Apology against Rufinus

Contents

Translation in progress.

Reading pages: 1.1–1.15 · 1.16–1.29 · 1.30–2.10 · 2.11–2.22 · 2.23–3.1 · 3.2–3.15 · 3.16–3.32 · 3.33–3.44

1. 1.1Jerome begins his Apology by complaining that Rufinus attacks him in unpublished books and had earlier compromised him by quoting his praises of Origen in the preface to On First Principles.
2. 1.2Jerome asks why Rufinus cited only him, and not Hilary, Ambrose, or Victorinus, as an earlier translator and user of Origen.
3. 1.3Jerome explains that he answered his accusers without naming Rufinus, and quotes Rufinus's preface praising Jerome's translations of Origen as purged of anything contrary to the faith.
4. 1.4Jerome asks which faith Rufinus meant by "our faith," and promises to answer Rufinus's books once they are published.
5. 1.5Jerome says he only defended himself, mocks Rufinus's three books as Marcion's Antitheses drawn from his works, and trusts in God's protection.
6. 1.6Jerome explains that Pammachius's letters made him translate On First Principles literally, since Rufinus had softened only the passages on the Trinity and kept Origen's other errors.
7. 1.7Jerome quotes his letter to Pammachius and Oceanus: he translated On First Principles literally to expose Origen's heresies and Rufinus's softened version, not to commend them.
8. 1.8Jerome contrasts his long, unchallenged translating with Rufinus's first work, and claims that the Apology for Origen ascribed to Pamphilus is really the first of Eusebius's six books.
9. 1.9Jerome cites Eusebius's lost Life of Pamphilus, which said Pamphilus wrote nothing but letters, to argue that the Apology is not Pamphilus's.
10. 1.10Jerome urges Rufinus to admit that the Apology is not Pamphilus's, since it sets a supposed martyr against the condemnations of Origen by Theophilus and Anastasius.
11. 1.11Jerome compares Rufinus's charge to Eusebius's against Methodius, defends having praised Eusebius and Origen for their learning, and explains that his literal translation was forced on him by Rufinus's compromising praise.
12. 1.12Jerome denies that the condemnations of Origen by bishops and emperors were aimed at Rufinus or prompted by himself, and mentions his private letter of expostulation to Rufinus.
13. 1.13Jerome answers Rufinus's mockery of his Jewish teacher Baranina, whom Rufinus called "Barabbas," and cites Origen and others who learned from Jews.
14. 1.14Jerome notes that Rufinus claimed ignorance of Origen's errors when Theophilus's letters were read, and asks the same allowance for himself.
15. 1.15Jerome undertakes to defend his Commentary on Ephesians, arguing that it cannot both condemn and teach the same doctrine, and that genres of writing differ.
16. 1.16Jerome explains that a commentary reports many interpreters' views for the reader to judge, as the classical commentators did, so it cannot be charged with all the views it reports.
17. 1.17Jerome mocks Rufinus's poor Latin style and ignorance of elementary rhetorical rules.
18. 1.18Jerome quotes Origen's lost Stromata 6, which follows Plato in allowing a useful lie as a medicine, to support his charge that Origenists tolerate lying.
19. 1.19Jerome defends rendering Ps 2:12 as "Worship the Son" in his commentary and "Worship purely" in his translation, since Hebrew bar can mean both "son" and "pure."
20. 1.20Jerome contrasts Origen's speculations with his own legitimate discussion of Hebrew ambiguities.
21. 1.21Jerome introduces his defence of the passages of his Commentary on Ephesians that Rufinus attacked, quoting his preface on his use of Origen, Didymus, and Apollinaris.
22. 1.22Jerome shows that his comment on Eph 1:4 referred election to God's foreknowledge, reported Origen's view of pre-existent souls only as "another's," and then refuted it.
23. 1.23Jerome defends his comment on Eph 1:21: ranks and advancement among angels, like grades of clergy among men, do not mean angels turning into demons or men as Origen taught.
24. 1.24Jerome defends his comment on Eph 2:7, where he called Origen's view that of a "careful reader," noting that even thieves and the serpent are called careful or wise.
25. 1.25Jerome defends his comment on Eph 3:1 as a set of three views (his own, Origen's, Apollinaris's) and argues that calling the body the soul's chain until the resurrection is not absurd.
26. 1.26Jerome quotes the end of his comment on Eph 4:16, on the restoration of the scattered body of the church, which Rufinus had attacked as his strongest charge.
27. 1.27Jerome explains that his comment on Eph 4:16 contrasted two heresies about the final restoration and did not state his own view.
28. 1.28Jerome quotes the passage of Origen's commentary on Eph 5:28–29 which he had reported, including the words about wives turned into men and bodies into souls that Rufinus attacked.
29. 1.29Jerome explains that his words about wives becoming men meant beginning now the chastity of the angelic life, not abolishing the sexes or bodies in the resurrection.
30. 1.30Jerome rebuts the charges of slandering his predecessors and of breaking his dream-oath, arguing that his vow concerned future reading, not memory of what he learned as a boy, and mocks Rufinus's style.
31. 1.31Jerome replies that a dream cannot bind like a waking oath, retorts with the vows of baptism and monastic life, and warns Rufinus with the Psalms.
32. 1.32Jerome defends his teaching that baptism washes away all sins, so that a man married twice before baptism may become a cleric, and denies seeking office or wealth.
33. 2.1Jerome turns in Book 2 to Rufinus's Apology addressed to Pope Anastasius.
34. 2.2Jerome mocks Rufinus's excuses to Anastasius for not coming to Rome and his claim to be approved in faith and love.
35. 2.3Jerome ridicules Rufinus's claim to have suffered prison and exile for the faith at Alexandria.
36. 2.4Jerome says Rufinus answers about the Trinity, which no one questioned, and demands his view on the origin of Christ's human soul.
37. 2.5Jerome demands that Rufinus say plainly whether the risen will keep their sex and their flesh and blood forever, instead of using Origen's ambiguous formula.
38. 2.6Jerome quotes Rufinus's statement on the devil's eternal punishment and mocks its Latin style.
39. 2.7Jerome argues that Rufinus's formula blames the devil for all sin, denying free will, and is compatible with Origen's view of eternal fire as remorse; he should have used Scripture's plain words of the devil's final ruin.
40. 2.8Jerome quotes Rufinus's statement to Anastasius that he holds no fixed view among the three theories of the soul's origin.
41. 2.9Jerome mocks the grammar and confusion of Rufinus's sentences on the origin of the soul.
42. 2.10Jerome scorns Rufinus's professed ignorance on the origin of the soul as an evasion meant to avoid condemning Origen's doctrine of pre-existence.
43. 2.11Jerome argues that by claiming to cut out only heretical interpolations, Rufinus made himself answerable for every error he left in On First Principles, such as the passage on the Son not seeing the Father.
44. 2.12Jerome lists the doctrines in Origen's works that he holds heretical and challenges Rufinus to show where Origen contradicts them.
45. 2.13Jerome demands that Rufinus name the passages where Origen speaks orthodoxly, and concludes that what Rufinus cut out was Origen's own.
46. 2.14Jerome replies to Rufinus's claim to be neither Origen's defender nor first translator: the fault is not translating Origen but praising his heresies, as Anastasius's letter to John of Jerusalem said.
47. 2.15Jerome quotes Rufinus's preface and his treatise on the falsification of Origen's books, and lists blasphemies he finds even in Rufinus's edited version of the Apology for Origen.
48. 2.16Jerome demands that Rufinus name the book where Origen contradicts himself on the Son and the Spirit.
49. 2.17Jerome rejects Rufinus's argument from falsified writings (the Recognitions, Clement of Alexandria, Dionysius) as one that would make every author's errors someone else's.
50. 2.18Jerome translates more of Origen's letter to friends at Alexandria than Rufinus did, to show that it attacks the bishops who condemned him and that Rufinus cut its context.
51. 2.19Jerome explains that Origen alleged falsification only about his dialogue with Candidus, and ridicules Rufinus's stories of Hilary's falsified book and Cyprian's On the Trinity, which is Novatian's.
52. 2.20Jerome dismisses Rufinus's story that Apollinarians tampered with a copy of Athanasius lent to Jerome at Rome as dinner-table gossip.
53. 2.21Jerome quotes Rufinus's attack on Epiphanius, who had claimed to have read six thousand of Origen's books, as one of the critics who plunder Origen while condemning him.
54. 2.22Jerome defends Epiphanius, notes that the bishops of East and West condemn Origen, and says that Origen never wrote six thousand books.
55. 2.23Jerome explains that he once listed the Apology as Pamphilus's in his On Illustrious Men, relying on Rufinus's copy, but later found it was Book 1 of Eusebius's Apology.
56. 2.24Jerome complains that a forged letter in his name, circulated among African bishops, made him repent of translating from the Hebrew, and insists that he has always honoured the Septuagint.
57. 2.25Jerome quotes his preface to Genesis, which defends translating from the Hebrew because the apostles quote Hebrew passages missing in the Septuagint, and rejects the legend of the seventy cells.
58. 2.26Jerome quotes his preface to Samuel and Kings, where he compares his work to the humble goats' hair offered for the tabernacle.
59. 2.27Jerome quotes his preface to Chronicles, which explains that the Septuagint circulated in three corrupted recensions and that his version from the Hebrew leaves the old edition intact.
60. 2.28Jerome quotes his preface to Ezra, inviting critics to check his translation with the Hebrews and noting that the Greeks gratefully use Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion.
61. 2.29Jerome quotes his preface to Job, which notes how much of Job was missing from the Greek and Old Latin and asks that a Christian translator be received as Aquila and Theodotion are.
62. 2.30Jerome quotes his preface to the Psalter from the Hebrew, made to help Sophronius answer a Jew who disputed the Septuagint's Psalms.
63. 2.31Jerome quotes his preface to the books of Solomon, which leaves readers free to use his corrected Septuagint version.
64. 2.32Jerome quotes his preface to Isaiah, which suggests the Septuagint veiled Christian mysteries and asks readers to use his translation as the Greeks use Aquila and others.
65. 2.33Jerome defends his preface to Daniel: he reported the Jewish objections to Susanna, the Song of the Three Young Men, and Bel and the Dragon, and followed the churches in reading Theodotion's Daniel.
66. 2.34Jerome argues that Christ and the apostles quoted the Hebrew where it differed from the Septuagint, and challenges Rufinus to find a New Testament quotation from the Septuagint not in the Hebrew.
67. 2.35Jerome concludes Book 2: the Septuagint and the later translations are all useful, and he awaits Rufinus's full Apology.
68. 3.1Jerome begins Book 3 by answering Rufinus's threatening letter, applying to him Scripture's words about fools and promising not to answer slander with slander.
69. 3.2Jerome protests at what he takes as Rufinus's threat of death, citing apostles who disagreed without enmity, and says he had wished to keep silent at Chromatius's request.
70. 3.3Jerome rejects Rufinus's claim to have sent his Apology only to a few, since its charges had spread through Rome, Italy, and Dalmatia.
71. 3.4Jerome denies bribing Rufinus's secretary, accuses Rufinus's circle of stealing his own letter from Eusebius's room at Bethlehem, and hints that Rufinus's money corrupts others.
72. 3.5Jerome argues that Rufinus's story of stolen and falsified drafts of On First Principles is self-contradictory, and that no editing could make the work catholic.
73. 3.6Jerome answers Rufinus's letter on eloquence and his threat that Jerome cannot be pardoned for any error, mocking Rufinus's Latin and claim of haste.
74. 3.7Jerome turns Rufinus's dilemma back on him: Rufinus spread public books against Jerome while complaining that Jerome did not rebuke him privately.
75. 3.8Jerome asks why his defence of himself should provoke Rufinus to threaten him with civil courts.
76. 3.9Jerome offers Rufinus peace if both will condemn Origen together, following Theophilus and Anastasius.
77. 3.10Jerome doubts Rufinus's claim to have written his letter within two days of receiving Jerome's books.
78. 3.11Jerome repeats that a commentary reports many views, whereas Rufinus's preface made him answerable for what he kept in On First Principles.
79. 3.12Jerome repeats that he found at Caesarea the six books of Eusebius's Apology for Origen, of which Rufinus's "Pamphilus" is the first, and urges Rufinus to retract the attribution to spare the martyr's name.
80. 3.13Jerome points out that Rufinus's own question about his commentaries admits that the views Jerome reported were others' and not Jerome's.
81. 3.14Jerome restates his argument that Rufinus's preface, claiming to keep only the best of Origen, makes him answerable for every error left in On First Principles.
82. 3.15Jerome doubts Rufinus's claim that the bishops of Italy accepted his statement on the resurrection, since Rome had rejected it.
83. 3.16Jerome doubts Rufinus's promise to follow Theophilus, lists the letters of Theophilus he has translated, and recalls that Rufinus's former ally had urged him to resist Epiphanius.
84. 3.17Jerome defends his hospitality to Paul, an Egyptian bishop deposed by Theophilus, appealing to the Samaritan and to Christ in the stranger.
85. 3.18Jerome says that Paul rejected the Origenist monks expelled from Egypt, and that Theophilus himself is witness to Jerome's communion with him.
86. 3.19Jerome denies writing anything shameful about Vigilantius and says his letter to Vigilantius answered Rufinus, who had stirred Vigilantius up.
87. 3.20Jerome challenges Rufinus, who doubts Anastasius's letter against him, to verify it in the Roman archives or answer Anastasius himself.
88. 3.21Jerome mocks Rufinus's reliance on Siricius's letter and his flight from Roman judgment, and resents his hints about Jerome's departure from Rome.
89. 3.22Jerome narrates his voyage from Rome in 385 by way of Cyprus, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Egypt to Bethlehem, and challenges Rufinus to produce any church document against him.
90. 3.23Jerome quotes Epiphanius's letter to John of Jerusalem praying that Rufinus be freed from Origen's heresy, to refute Rufinus's claim that Epiphanius had given him the kiss of peace.
91. 3.24Jerome denies sending agents to Rome to harm Rufinus, explaining why each of the presbyters Rufinus suspected went there, and sees God's providence in it.
92. 3.25Jerome replies to Rufinus's denial that he forged the letter of retractation circulated in Africa, and defends translating from the Hebrew to answer the Jews.
93. 3.26Jerome mocks Rufinus's reply on his poor Latin and his warning that sins, not words, stink.
94. 3.27Jerome argues that praising a man in one respect and blaming him in another is consistent, unlike Rufinus's praising and then condemning the same qualities in Jerome.
95. 3.28Jerome begins answering Rufinus's challenge that he, too, cannot explain the heavens, angels, and stars.
96. 3.29Jerome says ignorance of natural philosophy does not excuse Rufinus's professed ignorance on the origin of souls, and mocks his arrival at Rome as a richly laden ship.
97. 3.30Jerome presses Rufinus on the three theories of the soul's origin: if one is true, his professed ignorance of all three is evasion meant to protect Origen's view.
98. 3.31Jerome turns Rufinus's taunt about his "smoke" against him, comparing Rufinus to the fire-breathing impostor Bar Kochba and to Salmoneus.
99. 3.32Jerome contrasts his own dream, which humbled him, with Rufinus's boast of Macarius's dream, whose "ship" brought only shipwreck of the faith.
100. 3.33Jerome denies breaking the reconciliation of 397 by plotting against Rufinus, noting that Aterbius had accused Rufinus of Origenism at Jerusalem before any quarrel.
101. 3.34Jerome answers Rufinus's complaint that he should have rebuked him privately, and points out contradictions in Rufinus's story of how his drafts were stolen.
102. 3.35Jerome says that his friends, whom Rufinus calls his disciples, suspect Jerome himself because of Rufinus's praise, so he cannot restrain them.
103. 3.36Jerome says his literal translation of On First Principles, requested by Pammachius and Oceanus, served both to show Rufinus's faith and to expose Origen's heresy.
104. 3.37Jerome says he translated On First Principles anew only because Rufinus's praise had implicated him, and prefers Rufinus's enmity to the friendship of heretics.
105. 3.38Jerome insists that his friendly letter to Rufinus (Ep. 81) is genuine and was withheld by friends at Rome, and that Anastasius's letter is likewise genuine.
106. 3.39Jerome answers Rufinus's demand for the books of Pythagoras: he had spoken of Pythagorean doctrines, known through Cicero and others, and he cites the Golden Verses and Pythagorean maxims.
107. 3.40Jerome traces the doctrine of transmigration and of learning as recollection from Pythagoras through Plato to Origen's On First Principles, and explains that he spoke of reading doctrines, not books.
108. 3.41Jerome summarizes the threats at the end of Rufinus's letter, which offered peace only if Jerome stopped writing against heretics.
109. 3.42Jerome refuses to answer Rufinus's threats in kind, quoting only a proverb on hearing what one does not want.
110. 3.43Jerome refuses to keep silent about heretics, and answers Rufinus with a long chain of sayings from Proverbs and with Ps 58.
111. 3.44Jerome ends: if Rufinus wants peace, let him lay down his arms; one faith will bring peace.