Symposium (The Banquet of the Ten Virgins) 3.1–3.14

Taking up the argument from this point, I think, she said herself: “You seem to me, Theophila, to excel all of us in both deed and word, and to take second place to no one in wisdom. For no one will find fault with your speech, not even if he were utterly contentious and quarrelsome. Only one thing, blessed one, while the rest was rightly said, seems to me to trouble and distress me, when I consider that so spiritual and wise a man, I mean Paul, would not idly have referred the union of the first-formed man and the woman ‘to Christ and the church’ if Scripture had pictured nothing loftier than the words and the story. For if Scripture must be taken simply as a type of the union of man and woman, why does the apostle, when he mentions these things and leads us by the hand, I think, into the way of the Spirit, refer them ‘to Christ and the church’ and interpret the story of Eve and Adam allegorically? For the text of Genesis says this: ‘And Adam said, “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of her husband. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”’ But the apostle, looking at this very passage, no longer wants it taken according to the letter, as I said, of the union of woman and man, as you did. For you, working out the argument in a more natural way, took Scripture as speaking only of conceptions and births: that living creatures come together, swelling and in labour like trees in the season of bearing, so that bone taken from bones may be born as another human being. But he, teaching that the word is to be referred more spiritually to Christ, said this: ‘He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I speak concerning Christ and the church.’

“Do not be disturbed if, while speaking of some things, he leaps to others, so that he seems to mix in and insert things unlike the subject, digressing from the inquiry, as he does here too. For, wishing, as is likely, to establish carefully his account of chastity, he first prepares the ground for his argument, beginning with a smoother kind of expression. For the character of his discourse, being most varied and worked up by amplification, begins more on the surface but flows out into what is loftier and magnificent; then again, turning to depth, it ends sometimes in what is simpler and plain, sometimes in what is more forceful and subtle, bringing in nothing foreign to the main points by its changes, but, drawing everything together by a wonderful affinity, he works the inquiry before him into a single subject. I must uncover more boldly the sense of the apostle's arguments, rejecting nothing of what was said before. For you seem to me, Theophila, to have gone through those things sufficiently and brilliantly, working out the words of Scripture as they stand, which is the safer course. For it is dangerous to despise the literal text entirely, as has been said, especially that of Genesis, where the unchangeable decrees of God concerning the constitution of the universe are recorded; in accordance with them the world is still governed even now most beautifully, in perfect measure, until he who ordered it, wishing to re-form it, dissolves the first laws of nature by another decree. But since the demonstration of the argument must not be left unexamined and, as it were, half lame, come, let us give it also its partner in the higher sense, examining Scripture more deeply. For we must not despise Paul, who rises above the letter and declares that it refers to Christ and the church.

“And first we must examine (for some are likely to object in one way or another) how Adam can be likened to the Son of God, when he was found in the fall of transgression and heard, ‘You are earth, and to earth you shall go.’ And how will he who was moulded from clay after the earth and the firmament be thought ‘the firstborn of all creation’? And how will it be granted that he himself is ‘the tree of life,’ who was cast out because of his transgression, ‘lest he again stretch out his hand and eat of it and live for ever’? For what is likened to that of which it is a likeness must resemble it in many respects, and not have its constitution from what is contrary and alien. For no one who dared to equate the unequal with the even, or harmony with discord, would be accepted as sensible; rather the equal is likened to what is equal by nature, even if it is equal only slightly, and white to white, even if it only very faintly and moderately shows the whiteness of that from which it too is called white. Now it is clear to anyone wise, beyond all doubt, that to be sinless and incorrupt is equal and bright, while what is mortal and sinful, cast out through condemnation and come under sentence, is uneven and discordant.

“These, then, I think, are roughly the objections returned by the many who do not want to refer the first man to Christ, despising, it seems, Paul's understanding. Come, let us consider how rightly he referred Adam to Christ, thinking him not only to be a type and image, but that he himself became this very Christ, because the Word who was before the ages descended into him. For it was fitting that God's firstborn, his first offshoot and only-begotten, Wisdom, should be blended with the first-formed man, first and firstborn of human beings, and become man. For this is Christ: a man filled with unmixed and perfect deity, and God contained in a man. For it was most fitting that the eldest of the ages and first of the archangels, being about to converse with human beings, should take up his dwelling in the eldest and first man of humanity, Adam. In this way, [renewing] what was from the beginning and forming him anew from a virgin and the Spirit, he fashions the same man, since at the beginning too, while the earth was still virgin and unploughed, God took dust and formed from it, without seed, the most rational creature.

“And let the prophet Jeremiah come forward as my sure and clear witness, saying: ‘And I went down to the potter's house, and behold, he was doing work on the stones. And the vessel he was making in his hands fell apart. And again he made it another vessel, as it pleased him to make it.’ For while Adam was still being moulded of clay, still, it seems, soft and moist, and had not yet been hardened and turned to stone like earthenware by incorruption, sin, like water trickling and dripping down on him, dissolved him. That is why God, moistening him afresh and making the same man ‘for honour,’ first hardened and set him in the virgin womb, united and blended him with the Word, and brought him out into life unmeltable and unbreakable, so that he might not again be flooded from outside by the streams of corruption, become soft, and fall apart. And in the parable of the finding of the sheep my Lord is clearly teaching the same thing, where he says to those standing by: ‘What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go after the lost one, seeking it until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, and coming home he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for my lost sheep has been found.”’

“For since he truly was and is, being ‘in the beginning with God’ and being ‘God,’ the ‘chief captain’ and ‘shepherd’ of those in heaven, whom all rational beings obey and follow, and who tends in good order and numbers the multitudes of the blessed angels … (for this is the equal and perfect number of immortal living creatures, divided by kinds and tribes, man too being taken into the flock here; for he too had been created free of corruption, so that he might honour the King and Maker of all, singing in answer to the cries of the angels that came from heaven). But since it happened that he transgressed the commandment and suffered a ruinous and terrible fall, being resolved into death, for this reason the Lord says that he came from heaven into life, leaving the ranks and armies of the angels. For the mountains must be likened to the heavens, and the ninety-nine sheep to the powers and ‘the principalities and authorities,’ which the captain and shepherd left when he came down to seek the lost one. For man was still lacking to be enrolled in their number, the Lord having carried him and put him on, so that he might not again, as I said, be flooded and sunk by the great waves and the deceits of pleasure. For this reason the Word took up man, that through him he might undo the condemnation that had come for his ruin, having defeated the serpent. For it was fitting that the evil one should be conquered not through another, but through the very one whom he boasted he had deceived and tyrannized; because sin and condemnation could not be undone otherwise than if the same man, on whose account it was said, ‘You are earth, and to earth you shall go,’ wrestled again and undid the sentence brought upon all because of him, so that, as ‘in Adam’ first ‘all die, so’ again ‘in Christ,’ who took up Adam, ‘all shall be made alive.’

“That man, having become the instrument and garment of the Only-begotten, has been shown to be the very thing that he was who dwelt in him, seems to me now to have almost reached its end. But that there is neither inequality nor discord must again be briefly examined from the beginning. Whoever says that what is good by nature and just and holy by nature, by participation in which other things become good, is Wisdom, after God, speaks most rightly; and, on the other side, that what is unholy and unjust and evil is sin. For two things are opposed to each other in the extreme: life and death, incorruption and corruption. Equality is life, inequality corruption; harmony is righteousness and prudence, discord injustice and folly. But man, being between these, is neither righteousness itself nor injustice; standing in the middle between incorruption and corruption, to whichever of them he inclines and leans, he is said to be changed into the nature of the one that prevails. Turning toward corruption he becomes corruptible and mortal, toward incorruption incorruptible and immortal. For, placed on the border between ‘the tree of life’ and ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,’ whose fruit he tasted, he was changed into its form, being himself neither ‘the tree of life’ nor that of corruption, but appearing mortal by participation in and the presence of corruption, and again incorruptible and immortal by association with and the anointing of life. So Paul too taught, saying, ‘For corruption will not inherit incorruption,’ nor death life, rightly defining corruption and death as that which corrupts and kills, not what is corrupted and dies, and incorruption and life as that which makes immortal and gives life, not what is made immortal and given life. So man is neither discord and inequality nor equality and harmony; but when he received discord, that is, transgression and sin, he became discordant and unseemly; and when he received harmony, that is, righteousness, he became a harmonious and seemly instrument, so that the Lord, the incorruption that conquered death, might sing the resurrection tunefully with the flesh, not letting it be inherited again by corruption. And about these things let enough now have been said.

“For it has already been shown, with proofs from Scripture not to be despised, that the first-formed man can properly be referred to Christ himself, being no longer only a type and likeness and image of the Only-begotten, but having become this very thing, Wisdom and Word. For man, blended like water with wisdom and life, became that very thing which was the unmixed light that entered him. That is why the apostle aptly referred to Christ what concerns Adam. For in this way it would best agree that the church came into being from his bones and flesh; for her sake the Word left his Father in heaven and came down to be joined to his wife, and slept the trance of his passion, dying for her, ‘that he might present the church to himself glorious and blameless, having cleansed her by the washing’ for the spiritual and blessed seed, which he himself sows, whispering it and planting it in the depth of the mind, and which the church receives and forms, like a woman, so as to bring forth and nurture virtue. For in this way ‘Increase and multiply’ is also fittingly fulfilled, as she grows daily in size and beauty and number through the union and communion of the Word, who still even now comes down to us and falls into a trance in the remembrance of his passion. For otherwise the church could not conceive believers and give them new birth ‘through the washing of regeneration,’ unless Christ, emptying himself for them too, so that he might be contained, as I said, in the recapitulation of his passion, should die again, coming down from heaven, and, joined to his own wife, the church, should allow a certain power to be taken from his own side, so that all who are built up in him may grow, those born through the washing, having received of his bones and of his flesh, that is, of his holiness and of his glory. For whoever says that the bones and flesh of Wisdom are understanding and virtue speaks most rightly; and the side is ‘the Spirit of truth,’ the Paraclete, from whom the enlightened receive and are fittingly born again to incorruption. And it is impossible for anyone to share in the Holy Spirit and be enrolled as a member of Christ unless the Word first comes down for him too and falls asleep in a trance, so that he, rising with him from sleep, having been renewed and restored, may himself be able to share in it, filled with the Spirit. For this may properly be called the side of the Word, ‘the Spirit of truth,’ sevenfold according to the prophet; taking from him, after the trance of Christ, that is, after his becoming man and his passion, God fashions the ‘helper’ for him: I mean the souls joined and betrothed to him. For often the Scriptures name thus, church, the whole gathering and assembly of believers, the more perfect being brought up by progress into the one person and body of the church. For those who are better and have grasped the truth more clearly, having been freed from the absurdities of the flesh through perfect purification and faith, become the church and ‘helper’ of Christ, joined and betrothed to him, as the apostle says, like a ‘virgin,’ so that, receiving the pure and fruitful seed of the teaching, they may work together, helping the preaching, for the salvation of the rest. But those who are still imperfect and beginning in the teachings are brought to birth and formed, as in wombs, by the more perfect, until, being delivered, they are born again to the greatness and beauty of virtue; and these in turn, becoming the church by progress, may serve in the birth and nurture of other children, bringing to completion, like a womb, in the receptacle of the soul, the unblemished will of the Word.

“For we must consider also the case of the renowned Paul: when he was not yet ‘perfect in Christ,’ he was first born and nursed with milk, Ananias preaching the gospel to him and renewing him by baptism, as the account in the Acts contains. But when he had come to manhood and been built up, re-formed into spiritual perfection, and was declared a ‘helper’ and ‘bride’ of the Word, having received and conceived the seeds of life, then he who had earlier been called a child becomes church and mother, himself in labour with those who through him believed in the Lord, until Christ should be brought to birth in them too. For he says, ‘My little children, with whom I am again in labour until Christ is formed in you,’ and again, ‘For in Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel.’ So it is established in this way that the contemplation concerning Eve and Adam is referred to the church and to Christ. For this is the great mystery, truly beyond the world, which I, through weakness and dullness of mind, cannot speak of worthily and according to its greatness. Nevertheless I must attempt it; for it would follow now to tell you also what comes next.

“For Paul, calling everyone to holiness and self-control, in this way hurled what concerns the first-formed man and Eve toward Christ and the church, as a second question, so that the ignorant might be silenced, stripped of their pretext. For, being licentious because of the excessive flows of pleasure in them, they dare to force the Scriptures against orthodox reasoning, holding out as a bulwark for their incontinence both ‘God said, “Increase and multiply”’ and ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother’; nor are they ashamed to run down the Spirit, but … they fan the frenzy, kindling it with provocations. That is why, cutting off very sharply these stealthy follies and contrived pretexts of theirs, when he came to prescribe how husbands should behave toward their wives, and declared that they should do so just as Christ also did to the church, ‘giving himself up’ for her, ‘that he might sanctify and cleanse her by the washing of water with the word,’ he ran back to Genesis, recalling the words about the first-formed man, and he secured these too for the sense of the subject before him, so as not to give a hold to those who, under pretext of begetting children, advocate the friction of bodies, to misuse these chief texts.

“For consider, virgins, that, wishing believers to be chaste, he tries through many proofs to indicate to them the dignity of chastity: at one point saying, ‘Now concerning the things about which you wrote to me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman,’ he shows plainly from the outset that not to touch a woman is good, placing it first and setting it out absolutely. Then again, seeing the weakness and the burning of the more incontinent toward intercourse, he allowed those unable to rule the flesh to have relations with their own bedfellows rather than fall shamefully and pour themselves out in sexual immorality. Indeed, after permitting this he at once added, ‘so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control,’ which means: ‘But if you cannot, my friends, be entirely chaste because of your lack of self-control and the moistness of your bodies, I have permitted you rather to have relations with your own wives, so that you may not, while thought to profess continence, be continually tempted by the evil one, burning for other women.’

“Come, let us go through the text itself more carefully: the apostle did not grant these things to the many absolutely, but first added the reason why he was led to it. Having declared, then, that ‘it is good for a man not to touch a woman,’ he added: ‘but because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife’ (that is, because of the compulsion of sexual immorality, if you cannot restrain pleasure) ‘and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to the wife her due, and likewise also the wife to the husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; and come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. But this I say by way of concession, not by command.’ And this too is said very thoughtfully. For he indicated that he had now given advice ‘by way of concession, and not by command,’ since he applies the command to self-control and not touching a woman, and the concession to those who, as I said, cannot restrain desire. These are his rules, then, about men married once and women married once, as long as their union [lasts]. But concerning men who have already lost their wives, or women their husbands, we must again trace precisely the apostle's voice and what it declares: ‘But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: it is good for them if they remain as I am. But if they are not practising self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.’ Here too he persisted in preferring continence. For, taking himself as the greatest example for his hearers to imitate, he summoned them to this resolve, teaching that it is better for one who has been joined to one wife to remain by himself, just as he himself did. But if this should be hard for someone to achieve because of the burning and vigour of the body, he allows one in that state to go on, by concession, to a second marriage, not declaring second marriage itself to be good, but judging it better than burning. It is as if someone, on the day of the Pascha and of the [fast], brought food to a person dangerously ill and bade him, because of his illness, to taste what was brought, saying: ‘Truly, my friend, it would be good … for you, like us, to hold out firmly and partake of the same things (for today it is forbidden to think of food at all); but since you have been seized by illness beforehand and weakened and cannot bear it, we therefore grant you a concession and advise you to take some food, lest, being quite unable through illness to resist the desire for food, you perish.’ So also the apostle here: having first said that he wished all to be self-controlled, as he himself was, he then, for those sick with the passions, lest they be wholly corrupted by sexual immorality, the generative members being provoked by tickling to mingle with the seed of strangers, permitted second marriage, judging it better than ‘to burn’ and behave shamefully.

“About continence and marriage and self-control and the union of men and women, and in which of these lies what is profitable for the building up of righteousness, I have now nearly finished; it remains to speak about [virginity], whether he said anything about it too. So these things too must be discussed. The passage runs thus: ‘Concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord; but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think, then, that this is good because of the present distress, that it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. Yet such people will have trouble in the flesh, and I would spare you.’ Introducing the subject of virginity very cautiously, and being about to advise that whoever wishes may give his own virgin in marriage, so that nothing that concerns holiness should be done by compulsion and force, but by the free choice of the soul (for this is pleasing to God), he does not wish these words, that is, that the virgin be given in marriage, to be taken as spoken by the authority and judgment of the Lord. Indeed, having said, ‘and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned,’ he again, cautiously, almost unsettled his consent, indicating that he had given this advice by human concession, not by divine. At once, then, after saying, ‘and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned,’ he added, ‘Yet such people will have trouble in the flesh, and I would spare you,’ which means: ‘I, sparing you, my friends, have agreed to this, since you yourselves have chosen to think so, so that I may not seem to hurry and compel any of you to it by force. Nevertheless, even if you prefer, finding chastity hard to bear, to turn rather to this, I still think it profitable for you to master the provocations of the flesh, not misusing your own vessels for impurity because you have married.’ Indeed he adds: ‘This I say, brothers: the time from now on is short, so that those who have wives may be as though they had none.’ Then, persisting again and urging the same things, he worked out his argument further, strongly confirming the resolve of virginity. In express words, then, joining what follows to what was said before, he declared: ‘I want you to be free from anxiety. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the things of the world, how to please his wife. And the wife and the virgin are divided. The unmarried woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in both body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the things of the world, how to please her husband.’ For it is beyond dispute and plain to all that to be anxious about the things of the Lord and to please the Lord is far better than to be anxious about the things of the world and to please one's wife. For who is so foolish and blind that he does not at once perceive that Paul's exhortation leans more toward chastity? ‘For this I say,’ he says, ‘for your own benefit, not to put a noose on you, but for what is seemly.’

“Notice besides what has been said how he declares that the way of life of virginity is also a gift of God. That is why he rejects those among the more incontinent who have come to it on a pretext of vainglory, advising them to marry, lest, in the season of their prime, when the flesh gives them throbbing inflammations, they behave shamefully, their souls driven by frenzy. For we must consider what he teaches: ‘But if anyone thinks he is behaving shamefully toward his virgin,’ he says, ‘if she is past her prime, and it must be so, let him do what he wishes; he does not sin; let them marry.’ Here he fittingly prefers marriage to shameful conduct in the case of those who chose to remain virgins but afterwards find it hard to bear and grow weary, and who, out of shame before people, boast in word that they persevere, but in deed cannot hold out any longer. But the one who with sovereign and free choice decides ‘to keep his own’ flesh ‘virgin’ and has no ‘necessity,’ that is, a passion that calls the loins to intercourse (for there are, as is likely, differences of bodies), the one who contends and earnestly perseveres in his promise and carries it through excellently, him he urges to remain and keep it, giving virginity the first prize. For the one who is able, he says, and is ambitious ‘to keep his own’ flesh ‘virgin, does better’; and the one who is not able, but keeps [it] lawfully and does not secretly corrupt, ‘does well.’ About these things enough has been said. Let anyone who wishes take in hand the letter to the Corinthians and, having conversed with each thing written in it, then examine and compare what we have said, whether it does not hold in full agreement and harmony with it. This, Arete, is what I too contribute, as far as I can, on behalf of chastity.” EUBOULION: Through a great deal, Gregorion, she barely arrived at her subject, having measured out and crossed a very long sea of words. GREGORION: So it seems. But come, let us go through the rest in order, recalling it as faithfully as we can, while I think I still have the hearing ringing in my ears, before it flies away and escapes; for the memories of the old easily lose what they have newly heard. EUBOULION: Speak, then; for we have come gladly to hear these speeches. GREGORION: Well then, as you said, after Thalia had been brought to land on waveless courses, Theopatra said that she herself took up next and spoke as follows.