Chapter Twenty1
Objection based on the Monarchy of God.
But let us make a thorough investigation concerning the single rule 2 of the only God and the manifold rule of those who are worshipped as gods. You do not know how to expound the doctrine even of the single rule. For a monarch is not one who is alone in his existence, but who is alone in his rule. Clearly he rules over those who are his fellow-tribesmen, men like himself, just as the Emperor Hadrian was a monarch, not because he existed alone, nor because he ruled over oxen and sheep (over which herdsmen or shepherds rule), but because he ruled over men who shared his race and possessed the same nature. Likewise God would not properly be called a monarch, unless He ruled over other gods; for this would befit His divine greatness and His heavenly and abundant honour.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Answer to objection based on the Monarchy of God.
[As you have taken an image to express the rule of one God over many, the first point in my answer must be the matter of similarity in name.3 It is quite wrong to suppose that because things bear the same name they must be identical in reality. For example, the name of "warm" is given both to the fire and to the man who is warmed by it, but it is only the fire that is so by nature. He who has warmed himself is also warm, but only relatively.4 So God alone is a god absolutely; the others are only such relatively,5 although the name of "God" may be given to "gods many and lords many." God rules not as having the same name as other gods and therefore as one of them, but as supreme, and without being one of them. He is uncreate, and they are creatures, whom He has made, and it is thus that He rules over them. He does not grudge them the name of god if they simply draw their divinity from nearness to Him; it is when they turn away from Him that they fall into darkness.
The case of Hadrian is not a parallel, for as man he cannot be master of his fellow-men (who are like himself), but only as having the added power of tyrant. Bat God's is not a tyrannical rule over those who are like Himself, but a loving rule over His inferiors.
We may liken Him to the sun, which gives things light and beauty till they themselves are bright, and yet receives nothing back from them. Just so God makes the angels shine with a reflected Godhead, though they have no part in His actual deity.
And so the right thing to do is to worship Him who is God absolutely. To worship one who is merely such relatively is as great a mistake as to hope to get heat and light from a red-hot iron instead of from the fire itself, for the metal will soon resume its own nature. Such is the case of the man who worships an angel or any other spiritual being except the one true God.
As the sun gives light to all, and yet loses none, and as the teacher imparts his teaching and yet retains his wisdom, so does God give all things and yet lack none, and so did power go out from Christ to heal the sick, and yet it remained within Him.]
Footnotes:
1This objection and the next, and also the answers contained in chapters xxvi., xxvii., and xxviii. are quoted by Nicephorus, in his Antirrhetica, and are to be found in D. Pitra's Spicil. Solesm. t. I. p. 309 et seq. See Introd., pp. x, xi, xxvii. One interest of Nicephorus lies in the difference of his text from the Athens MS. The most notable in this chapter occurs in the first sentence, where he omits the words τοῦ μόνου θεοῦ καὶ τῆς πολυαρχίας.
2The word Monarchia (μοναρχία) seems to require translating thus, in order to bring it into contrast with the Polyarchia (πολυαρχία) which follows.
3ἐξ εἰκ/νος ἡμῖν . . . τὸν λόγον κρατύνειν ἐσπούδασας. The mention of an "image" at the beginning of this answer may possibly have attracted the attention of Nicephorus to the passage. For it is on the question of image worship that he introduces it as supporting his own attitude.
4The same illustration is used in ii. 9.
5θέσει, in contrast with φύσει, philosophic terms by which he expresses his argument. Literally, "by position" and "by nature." See ii. 9.