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| Chapter VIII
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Chapter
VIII.
Nevertheless one who regards only the dissolution of the body is greatly
disturbed, and makes it a hardship that this life of ours should be
dissolved by death; it is, he says, the extremity of evil that our
being should be quenched by this condition of mortality. Let him, then,
observe through this gloomy prospect the excess of the Divine
benevolence. He may by this, perhaps, be the more induced to admire the
graciousness of God’s care for the affairs of man. To live is
desirable to those who partake of life, on account of the enjoyment of
things to their mind; since, if any one lives in bodily pain, not to be
is deemed by such an one much more desirable than to exist in pain. Let
us inquire, then, whether He Who gives us our outfit for living has any
other object in view than how we may pass our life under the fairest
circumstances. Now since by a motion of our self-will we contracted a
fellowship with evil, and, owing to some sensual gratification, mixed
up this evil with our nature like some deleterious ingredient spoiling
the taste of honey, and so, falling away from that blessedness which is
involved in the thought of passionlessness, we have been viciously
transformed—for this reason, Man, like some earthen potsherd, is
resolved again into the dust of the ground, in order to secure that he
may part with the soil which he has now contracted, and that he may,
through the resurrection, be reformed anew after the original pattern;
at least if in this life that now is he has preserved what belongs to
that image. A doctrine such as this is set before us by Moses under the
disguise of an historical manner1962
| 1962 ἱστορικώτερον
καὶ δι᾽
αἰνιγμάτων | . And yet this
disguise of history contains a teaching which is most plain. For after,
as he tells us, the earliest of mankind were brought into contact with
what was forbidden, and thereby were stripped naked of that primal
blessed condition, the Lord clothed these, His first-formed creatures,
with coats of skins. In my opinion we are not bound to take
these skins
in their literal meaning. For to what sort of slain and flayed animals
did this clothing devised for these humanities belong? But since all
skin, after it is separated from the animal, is dead, I am certainly of
opinion that He Who is the healer of our sinfulness, of His foresight
invested man subsequently with that capacity of dying which had been
the special attribute of the brute creation. Not that it was to last
for ever; for a coat is something external put on us, lending itself to
the body for a time, but not indigenous to its nature. This liability
to death, then, taken from the brute creation, was, provisionally, made
to envelope the nature created for immortality. It enwrapped it
externally, but not internally. It grasped the sentient part of man;
but laid no hold upon the Divine image. This sentient part, however,
does not disappear, but is dissolved. Disappearance is the passing away
into non-existence, but dissolution is the dispersion again into those
constituent elements of the world of which it was composed. But that
which is contained in them perishes not, though it escapes the
cognisance of our senses.
Now the cause of this
dissolution is evident from the illustration we have given of it. For
since the senses have a close connection with what is gross and earthy,
while the intellect is in its nature of a nobler and more exalted
character than the movements involved in sensation, it follows that as,
through the estimate which is made by the senses, there is an erroneous
judgment as to what is morally good, and this error has wrought the
effect of substantiating a contrary condition, that part of us which
has thus been made useless is dissolved by its reception of this
contrary. Now the bearing of our illustration is as follows. We
supposed that some vessel has been composed of clay, and then, for some
mischief or other, filled with melted lead, which lead hardens and
remains in a non-liquid state; then that the owner of the vessel
recovers it, and, as he possesses the potter’s art, pounds to
bits the ware which held the lead, and then remoulds the vessel after
its former pattern for his own special use, emptied now of the material
which had been mixed with it: by a like process the maker of our
vessel, now that wickedness has intermingled with our sentient part, I
mean that connected with the body, will dissolve the material which has
received the evil, and, re-moulding it again by the Resurrection
without any admixture of the contrary matter, will recombine the
elements into the vessel in its original beauty. Now since both soul
and body have a common bond of fellowship in their participation of the
sinful affections, there is also an analogy between the soul’s
and body’s death. For as in regard to the flesh we pronounce the
separation of the sentient life to be death, so in respect of the soul
we call the departure of the real life death. While, then, as we have
said before, the participation in evil observable both in soul and body
is of one and the same character, for it is through both that the evil
principle advances into actual working, the death of dissolution which
came from that clothing of dead skins does not affect the soul. For how
can that which is uncompounded be subject to dissolution? But since
there is a necessity that the defilements which sin has engendered in
the soul as well should be removed thence by some remedial process, the
medicine which virtue supplies has, in the life that now is, been
applied to the healing of such mutilations as these. If, however, the
soul remains unhealed1963
| 1963 “Here,” says Semler, “our Author reveals himself
as a scholar of Origen, and other doctors, who had imbibed the heathen
thoughts of Plato, and wished to rest their system upon a future
(purely) moral improvement.” There is certainly too little room
left here for the application to the soul and body in this life of
Christ’s atonement. | , the remedy is
dispensed in the life that follows this. Now in the ailments of the
body there are sundry differences, some admitting of an easier, others
requiring a more difficult treatment. In these last the use of the
knife, or cauteries, or draughts of bitter medicines are adopted to
remove the disease that has attacked the body. For the healing of the
soul’s sicknesses the future judgment announces something of the
same kind, and this to the thoughtless sort is held out as the threat
of a terrible correction1964
| 1964 σκυθρωπῶν
ἐπανόρθωσις, lit. “a correction consisting in terrible
(processes)” (subjective genitive). The following passage will
illustrate this: “Now this requires a deeper investigation,
before it can be decided whether some evil powers have had assigned
them…certain duties, like the State-executioners, who hold a
melancholy (τεταγμένοι
ἐπὶ τῶν
σκυθρωπῶν…πραγμάτων) but necessary office in the Constitution.” Origen,
c. Cels. vii. 70. | , in order that
through fear of this painful retribution they may gain the wisdom of
fleeing from wickedness: while by those of more intelligence it is
believed to be a remedial process ordered by God to bring back man, His
peculiar creature, to the grace of his primal condition. They who use
the knife or cautery to remove certain unnatural excrescences in the
body, such as wens or warts, do not bring to the person they are
serving a method of healing that is painless, though certainly they
apply the knife without any intention of injuring the patient. In like
manner whatever material excrescences are hardening on our souls, that
have been sensualized by fellowship with the body’s affections,
are, in the day of the judgment1965
| 1965 in
the day of the judgment. The reading
κτίσεως, which Hervetus has followed, must be wrong here. | , as it were
cut and scraped away by the ineffable wisdom and power of Him Who, as
the Gospel says, “healeth those that are sick1966
.” For, as He says again, “they
that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that
are sick1967
.” Since, then, there has been
inbred in the soul a strong natural tendency to evil, it must suffer,
just as the excision of a wart1968
| 1968 of
a wart; μυρμηκίας. Gregory uses the same simile in his treatise On the
Soul (iii. p. 204). The following “scholium” in Greek
is found in the margin of two mss. of that
treatise, and in that of one ms. of this
treatise: “There is an affection of the skin which is called a
wart. A small fleshy excrescence projects from the skin, which seems a
part of it, and a natural growth upon it: but this is not really so;
and therefore it requires removal for its cure. This illustration made
use of by Gregory is exceedingly appropriate to the matter in
hand.” | gives a sharp pain
to the skin of the body; for whatever contrary to the nature has been
inbred in the nature attaches itself to the subject in a certain union
of feeling, and hence there is produced an abnormal intermixture of our
own with an alien quality, so that the feelings, when the separation
from this abnormal growth comes, are hurt and lacerated. Thus when the
soul pines and melts away under the correction of its sins, as prophecy
somewhere tells us1969
, there necessarily
follow, from its deep and intimate connection with evil, certain
unspeakable and inexpressible pangs, the description of which is as
difficult to render as is that of the nature of those good things which
are the subjects of our hope. For neither the one nor the other is
capable of being expressed in words, or brought within reach of the
understanding. If, then, any one looks to the ultimate aim of the
Wisdom of Him Who directs the economy of the universe, he would be very
unreasonable and narrow-minded to call the Maker of man the Author of
evil; or to say that He is ignorant of the future, or that, if He knows
it and has made him, He is not uninfluenced by the impulse to what is
bad. He knew what was going to be, yet did not prevent the tendency
towards that which actually happened. That humanity, indeed, would be
diverted from the good, could not be unknown to Him Who grasps all
things by His power of foresight, and Whose eyes behold the coming
equally with the past events. As, then, He had in sight the perversion,
so He devised man’s recall to good. Accordingly, which was the
better way?—never to have brought our nature into existence at
all, since He foresaw that the being about to be created would fall
away from that which is morally beautiful; or to bring him back by
repentance, and restore his diseased nature to its original beauty?
But, because of the pains and sufferings of the body which are the
necessary accidents of its unstable nature, to call God on that account
the Maker of evil, or to think that He is not the Creator of man at
all, in hopes thereby to prevent the supposition of His being the
Author of what gives us pain,—all this is an instance of that
extreme narrow-mindedness which is the mark of those who judge of moral
good and moral evil by mere sensation. Such persons do not understand
that that only is intrinsically good which sensation does not reach,
and that the only evil is estrangement from the good. But to make pains
and pleasures the criterion of what is morally good and the contrary,
is a characteristic of the unreasoning nature of creatures in whom,
from their want of mind and understanding, the apprehension of real
goodness has no place. That man is the work of God, created morally
noble and for the noblest destiny, is evident not only from what has
been said, but from a vast number of other proofs; which, because they
are so many, we shall here omit. But when we call God the Maker of man
we do not forget how carefully at the outset1970
| 1970 i.e.Chapter 1., throughout. | we
defined our position against the Greeks. It was there shown that the
Word of God is a substantial and personified being, Himself both God
and the Word; Who has embraced in Himself all creative power, or rather
Who is very power with an impulse to all good; Who works out
effectually whatever He wills by having a power concurrent with His
will; Whose will and work is the life of all things that exist; by
Whom, too, man was brought into being and adorned with the highest
excellences after the fashion of Deity. But since that alone is
unchangeable in its nature which does not derive its origin through
creation, while whatever by the uncreated being is brought into
existence out of what was nonexistent, from the very first moment that
it begins to be, is ever passing through change, and if it acts
according to its nature the change is ever to the better, but if it be
diverted from the straight path, then a movement to the contrary
succeeds,—since, I say, man was thus conditioned, and in him the
changeable element in his nature had slipped aside to the exact
contrary, so that this departure from the good introduced in its train
every form of evil to match the good (as, for instance, on the
defection of life there was brought in the antagonism of death; on the
deprivation of light darkness supervened; in the absence of virtue vice
arose in its place, and against every form of good might be reckoned a
like number of opposite evils), by whom, I ask, was man, fallen by his
recklessness into this and the like evil state (for it was not possible
for him to retain even his prudence when he had estranged himself from
prudence, or to take any wise counsel when he had severed himself from
wisdom),—by whom was man to be recalled to the grace of
his original state? To whom belonged the restoration of the fallen
one, the recovery of the lost, the leading back the wanderer by the
hand? To whom else than entirely to Him Who is the Lord of his nature?
For Him only Who at the first had given the life was it possible, or
fitting, to recover it when lost. This is what we are taught and learn
from the Revelation of the truth, that God in the beginning made man
and saved him when he had fallen.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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