Symposium (The Banquet of the Ten Virgins) 4.1–5.8

“If, virgins, the wisdom of the art of speaking stood always on the same lines of argument and always travelled the same path, there would be no way for one attempting to speak after those who have already contended not to be wearisome. But if there are countless impulses and courses of speech, God inspiring us ‘in many portions and in many ways,’ what reason is there to hide oneself and be afraid? For one who shares in grace is not blameless if he does not adorn good things with words of thanksgiving. So come, let us too sing of the most brightly shining and most precious star among Christ's gifts, chastity. For this is the broadest and most generous road of the Spirit. From what point, then, we should begin so as to seem to say what is fitting and suited to our subject, must now be considered.

“For I think I have perceived precisely that nothing else has been so much the cause and means of salvation for human beings, of their restoration to paradise, their change to incorruption, and their reconciliation with God, nothing has so led us to life, as chastity. I will try to show now what I think about these things, so that, hearing clearly the power of this gift, you may know how many goods it has brought us. In ancient times, then, after man was cast out because of his transgression and removed, the stream of corruption poured over him abundantly, and, rushing violently in enormous surges, not only swept along outside in disorder, but already, pouring in, flooded the souls within. Suffering this continually, they were carried along deaf and senseless, having given up steering their own vessels, because they had nothing firm. For the senses of the soul, as those who know about these things say, when they are overcome by the passions that strike from outside and admit the onrush of the wave of folly that floods within, at once, darkened, hinder the whole vessel of the soul, which by nature is easily guided, from travelling on its straight course. For this reason God, taking pity on us, who were thus unable either to hold out or to recover, sent down from heaven the best and most glorious help, chastity, so that, having made our bodies fast by it like ships, we might lie calmly at anchor, safe from corruption; and the Holy Spirit bears witness to this. For this is found in the hundred and thirty-sixth Psalm, where the souls joyfully sing a hymn of thanksgiving to God, all those who have been taken up and now travel round heaven with Christ, [that they were not swept away] by the material and bodily streams. From this, indeed, they say that Pharaoh too bore the type of the devil, since he ordered the male children to be thrown pitilessly into the river and the female to be kept alive. For the devil too, reigning ‘from Adam until Moses’ over the great Egypt, the world, took pains that the male and rational offspring of the soul should be swept away by the passions and destroyed, while he longs for the fleshly and sensible to increase and multiply.

“But so as not to stray from our subject, come, let us take in hand and explain this Psalm, which the pure and unblemished souls sing to God, saying, ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows in the midst of it, there we hung up our instruments.’ Calling their bodies ‘instruments,’ they clearly hung them up, fastening them by the cables of chastity to [the tree], so that they might not be snatched away and swept off again by the stream of incontinence. For Babylon, which is interpreted ‘tumult’ or ‘confusion,’ signifies this life flowing all round us, in the midst of which we sit and are flooded all the time we are in the world, as the rivers of wickedness constantly rush upon us. That is why we are terrified and lament and cry out with weeping to God, that our instruments may not be torn from the tree of chastity by the waves of pleasure and slip down. For the divine Scriptures everywhere take the willow as a type of virginity, since its flower, if ground up and drunk, quenches everything that boils up toward coupling and provocation, until it makes wholly barren and fruitless every impulse toward begetting children; as Homer too indicated, calling willows for this reason ‘fruit-losing.’ And in Isaiah the righteous are said to grow like willows by flowing water. For the plant of virginity grows greatly to its height when the righteous man, who has been entrusted to keep and tend it, waters it with the gentlest streams of Christ, sprinkling it with wisdom. For as this tree naturally grows green and sprouts with water, so virginity naturally flowers and flourishes always when enriched with words, so that one may hang his own instrument from it.

“If, then, the rivers of Babylon are the torrents of pleasure, as the wise say, which confuse and disturb the soul, the willows must be self-control, from which we hang and draw up the generative instruments that swing downward and weigh down the mind, so that they may not be carried down to the channels of incontinence and, like worms, touch the discharges and putrefactions. For God gave virginity as most useful and helpful for gaining incorruption, sending it as an ally to those who reach out for and long for Zion, as the Psalmist teaches, that is, for the shining love that is the commandment concerning it, since Zion is interpreted ‘command of the watchtower.’ Let us now consider in this way what follows as well. Why do the souls confess that they were asked by their captors to sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land, if not because they teach that the gospel is a holy and secret song, which sinners and those who commit adultery sing to the evil one? For they depart from the commandments, doing the will of ‘the spiritual forces of wickedness,’ and throw ‘what is holy to the dogs and the pearls before swine,’ just like those of whom the prophet says in displeasure, ‘And they read the law outside.’ For it was not because the Jews went out and read the law outside the gates of Jerusalem or of their houses that the prophet strongly accuses them and cries out that they had become liable to charge, but because, while transgressing the commandments and acting impiously toward God, they read the precepts with a feigned show, as if pious, but did not receive them in their soul and hold them with faith, but spat them out ‘by their works.’ For this is how they sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land: dragging down the law and explaining it in a lower sense, expecting an earthly kingdom, and setting their hopes on this foreign land, which the word says will pass away, where the captors, lying in wait for deception, entice them with pleasures.

“Those too who sing the gospel to the foolish seem to sing ‘the song of the Lord in a foreign land,’ of which Christ is not the husbandman. But those who have put on and shine with the most pure, bright, unmixed, reverent, and seemly beauty of virginity, and are found barren and fruitless of fleeting and painful things, do not sing ‘the song in a foreign land,’ because they do not carry their hopes here, nor cling to the delights of mortal bodies, nor look at the sense of the commandments in a low way, but well and nobly, with lofty mind, they gaze at the promises above, seeking the heavenly place that is akin to them. That is why God, admiring their thoughts, promises ‘with an oath’ to give them special honours, setting them first ‘at the beginning of joy’ and establishing them in the first seat. For he says thus: ‘If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand be forgotten. May my tongue cling to my throat if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem first as at the beginning of my joy’: calling Jerusalem these very undefiled and, as I said, unharmed souls, which, having drunk with undefiled lips the strictly pure, unfermented drink, are betrothed ‘to one husband, to present a pure virgin to Christ’ in heaven, ‘having won the contest for undefiled prizes.’ In this way Isaiah too exhorts, saying: ‘Shine, shine, Jerusalem; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.’ It is plain to everyone that these promises will be fulfilled after the resurrection. For the Holy Spirit does not prophesy about the much-talked-of little town in Judea, but about that truly heavenly city, the blessed Jerusalem, which they say is the assembly of the souls that God promises, without fail, to set first ‘at the beginning of joy’ of the new ages, making them dwell, arrayed in the whitest adornment of virginity, in a pure dwelling of unsetting lights, because they did not remember to put off the bridal adornment, that is, to slacken their reasoning with strange imaginings.

“Indeed, the saying in Jeremiah that a bride should not forget her adornment, nor a virgin her breast-band, signifies not to give way and loosen the band of self-control through deceits and distractions. For the breast is reasonably thought to be our heart and mind; and the breast-band, the girdle that binds and draws tight the soul's resolve toward chastity, is love toward God. May Jesus, our captain and shepherd and ruler and bridegroom, grant you, fair virgins, to keep it unbroken and sealed ‘to the end.’ For no one could easily find a better help for human beings than this possession, pleasing and dear to God. That is why I say that all must honour chastity, and especially practise it and praise it. Let these first-fruits of speech, then, be dedicated to you by me too, Arete, partly in play and partly in earnest.” “I accept the gift,” Arete said, she told me, “and I bid Thallousa speak after you; for I must receive a speech from each one of you.”

Thallousa, then, she said, having paused a little and considered something to herself, said: “Arete, I ask you to stand by me as a helper in my mind, so that we may appear to speak in a manner worthy first of you and then of those present. For I am fully persuaded, having learned it from the sacred writings, that the greatest and most splendid offering and gift, than which nothing of equal worth can be brought by human beings to God, is the contest of virginity. For, although many people did many good things by vows in the law, those alone who offered themselves to God by their own free will would not have been said to fulfil a great vow unless this were so. For the text runs thus: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: A man or woman who vows a great vow, to consecrate chastity to the Lord.”’ One vows to bring golden and silver vessels to the temple and dedicate them; another to dedicate a tenth of his crops, another of his property, another the best of his flocks; another consecrates his possessions; and yet none of these is said to have vowed a great vow to the Lord, but only the one who dedicates himself wholly to God.

“For I must try, virgins, to show you in a true account the spiritual sense of the Scripture. For whoever guards and attends in one part, but is distracted and errs in another, is not wholly dedicated to God. For the perfect man must dedicate everything, both what belongs to the soul and what belongs to the flesh, so that he may be complete and not lacking. In this way God instructs Abraham too, saying, ‘Take for me a heifer three years old, and a goat three years old, and a ram three years old, and a turtledove and a pigeon.’ That is (for notice that he enjoins this too, in a manner of good omen): ‘Offer to me and keep your soul unyoked and unharmed like a heifer, and your flesh and your reason, the one like a goat, since it ranges over the heights and cliffs, the other like a ram, so that it may never leap away and fall and slip from the truth. For so you will be perfect and blameless, Abraham, having dedicated to me your soul, your perception, and your mind.’ These he symbolically called a three-year-old heifer and goat and ram, as having taken up the blameless knowledge of the Trinity. And perhaps he also hints at the first, middle, and last course of our life's age, wishing, as far as possible, that we should offer ourselves to him having lived chastely through the time of childhood, manhood, and old age. In the same way our Lord Jesus Christ also exhorts in the Gospels, legislating thus: ‘Let your lamps’ not be quenched, and ‘your loins’ not be ungirded. ‘Therefore be like men waiting for their master, when he will return from the wedding, so that when he comes and knocks they may open to him at once. Blessed are you, for he will make you recline and will come and serve you; and if he comes in the second watch or in the third, blessed are you.’ For consider, virgins, that by supposing three watches of the night, the evening, the second, and the third, and three comings of his own, he hinted at the three changes of our age, youth, prime, and old age, wishing that, if he comes to take us out of the world while we are in the first age, that is, while we are children, we may be ready and pure, having practised nothing wrong; and likewise in the second, and in the third. For the evening watch is the time of a man's prime and youth, in which the ruling part of the soul begins to be troubled, clouded by the changes of life, as his flesh reaches maturity and turns to passions. The second is when, having advanced ‘to mature manhood,’ the mind begins to gain stability and firmness against its turmoils and conceit. The third is when most of the fancies of the desires waste away, as the flesh withers and advances into old age.

“That is why we ought to kindle in our heart the unquenchable lamp of faith, gird our loins with self-control, and keep awake and always wait for the Lord, so that, whether he wishes to take some of us in our first age, or in the second, or in the third, he may come and find us most ready and doing what he commanded, and make us recline in the bosom of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And Jeremiah says, ‘It is good for a man when he bears a heavy yoke in his youth,’ and his soul will not ‘depart from the Lord.’ For it is truly good to put one's neck from childhood under divine care and not to shake off, until old age, the rider mounted on a pure mind, while the evil one is always dragging our reasoning down toward what is worse. For who does not welcome the pleasures and delights that come through the eyes, through the ears, through taste and smell and touch, if he does not bear the charioteer, self-control, who restrains and bloodies the horse of vice? Another, then, looking at other things, will think otherwise; but we say that a person dedicates himself perfectly to God who strives to keep his flesh undefiled from childhood, practising virginity. For it quickly brings great and much-desired gifts of hope to those who long for it, withering the passions and sparks that ruin the soul. Come, let me explain how we are dedicated to the Lord.

“The command in Numbers, then, to ‘vow a great vow’ shows this, which I will set forth by explaining it more fully, proving that chastity is a great vow beyond all vows. For I am plainly dedicated wholly to the Lord when I strive to keep my flesh not only untouched by intercourse but also unstained by other misdeeds. ‘For the unmarried woman,’ he says, ‘is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord’: not only so that she may not win a glory of virtue lame in some part, but that she may be sanctified in both, as the apostle says, ‘in spirit and in body,’ dedicating her members to the Lord. For we must say what it is to dedicate oneself perfectly to the Lord. If I open my mouth for some things and shut it for others, for example, open it for the explanation of the Scriptures, to praise God rightly and magnificently as far as I can, but shut it, setting ‘a door’ and ‘a guard’ on it so as not to speak vain things, my mouth is chaste and dedicated to the Lord, and ‘my tongue’ has become ‘a pen,’ an instrument of wisdom. For through it the Word, the Lord, the swift-writing scribe of the ages, writes in clear letters from the depth and power of the Scriptures, illuminating ‘the law of the Spirit’: swift-writing because he alone swiftly and keenly writes down and fulfils the will of the Father, hearing, ‘Swiftly despoil, quickly plunder.’ Of this ‘scribe’ ‘my tongue’ is the ‘pen’; for it has been made chaste for him and dedicated as a pen that is ‘fair,’ writing fairer things than the poets and prose-writers who establish human doctrines. If I accustom my eyes too not to desire the beauty of bodies, nor to take pleasure in shameful sights, but to look at the things above, my eyes too are chaste and dedicated to the Lord. If I stop my ears against slander and whispering and open them to the word of God, going to the wise, I have dedicated my hearing too to the Lord. If I shake my hands free from peddling, from reselling, from love of money, from striking, my hands too are chaste to God. If I keep my walking from going in crooked ways, I have dedicated my feet too, not going to law courts and revels, ‘where men who judge crookedly are,’ but to accomplish rightly the fulfilment of some one of the commandments. What remains for me, if I make my heart too wholly chaste, dedicating all its thoughts to the Lord? I think nothing base, I reason on nothing worldly, pride and anger have no citizenship in me, I meditate on the law of the Lord by day and by night; and this is ‘to consecrate chastity, having vowed a great vow.’

“I will try, virgins, to explain to you also what follows in these ordinances, since they too depend on our own right conduct, being laws about virginity and oracles teaching what the virgin should abstain from and that she should be lifted upward. For it runs thus: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: A man or woman who vows a great vow to consecrate himself to the Lord shall abstain from strong drink and wine; and he shall not drink vinegar made from wine or vinegar made from strong drink, or anything made from grapes, and he shall not eat fresh grapes or raisins all the days of his vow.”’ That is: one who has pledged and dedicated himself to [God] will not pluck from the plant of wickedness any of its produce, because by nature it always brings drunkenness and derangement. For we have learned from the Scriptures of two different vines, which have come to be separately and are unlike. One brings immortality and righteousness, the other madness and delirium. The sober and gladdening vine, which, like branches, cheerfully hangs from its teachings clusters of gifts dripping with love, is our Lord Jesus, who says plainly to the apostles, ‘I am the true vine, you are the branches, and my Father is the vinedresser.’ But the wild and deadly one is the devil, dripping rage and poison and wrath, just as Moses teaches, describing him: ‘For their vine,’ he says, ‘is from the vine of Sodom, and their tendrils from Gomorrah. Their grapes are grapes of gall, their cluster is bitter to them. Their wine is the rage of serpents and the incurable rage of asps.’ Harvesting from this, the inhabitants of Sodom were driven by frenzy to turn ‘against nature’ to a fruitless desire for males. From this those in the time of Noah, drunk, slid into unbelief and were sunk beneath the flood. From this Cain drew, and dyed his brother-hating hands red, and first defiled the earth with the gore of a kinsman. From this the nations, getting drunk, whet their anger for battles of mutual slaughter. For a man is not so deranged and senseless from wine as from jealousy and anger; one is not so drunk and out of his mind from wine as from grief, from lust, from lack of self-control. From tasting this vine the virgin has been commanded not to taste, so that, sober and awake from the cares of life, she may kindle the shining lamp of righteousness for the Word. ‘For take heed,’ says the Lord, ‘lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the cares of life, and that day come upon you like a snare.’

“And the virgin has been commanded not only never in any way to touch what is made from that vine, but also what imitates it and resembles it. For all manufactured and counterfeit wine is called strong drink, even if it is made from dates or other fruits. For these too, like toasts of wine, violently muzzle the reasoning. And, to speak to you truly, the wise call ‘strong drink’ everything, besides wine from the vine, that brings drunkenness and derangement to the soul. So, in order that, while guarding against the chief sins of wickedness, she may not be stained by what imitates and counterbalances them, mastering some and being mastered by others, that is, delighting in clothes of fine weaving, or in stones and gold and greed and the other adornments of the body, which themselves also make the soul drunk: for this reason he lays down these laws, that she may not pour herself out in effeminacies and laughter and deceits, stirred up to foolish talk, which whirl about and confound the reasoning. As he indicated elsewhere too, saying, ‘You shall not eat the hyena and what is like it, nor the weasel and what is like it.’ For this is the straight and short road to heaven: not only to drag along no hindrance of those things that throw a person headlong when he is excited by pleasures and delights, but also none of what imitates them. For indeed the assembly of the chaste has been handed down as the bloodless altar of God. So great and glorious a thing virginity appears to be. That is why it must be kept undefiled and wholly pure, having no share in the impurities of the flesh, but, gilded with wisdom, set within, ‘before the testimony,’ in the holy of holies, sending up to the Lord the fragrance of love. For ‘You shall make for me,’ he says, after the altar overlaid with bronze (on which the burnt offerings and the offerings were brought), another ‘altar of incorruptible wood, and you shall overlay it with gold, and you shall set it before the veil that is over the ark of the testimony,’ before ‘the mercy seat,’ that is, [the mercy seat] ‘of the testimonies,’ ‘where I will make myself known to you there. And Aaron shall burn on it incense of spices to the Lord in the morning, when he trims the lamps; he shall burn incense on it continually before the Lord throughout your generations. He shall not offer on it strange incense or burnt offering; he shall not pour out sacrifice or drink offering on it.’

“If the law is, according to the apostle, ‘spiritual,’ containing the images of the good things to come, come, let us strip off ‘the veil’ of ‘the letter’ spread over it and look at its exact meaning uncovered. The Hebrews were commanded to fashion the tabernacle as a copy of the church, so that through things perceptible they might proclaim beforehand ‘the image’ of divine ‘realities.’ For the pattern shown on the mountain, according to which Moses built the tabernacle, was an exact form of the dwelling in heaven, which we now serve more clearly than the types, but more dimly than the truth. For the truth has not yet come to human beings pure, as it is by nature; we who could not bear to see incorruption unmixed here, since we cannot even look freely at the sun's rays. The Jews proclaimed ‘the shadow’ of the image, third from the truth; but we clearly hold sacred the image of the heavenly order. For the truth will be shown precisely after the resurrection, when we shall behold ‘face to face’ the holy tabernacle, ‘the city’ in the heavens, ‘whose builder and maker is God,’ and not through ‘riddles’ and ‘in part.’

“For the Jews foretold our things, and we foretell the heavenly things, since the tabernacle was a symbol of the church, and the church of the heavens. So, this being the case, and the tabernacle being taken, as I said, as a type of the church, the altars too must bear some sign of the realities of the church: the one overlaid with bronze must be likened to the body of elders and the company of widows (for they are God's living altar, to whom we bring calves and tithes and freewill offerings and so offer sacrifices to the Lord); and the golden altar, set within in the holy of holies before the testimony, on which no sacrifice or drink offering is brought, must be compared to those in virginity, whose bodies, untouched by intercourse, are secured with pure gold. For two things are celebrated in praise of gold: that it does not admit rust, and that in colour it appears somewhat like the rays of the sun. It is fittingly, then, a symbol of chastity, which admits no stain or spot, but always flashes with the light of the Word. That is why it too stands within, nearer the holy of holies and before the veil, sending up prayers to the Lord with undefiled hands like incense, acceptable as ‘a fragrant odour.’ So John too indicated, saying that the incense in the bowls of the twenty-four elders is the prayers of the saints. This, Arete, is my contribution, as far as I can, on the spur of the moment, on behalf of chastity.”