Symposium (The Banquet of the Ten Virgins) 9.1–9.5

When Thecla had stopped after saying so much, Theopatra said that Arete bade Tysiane speak; and she, smiling, came forward before her and said: “Arete, lovely boast of the lovers of virginity, I too beg you to stand by me as my helper, so that I may not be at a loss for words, since many speeches of every kind have already been given. That is why I also decline these prefatory and preparatory parts of speeches, so that I may not, by spending time fitting them properly, fall away from the subject itself; so glorious, precious, and magnificent a thing is virginity. God, teaching the true Israelites the feast of the true Tabernacles and how they must celebrate and honour it, shows in Leviticus that each one must adorn his own tabernacle above all with chastity. I will set out the words of Scripture as well, from which it will be shown to all beyond dispute how pleasing and dear to God is this achievement of chastity: ‘And on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have completed the produce of the land, you shall keep a feast to the Lord seven days, and on the eighth day there shall be rest. And on the first day you shall take the beautiful fruit of a tree, and branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows, and branches of chaste-tree from the brook, to rejoice before the Lord your God seven days of the year, a perpetual statute for your generations. In the seventh month you shall celebrate it; you shall dwell in booths seven days. Every native in Israel shall dwell in booths, that your generations may see that I made the sons of Israel dwell in booths when I brought you out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.’ The Jews will surely suppose, fluttering about the bare letter of Scripture, like the creatures called caterpillars about the leaves of vegetables and not, like the bee, about the flowers and fruits, that these words and these laws were spoken about a tabernacle such as they build, as though God rejoiced in the perishable decorations that they put together from the fruits of trees, not having perceived the wealth of ‘the good things to come.’ These things, like a breath and phantom shadows, foretell the resurrection and the setting up again of our tent that has fallen to the earth, when, having received it back immortal in the seventh millennium, we shall celebrate the great feast of the true Tabernacles in the new and painless creation, the fruits of the earth having been completed and human beings no longer begetting and being begotten, but God having rested from the works of creating the world. For since God made the heaven and the earth in six days and completed the whole world and ‘rested on the seventh day from his works which he had made, and blessed the seventh day and sanctified it,’ therefore we are commanded, symbolically, to keep a feast to the Lord in the seventh month, when the fruits of the earth have been completed: that is, when this world has been completed in the seventh millennium, when God, having truly completed the world, ‘will rejoice’ in us. For now all things are still being fashioned by his enduring will and inconceivable power: the earth still yields its fruits, the waters are gathered ‘into their gatherings,’ the light is still being separated, the number of human beings is still being fashioned, the sun rises ‘to rule the day’ and the moon still ‘to rule the night,’ and the four-footed beasts, wild animals, and creeping things are brought forth from the earth, and birds and swimming creatures from the moist substance. But when the times are completed and God ceases working this creation, in the seventh month, on the great day of the resurrection, the feast of our Tabernacles is celebrated to the Lord, of which the words in Leviticus are symbols and types. Tracing them out we must understand the naked truth. For ‘a wise man,’ it says, ‘hearing these things will become wiser, and will understand a parable and a dark saying, the words of the wise and riddles.’ So let the Jews be ashamed, not having perceived the depths of the Scriptures, and thinking that the law and the prophets spoke everything bodily, since they long for worldly things and prefer outward wealth to that of the soul. For since the Scriptures are divided into a type of things past and of things to come, these wretches, leaping away from the things to come, carry out the types as if they were already past: as in the case of the slaughter of the lamb, thinking that the mystery of the lamb is only a remembrance of the salvation of their fathers in Egypt, when, as the firstborn of Egypt were struck, they themselves were saved, having reddened the doorposts of their houses with the blood; but they no longer thought that this was also a type foreshadowing the slaughter of Christ, by whose blood the souls that have been secured and sealed will be saved from wrath, when the world is set on fire and the firstborn children of Satan are destroyed, the punishing angels turning away in awe before the seal of the blood imprinted on them.

“Let this be said as an example, showing that the Jews, thinking present things to be types of what has already happened, have run aground from the hope of ‘the good things to come,’ not being willing that the types should foretell the images, nor the images the truth. For ‘the law’ is the type and shadow of the image, that is, of the gospel, and the image, the gospel, is the type of the truth itself. For the men of old and the law foretold to us, prophesying, the features of the church, and the church foretells those of the new ages. So we, who have received Christ, who said, ‘I am the truth,’ know that the shadows and the types have ceased, and we hasten toward the truth, foretelling its clear images. For we still know ‘in part’ and as ‘through a mirror,’ since ‘the perfect’ has not yet come to us, the kingdom of heaven and the resurrection, when ‘what is in part will be done away.’ For then the tabernacles of all of us are set up, when the body rises with the bones joined and fastened together with the flesh. Then we purely celebrate the day of joy to the Lord, when we receive back our tabernacles eternal, no longer to die or be dissolved into the dust of the earth. For our tabernacle was earlier unfallen; but through the transgression it was shaken and bent down, God dissolving the sin by death, so that man, being a sinner immortally, with sin living in him, should not be condemned eternally. And for this reason he died, though he had not been made mortal or corruptible, and the soul was separated from the flesh, so that the transgression might be put to death through death, being no longer able to live in what had died. So, the transgression having died and been destroyed, I fly up again immortal, and I sing to God, who through death saves his children from death, and I celebrate the feast to him lawfully, having adorned my tabernacle, my flesh, with good works, as the virgins there did with their five-lighted lamps.

“Being examined on the first day of the resurrection, I bring what is commanded, whether I have been adorned with the fruits of virtue, whether I am shaded by the branches of chastity. For understand, I beg you, that the resurrection is the feast of Tabernacles, and understand that the things taken for the building of the tabernacle are the deeds of righteousness. So I take on the first day what is prescribed, as it were on the day on which I am judged, whether I have adorned my tabernacle with what is commanded, whether these things are found in it, which here in the world we are commanded to acquire, and there to offer to God. Come, let us consider what follows as well. ‘And you shall take for yourselves on the first day,’ it says, ‘the beautiful fruit of a tree, and thick branches of trees, and willows, and branches from the brook, to rejoice before the Lord your God.’ The Jews, ‘uncircumcised in heart,’ think that the most beautiful fruit of a tree is the citron, because of its size, and are not ashamed to say that God is honoured with a citron, for whom ‘all the four-footed beasts of the earth are not sufficient for a burnt offering, nor Lebanon for burning.’ And in general, you hard-hearted people, why is the citron beautiful? Why not rather the grape, or the pomegranate, or the apple, and the other fruits that excel the citron? Indeed, in the Song of Songs Solomon, mentioning all these beautiful fruits, passed over the citron alone in silence. But the fools were led astray from these things, not understanding ‘the tree of life,’ which paradise bore before, but which the church has now made to spring up for all, producing the beautiful and seemly fruit of faith. Having come with such fruit, we must bring it on the first day of the feast to the judgment seat of Christ. If we too do not have such fruit, we will not be able to celebrate the feast with God; we will not attain, as John says, the first resurrection. For the tree is Wisdom, the firstborn of all. ‘She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her,’ says the prophet, ‘and secure for those who lean on her as on the Lord.’ ‘A tree planted by the streams of waters, which will give its fruit in its season’: that is teaching and love and understanding, given in due season to those who come to the waters of redemption. Whoever has not believed in Christ, nor perceived that he is the beginning, the tree of life, and cannot show God his tabernacle adorned with the most beautiful of beautiful fruits, how will he celebrate the feast? How will he rejoice? Do you want to know the beautiful fruit of the tree? Consider the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, how they are beautiful in loveliness ‘beyond the sons of men.’ The law, sprouted through Moses, was a beautiful fruit, but not so beautiful as the gospel. For the former was a kind of type and ‘shadow of things to come,’ but this is ‘truth’ and the grace of life. The fruit of the prophets was beautiful, but not so beautiful as the fruit of incorruption cultivated from it.

“‘And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the beautiful fruit of a tree and branches of palm trees,’ meaning the training in divine teachings, by which the soul is cleansed of its passions and adorned, as sins are swept out of it and cast away. For we must come to the feast clean and adorned, having laboured at the exercises and practices of virtue as with a broom; since the mind, cleansed by laborious practices and exercises of the strange thoughts that cover it, sees sharply toward the truth, just as the widow in the Gospels found her coin after sweeping the house and throwing out the refuse, the passions that darken and cover the soul, which multiply from our softness and carelessness. So let whoever is eager to arrive at the feast of those tabernacles and be enrolled with the saints first acquire the beautiful fruit, faith; then the palm branches, the training and study of the Scriptures; then next the flourishing and thick branches of love. He commands these to be taken after the palm branches, most aptly calling love ‘thick branches’; for what is thick is wholly laden with fruit and dense, having nothing bare or empty, but everything full, both shoots and stems. Such is love, being in no part empty or fruitless. For truly, ‘if I sell my possessions and give to the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, and if I acquire such faith as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.’ Love, then, is the most fruitful and thickest of all trees, full and filled with gifts. Then what else does he want taken? He says willow branches, calling righteousness willow branches; for which reason the righteous, according to the prophet, ‘spring up like grass among the water and like willows by flowing water,’ flourishing in the Word. And above all he commands that the better branches, which adorn the tabernacle, be brought, because the tree is named after chastity, with which the things mentioned before are adorned. Away, then, with the licentious now, who drive away chastity for the sake of their own pleasures. For how will they enter the feast with Christ, not having adorned their tabernacle with the branches of chastity, the deifying and blessed plant, with which those hastening to that assembly and wedding must be garlanded and their loins be shaded? Come, fair virgins, look at the Scripture itself and the commands, how the Word took chastity as the completion of the achievements mentioned before, teaching how conspicuous and thrice-desired it will be at the resurrection, and that without it no one will obtain the promises. We who live as virgins cultivate it in a special way and offer it to the Lord. Those too make use of it who are chaste toward their own wives, and they bear, as it were, around the stem, shoots of it that have sprouted, self-control, not reaching to its high and great branches as we do; nevertheless, even if small, they too offer shoots of chastity. But those who are driven by passion, even if they do not commit sexual immorality, but are charmed into having relations without restraint even with their lawful wife alone, how will they celebrate the feast? How will they rejoice, not having adorned their tabernacle, the flesh, with the branches of the chaste-tree, nor having listened to the saying, ‘that those who have wives may be as though they had none’?

“For this reason I say that, above all, those who aim at the contests and use great prudence should without delay [embrace] and honour chastity as most beneficial and glorious. For in the new and painless creation, whoever is not found adorned with the branches of chastity will not obtain rest, not having fulfilled the commandment of God according to the law, nor will he come to live in the land of promise without first celebrating the Tabernacles. For only those who have celebrated the feast of Tabernacles come to the holy land, setting out from the so-called Tabernacles until they arrive at the temple and the city of God, advancing to the greater and more glorious joy, as the types that took place among the Jews also show. For as they, having gone out from the borders of Egypt, travelled first and came to the booths, and setting out from there came again to the land of promise, so also do we. For I too, having travelled from here and gone out of the Egypt of this life, come first to the resurrection, the true feast of Tabernacles; and there, having set up my tabernacle adorned with the fruits of virtue on the first day of the feast of the resurrection, the day of judgment, I celebrate with Christ the millennium of rest, the so-called seven days, the true Sabbaths. Then again, following Jesus, ‘who has passed through the heavens,’ I come, as they did after the rest of the feast of Tabernacles, into the land of promise, the heavens, not remaining in booths, that is, my tabernacle not remaining as it is, but, after the millennium, changed from human form and corruption to angelic greatness and beauty. There at last, virgins, after the feast of the resurrection has been completed, we pass from the wonderful place of the tabernacle to greater and better things, going up to the very house of God above the heavens, ‘with the voice of exultation and thanksgiving, the sound of those keeping festival,’ as the Psalmist says. With this robe, Arete, my lady, I too present you according to my ability.” EUBOULION: I am very anxious, Gregorion, thinking to myself in what a tumult Domnina must have been then, her heart troubled and afraid that she might be at a loss for words and say something inferior to the other virgins, so many and so varied speeches having already been given on the subject. If, then, she was visibly moved, come, finish this too; for I wonder whether she had anything to say, having been allotted the last place. GREGORION: Theopatra told me, Euboulion, that she was greatly troubled, but was not at a loss for words. After Tysiane, Arete, casting her eye on her, said: “Come, daughter, you too give your speech, so that we may complete the feast in full.”