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Chapter
VI.
But you
will perhaps seek to know the cause of this error of judgment; for it
is to this point that the train of our discussion tends. Again, then,
we shall be justified in expecting to find some starting-point which
will throw light on this inquiry also. An argument such as the
following we have received by tradition from the Fathers; and this
argument is no mere mythical narrative, but one that naturally invites
our credence. Of all existing things there is a twofold manner of
apprehension, the consideration of them being divided between what
appertains to intellect and what appertains to the senses; and besides
these there is nothing to be detected in the nature of existing things,
as extending beyond this division. Now these two worlds have been
separated from each other by a wide interval, so that the sensible is
not included in those qualities which mark the intellectual, nor this
last in those qualities which distinguish the sensible, but each
receives its formal character from qualities opposite to those of the
other. The world of thought is bodiless, impalpable, and figureless;
but the sensible is, by its very name, bounded by those perceptions
which come through the organs of sense. But as in the sensible world
itself, though there is a considerable mutual opposition of its various
elements, yet a certain harmony maintained in those opposites has been
devised by the wisdom that rules the Universe, and thus there is
produced a concord of the whole creation with itself, and the natural
contrariety does not break the chain of agreement; in like manner,
owing to the Divine wisdom, there is an admixture and interpenetration
of the sensible with the intellectual department, in order that all
things may equally have a share in the beautiful, and no single one of
existing things be without its share in that superior world. For this
reason the corresponding locality of the intellectual world is a
subtitle and mobile essence, which, in accordance with its supramundane
habitation, has in its peculiar nature large affinity with the
intellectual part. Now, by a provision of the supreme Mind there is an
intermixture of the intellectual with the sensible world, in order that
nothing in creation may be thrown aside1958
as
worthless, as says the Apostle, or be left without its portion of the
Divine fellowship. On this account it is that the commixture of the
intellectual and sensible in man is effected by the Divine Being, as
the description of the cosmogony instructs us. It tells us that God,
taking dust of the ground, formed the man, and by an inspiration from
Himself He planted life in the work of His hand, that thus the earthy
might be raised up to the Divine, and so one certain grace of equal
value might pervade the whole creation, the lower nature being mingled
with the supramundane. Since, then, the intellectual nature had a
previous existence, and to each of the angelic powers a certain
operation was assigned, for the organization of the whole, by the
authority that presides over all things, there was a certain power
ordained to hold together and sway the earthly region1959
| 1959 This
is not making the Devil the Demiurge, but only the “angel of the
Earth.” And as the celestial regions and atmosphere of the earth
were assigned to “angelic powers,” so the Earth itself and
her nations were assigned to subordinate angels. Origen had already
developed, or rather christianized, this doctrine. Speaking of the
Confusion of Tongues, he says, “And so each (nation) had to be
handed over to the keeping of angels more or less severe, and of this
character or of that, according as each had moved a greater or less
distance from the East, and had prepared more or less bricks for stone,
and more or less slime for mortar; and had built up more or less. This
was that they might be punished for their boldness. These angels who
had already created for each nation its peculiar tongue, were to lead
their charges into various parts according to their deserts: one for
instance to some burning clime, another to one which would chastise the
dwellers in it with its freezing:…those who retained the original
speech through not having moved from the East are the only ones that
became ‘the portion of the Lord.’…They, too, alone
are to be considered as having been under a ruler who did not take them
in hand to be punished as the others were’ (c.
Cels. v. 30–1). | , constituted for this purpose by the power
that administers the Universe. Upon that there was fashioned that thing
moulded of earth, an “image” copied from the superior
Power. Now this living being was man. In him, by an ineffable
influence, the godlike beauty of the intellectual nature was mingled.
He to whom the administration of the earth has been consigned takes it
ill and thinks it not to be borne, if, of that nature which has been
subjected to him, any being shall be exhibited bearing likeness to his
transcendent dignity. But the question, how one who had been created
for no evil purpose by Him who framed the system of the Universe in
goodness fell away, nevertheless, into this passion of envy, it is not
a part of my present business minutely to discuss; though it would not
be difficult, and it would not take long, to offer an account to those
who are amenable to persuasion. For the distinctive difference between
virtue and vice is not to be contemplated as that between two actually
subsisting phenomena; but as there is a logical opposition between that
which is and that which is not, and it is not possible to say that, as regards
subsistency, that which is not is distinguished from that which is, but
we say that nonentity is only logically opposed to entity, in
the same way also the word vice is opposed to the word virtue, not as
being any existence in itself, but only as becoming thinkable by the
absence of the better. As we say that blindness is logically opposed to
sight, not that blindness has of itself a natural existence, being only
a deprivation of a preceding faculty, so also we say that vice is to be
regarded as the deprivation of goodness, just as a shadow which
supervenes at the passage of the solar ray. Since, then, the uncreated
nature is incapable of admitting of such movement as is implied in
turning or change or alteration, while everything that subsists through
creation has connection with change, inasmuch as the subsistence itself
of the creation had its rise in change, that which was not passing by
the Divine power into that which is; and since the above-mentioned
power was created too, and could choose by a spontaneous movement
whatever he liked, when he had closed his eyes to the good and the
ungrudging like one who in the sunshine lets his eyelids down upon his
eyes and sees only darkness, in this way that being also, by his very
unwillingness to perceive the good, became cognisant of the contrary to
goodness. Now this is Envy. Well, it is undeniable that the beginning
of any matter is the cause of everything else that by consequence
follows upon it, as, for instance, upon health there follows a good
habit of body, activity, and a pleasurable life, but upon sickness,
weakness, want of energy, and life passed in distaste of everything;
and so, in all other instances, things follow by consequence their
proper beginnings. As, then, freedom from the agitation of the passions
is the beginning and groundwork of a life in accordance with virtue, so
the bias to vice generated by that Envy is the constituted road to all
these evils which have been since displayed. For when once he, who by
his apostacy from goodness had begotten in himself this Envy, had
received this bias to evil1960
| 1960 “We affirm that it is not easy, or perhaps possible, even
for a philosopher to know the origin of evil without its being made
known to him by an inspiration of God, whence it comes, and how it
shall vanish. Ignorance of God is itself in the list of evils;
ignorance of His way of healing and of serving Him aright is itself the
greatest evil: we affirm that no one whatever can possibly know the
origin of evil, who does not see that the standard of piety recognized
by the average of established laws is itself an evil. No one, either,
can know it who has not grasped the truth about the Being who is called
the Devil; what he was at the first, and how he became such as he
is.”—Origen (c. Cels. iv. 65). | , like a rock, torn
asunder from a mountain ridge, which is driven down headlong by its own
weight, in like manner he, dragged away from his original natural
propension to goodness and gravitating with all his weight in the
direction of vice, was deliberately forced and borne away as by a kind
of gravitation to the utmost limit of iniquity; and as for that
intellectual power which he had received from his Creator to co-operate
with the better endowments, this he made his assisting instrument in
the discovery of contrivances for the purposes of vice, while by his
crafty skill he deceives and circumvents man, persuading him to become
his own murderer with his own hands. For seeing that man by the
commission of the Divine blessing had been elevated to a lofty
pre-eminence (for he was appointed king over the earth and all things
on it; he was beautiful in his form, being created an image of the
archetypal beauty; he was without passion in his nature, for he was an
imitation of the unimpassioned; he was full of frankness, delighting in
a face-to-face manifestation of the personal Deity),—all this was
to the adversary the fuel to his passion of envy. Yet could he not by
any exercise of strength or dint of force accomplish his purpose, for
the strength of God’s blessing over-mastered his own force. His
plan, therefore, is to withdraw man from this enabling strength, that
thus he may be easily captured by him and open to his treachery. As in
a lamp when the flame has caught the wick and a person is unable to
blow it out, he mixes water with the oil and by this devices will dull
the flame, in the same way the enemy, by craftily mixing up badness in
man’s will, has produced a kind of extinguishment and dulness in
the blessing, on the failure of which that which is opposed necessarily
enters. For to life is opposed death, to strength weakness, to blessing
curse, to frankness shame, and to all that is good whatever can be
conceived as opposite. Thus it is that humanity is in its present evil
condition, since that beginning introduced the occasions for such an
ending.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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