfection of knowledge, nowhere limping in any way, so as not to appear unjust and unequal. Insofar as someone is righteous, he is certainly also faithful; but insofar as he is faithful, he is not yet also righteous—I mean the righteousness that comes by progress and perfecting, according to which the one who knows is called righteous.

For instance, Abraham, having become a believer, was credited with righteousness, having advanced to what is greater and more perfect than faith. For the one who only abstains from evil action is not righteous unless he also achieves doing good and knowing the reason why some things must be avoided and others done. “Through the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left,” says the apostle, the righteous man is escorted to the highest inheritance, protected by the one set and acting with the other. For the covering of the full armor and abstention from sins are not by themselves enough for perfection, unless one adds the work of righteousness, activity in doing good. Then the one who is dexterous on both sides, the one who knows, is revealed to us in righteousness, glorified already even here, like Moses, in the face of his soul—which, as we said earlier, is the characteristic mark of the righteous soul. For as the mordant of the dye, remaining in wool, gives it its distinctive quality and its difference from other wool, so in the soul the labor has passed, but the good remains; and the pleasure is left behind, but the shame is stamped in. For these are the characteristic qualities of each kind of soul, by which the one is known as glorified and the other as condemned.

Indeed, just as from righteous action and continual converse with God who spoke to him a certain glorified color settled on Moses' face, so also on the righteous soul a certain divine power of goodness, touching it by oversight, by prophecy, and by governing activity, imprints something like an intellectual radiance, as it were the sun's warmth, a visible seal of righteousness, a light united to the soul through undivided love, a soul that bears God. Here the likeness to God the Savior emerges for the one who knows, as far as is permitted to human nature, as he becomes perfect “as the Father,” it says, “who is in heaven.” It is he who said, “Little children, I am with you yet a little while.” For God too does not remain blessed and incorruptible insofar as he is good by nature, “neither having trouble nor causing it to another,” but by doing good in his own proper way; being truly God and a good Father, and being and becoming so in unceasing beneficence, he remains unchangeably in the sameness of his goodness. For what is the use of a good that does not act or do good?

The one, then, who has first moderated his passions and trained himself toward freedom from passion, and has grown to the beneficence of the perfection of knowledge, is here equal to the angels. Already luminous and shining like the sun in doing good, he hastens by righteous knowledge through the love of God to the holy dwelling place, like the apostles. They did not become apostles because they were chosen for some exceptional peculiarity of nature, since Judas too was chosen with them; rather, they were capable of becoming apostles, being chosen by the one who foresees even how things will end. Matthias, at any rate, who was not chosen with them, having shown himself worthy to become an apostle, is put in Judas's place.

It is possible, then, even now for those who have trained themselves in the Lord's commandments and lived perfectly and as knowers according to the gospel to be enrolled in the election of the apostles. Such a man is in truth a presbyter of the church and a true deacon of God's will, if he does and teaches the things of the Lord: not ordained by men, nor regarded as righteous because he is a presbyter, but enrolled in the presbyterate because he is righteous. And even if here on earth he is not honored with the chief seat, he will sit on the twenty-four thrones, judging the people, as John says in the Revelation. For in truth there is one saving covenant, reaching from the foundation of the world to us, though it is supposed to differ in its giving according to different generations and times. For it follows that there is one unchangeable gift of salvation, from one God through one Lord, benefiting in many ways; and for this reason the dividing wall that separates the Greek from the Jew is taken away, to make a people for his own possession.

And so both come to the unity of the faith, and the election from both is one. “And more elect than the elect,” it says, are those who are so by perfect knowledge, culled like flowers from the church itself and honored with the most magnificent glory, judges and administrators, the twenty-four, equally from Jews and from Greeks, the grace being doubled. For the grades here in the church, of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, are, I think, imitations of the angelic glory and of that ordering which the Scriptures say awaits those who, following in the footsteps of the apostles, have lived in the perfection of righteousness according to the gospel. The apostle writes that these, taken up in the clouds, will first serve as deacons, then be enrolled in the presbyterate by advancement in glory (for glory differs from glory), until they grow to the perfect man.