Chapter Twenty-Four1
Objection based on the resurrection of the flesh.
Let us once again discuss the question of the resurrection of the dead. For what is the reason that God should act thus, and upset in this random way the succession of events that has held good until now, whereby He ordained that races should be preserved and not come to an end, though from the beginning He has laid down these laws and framed things thus? The things which have once been determined by God, and preserved through such long ages, ought to be everlasting, and ought not to be condemned by Him who wrought them, and destroyed as if they had been made by some mere man, and arranged as mortal things by one who is himself a mortal. Wherefore it is ridiculous if, when the whole is destroyed, the resurrection shall follow, and if He shall raise---shall we say?---the man who died three years before the resurrection, and along with him Priam and Nestor who died a thousand years before, and others who lived before them from the beginning of the human race. And if any one is prepared to grasp even this, he will find that the question of the resurrection is one full of silliness. For many have often perished in the sea, and their bodies have been consumed by fishes, while many have been eaten by wild beasts and birds. How then is it possible for their bodies to rise up? Come then, and let us put to the test this statement which is so lightly made. Let us take an example. A man was shipwrecked, the mullets devoured his body, next these were caught and eaten by some fishermen, who were killed and devoured by dogs; when the dogs died ravens and vultures feasted on them and entirely consumed them. How then will the body of the shipwrecked man be brought together, seeing that it was absorbed by so many creatures? Again, suppose another body to have been consumed by fire, and another to have come in the end to the worms, how is it possible for it to return to the essence2 which was there from the beginning?
You will tell me that this is possible with God, but this is not true. For all things are not possible with Him; He simply cannot bring it about that Homer should not have become a poet, or that Troy should not be taken. Nor indeed can He make twice two, which make the number four, to be reckoned as a hundred, even though this may seem good to Him. Nor can God ever become evil, even though He wishes; nor would He be able to sin, as being good by nature. If then He is unable to sin or to become evil, this does not befall Him through His weakness. In the case of those who have a disposition and fitness for a certain thing, and then are prevented from doing it, it is clear that it is by their weakness that they are prevented. But God is by nature good, and is not prevented from being evil; nevertheless, even though He is not prevented, he cannot become bad.
And pray consider a further point. How unreasonable it is if the Creator shall stand by and see the heaven melting, though no one ever conceived anything more wonderful than its beauty, and the stars falling, and the earth perishing; and yet He will raise up the rotten and corrupt bodies of men, some of them, it is true, belonging to admirable men, but others without charm or symmetry before they died, and affording a most unpleasant sight. Again, even if He could easily make them rise in a comely form, it would be impossible for the earth to hold all those who had died from the beginning of the world, if they were to rise again.
Chapter Thirty
Answer to the objection based on the resurrection of the flesh.
[Do not raise an uproar against me, for there is no doubt that the resurrection is a difficulty. I will speak simply, and not with any flowery language which might deceive, like a base coin washed over with gold.]
First of all we may fitly consider the following point: has that which is created come into being from what existed already or not? If it was from what had an existence, there was no sense in attaching a beginning to it. But if such a beginning has to be attached, the reason is quite plain (i.e. that it was made from nothing). But if, from being nothing, God has given it an existence, what kind of essence3 did He grant to that which had none just before? For He who brought into being that which was not, will be all the more likely to preserve that which came into existence, even when it is dissolved, and to think it deserving of a better conclusion to be added. For it is the property of a nature that is unbegotten to change for the better the existence of the things that are begotten, and to lead to a renewal the things which He has created in time, and to wipe off with grace the things which were stained with the poison of wickedness, and to consider the things which were exhausted as worthy of a second beginning and a kind of remaking. For the world, after again receiving a better form and covering, does not dissolve its being, but on the contrary, it rejoices in being clothed with a fairer beauty than that which it received before. It befits the Divine alone to remain in a state of sameness, but for creation it is suitable that it should suffer change and alteration. Therefore the present life and order is our guide, leading us like children to the future assembly of immortality, and preparing us to face the glory that will lead us upward. For our present life is like a womb containing a babe, for it holds down the whole being of things in obscurity, in the forgetfulness of ignorance, where the light does not penetrate. The whole of what is growing must rise from the present age as from the membrane which holds it in the womb, and must receive a second mode of life in the light of the abiding place which is inviolable.
You would like to think that corruption goes on without end, that it is born in foulness and dies in filth, that it begets and is begotten and is covered in forgetfulness, that evil flourishes and calamity increases, that it melts through want and grows thin through poverty, suffering ill by day and sleeping by night, eating in luxury and then again in bitterness weighed down with satiety, and suffering in scarcity; a state alike of slavery and mastership, the rich man standing up and the poor man lying down, the old man falling and the young man rising, the breasts of women growing and the babe receiving suck, sorrow being brought by care and disease by toil, the life of the country hated and the life of the city welcomed, equality being shunned and that which is unequal being sought after, the nature of things troubled by much anomaly, cast down in winter and burning in summer, brightened by the flowers of spring in their season, and nourished by the fruits of autumn, digging the earth and working its clods . . . making a tragedy of existence and a comedy of life. . . . And that the hateful covering of these things should never pass away, even late in time, nor their dark robe disappear; that the soul should never be free from the inhuman earth; that lamentation should never be silent; . . . that the violence of tyrants should never die; . . . that the toil of those that groan should never be lightened, nor the tears of the mourners comforted; that the virtues of those who have mastered themselves should never shine forth, nor the boasting of the proud be quenched; that the deeds of the unrighteous should never be punished, nor the success of the righteous be seen; that there should be no judgment of the cunning of quackery and no honour for the guilelessness of the sincere; . . . that the earth should never be freed from pollutions,4 nor the sea have rest from navigation;5 that the world should not be turned round like a wheel and preserve its essence while changing its form; that everything in the whole world should not receive a renewal apart from the things which transcend it, nor receive a genuine newness of life; that the order of things should never put off its disorder, nor cast aside the unseemliness which it has now, but retain its grievous garb beyond the limits of time, and be yet more exhausted by its calamities !
For that which appears to be brought down upon the world as wholly a ruin and a destruction is really the beginning of immortality and the starting-point of salvation. For a second beautifying of life will make it a success, when rational nature shall a second time receive in the resurrection the word of a beginning which will be indissoluble. It is for the sake of man that the whole suffers change, seeing that it was also for his sake that at the outset it was deemed worthy of a beginning. Man was made on his own account, not on account of any other being, but heaven and earth and the things that appertain to them are created on man's account, and when he receives a change and alteration, the whole must be changed and wiped out along with him. Think of an architect who builds a house to begin with, and then when it has grown weak in course of time and come to an end by a fall, he raises it up again and considers it worthy of better workmanship and comeliness, not troubling himself which stone was laid first in the beginning or which was second or third in the building; but he erects it by setting in the last stones among the first and the first among the last, and the middle ones haphazard, not in the least disturbing the plan of the erection thereby, nor causing the arrangement of his workmanship to be found fault with; but, by applying suitable adornment to the house and decorating the form of its appearance, he receives abundant praise for his skill. Just in the same way God became the maker of reasoning beings like an architect making a house, and created man in the beginning, and built him as the sacred abode of divine power, composed of many kindred races like stones. And after he has been made for many ages and seasons, and has fallen by many experiences of sins, and in the end is altogether undone and destroyed, He will raise him up again, and will bring nature together with skilful understanding and wise authority, and will gather together the things that have been scattered, allowing none of the things that have fallen to perish; and, even though He place the first among the last in His arrangement, and bring those at the end into the first rank of merit, He will not at all disturb what He has done, but will grant that setting forth of the resurrection which is suitable to each.
And even if it is as you say, and Priam or Nestor died a thousand years ago, while some other man may die three days before the resurrection, none of them when he rises again will feel either measureless grief or abundance of joy therefrom, but each of them will receive what is suitable to him in accordance with his own deeds, and he will not have either blame or praise for the arrangement of the resurrection, neither for its speediness nor again for its tardiness, but it will be his own manner of life that he will either delight in or find fault with. For with God a period of a thousand years is reckoned as one brief day (cf. 2 Peter iii. 8), and again the brief space, if He thinks fit, becomes the stretching out of countless ages. Therefore these are the words of petty folk, when they say, "If He is going to raise up the man who died three days before in like manner as the man of a thousand years before, He does a very great injustice."
[For in ancient times men lived to be five hundred or more, and the man who died just before the resurrection may have had a sorry life and not lived to be thirty. It is doubtless in accordance with a divine plan that the former should sleep the longest, and the latter should receive speedier consolation.
As for your childish objection based on the shipwrecked man who was eaten by fishes and they by men, the men by dogs, and the dogs by vultures, making it impossible for his resurrection to take place, your words are like those of a man dreaming in a drunken sleep.]
For you suggest that He who makes the fire would not have the power to work in the way that fire does, in bringing about the resurrection. For when there is silver and gold lying in the soil, or lead and tin, bronze and iron, as it were hidden away somewhere, fire, by burning the soil and heating the material, brings out the silver and gold, etc., so as to separate them, allowing none of their essence to perish, unless there is something earthy in them anywhere which admits of destruction. If then the power of fire is so strong and has such a drastic effect that it brings out pure material from some other material, and preserves the essence of each undestroyed, even though the gold has fallen into countless cavities, and is dissolved into endless fragments and scattered into mire or clay, in heaps of earth or of dung; and if the fire, when applied to all, preserves the gold and expels the substance of the parts that are destructible, what are we to say about Him who ordained the nature of the fire? Pray would He not have the power without even an effort to change man, His rational treasure more precious than gold, who is contained in matter of various kinds, and to set before Him safe and sound those who have perished by land or sea, in rivers or in lakes, those who have been eaten by wild beasts or birds, those who have been dissolved into fine dust that cannot be measured? Will He be found to be less effective than the fire? And will He be impotent by the arguments you have adduced?
As for that strange phantasy which has come into your head, that God cannot do all things, you think to shape it into plausibility by means of your arguments, but it is really like a prop without foundation, and does not stand. How shall we make it clear to you that God has power to do all things? Shall it be from the divine essence itself, or from the sense of fitness? Or shall we test the question from both of the two, and expound to you first, if that is what you like, the meaning of the point at issue as judged from the inviolable nature itself? For instance, if God is able to make that which has been made to be not made, that which is created necessarily changes into that which is uncreated. But if we grant this, it follows that we may argue that there are two uncreated things; or rather, nothing is created, but the whole is uncreated. From such reasoning much that is fabulous results, for in this way even that which is uncreated will be created. But when that which is uncreated comes under the head of the created, the argument about the created does not stand. For who will be the maker of the created, if the uncreated does not exist?
Akin to this is the question whether God, who is uncreated, can make Himself created. As some say that it is impossible for the uncreated to become created, He cannot do so. And since He is righteous, He will grant justice by avenging the downtrodden. For if He were not to do this, His power would manifestly be nothing but slackness and folly, that He should make all things and penetrate them by a law of creation, and then that He should despise them, giving no honour to that which welcomed virtue in this life, and no judgment to that which gave heed to wickedness during the course of existence; but that He should allow that which is good and its opposite to be plunged alike in forgetfulness, neither crowning the virtue as virtue nor laying bare the wickedness, . . . but simply allowing human nature to be tossed about in silence, as though it had no existence, and making no investigation of either the wickedness in it or the virtue. Such a belief as this does not suit with the divine providence, nor does this idea accord with the immortal nature. On the contrary, it is altogether different, and quite strange and foreign to the attitude of Him who is inviolable6 and far removed from it, that God should thus have no care for the things of His own creation, standing by and watching the destruction of the theory of His creative workmanship, and paying no heed when men depart into obscurity.
We conclude therefore that He will raise up all things, and will grant them a second existence. He will judge the world for the things wherein it has sinned, sparing those who have believed in Him sincerely, and punishing those who were not willing to receive Him, nor reverencing the mystery of His appearing. All the colts that are signed with the king's letter and mark are deemed worthy of a royal stable and manger; and even though they be feeble in body and ineffective in strength and sluggish in running, and though they be not like the rest in condition, yet because of that which is marked on them7 they are precious and honourable. But all those that have not the royal branding, even though they may be nimble and swift, and impossible to overtake, and though they be of good racing ancestry, and of high renown, are nevertheless expelled from the royal stables (and this illustration is not a myth or the narrative of a story-teller, but a genuine record, and a true relation of known facts). Just in the same way all who were sealed with the sign of salvation, who engraved the almighty Name on the tablet of their soul, all who judged their confession towards God more potent than their own sins, these have escaped the danger of the judgment to come, and sailed without harm past what may be called Charybdis, gazing with the eye of faith on the common light of their salvation and the abundant redemption of Him who came to earth. For as the man who had put on a breastplate strong and thick and that cannot be loosed from his shoulders, is unwounded in war, and is not taken prisoner when terrors stand round about him, even so the man who has put on the confession of Him who is mightier than he, has no fear of the threatening of universal judgment. For as the fire does not consume that which is called "inviolable,"8 and does not burn the sword but brightens and tempers it, so those who are dipped in the inviolable Name will never be affected by fire or by judgment, which will flee before the Name which is named upon them.
If a man has an eye that is able to see, the sun fills it with abundant light when it is opened, but when the eye is shut it commits it to darkness. The sun itself does nothing wrong, and does not harm his vision; but the man who is possessed of sight has brought his own penalty. He is not wronged by the sun's rays, but he made darkness for himself out of those things in which he might have shown himself to be co-operating with the light, by receiving a proof of light in his seeing the sun, and by having a proof of darkness in his not seeing it, he himself being in both cases his own arbiter and judge. Even thus a man who believes in God and trusts in Him, who may be termed the divine light of the mind, is found to be a partner of God in whom he believes, shunning the darkness of ignorance and want of knowledge, and nourished by the brightness of heavenly doctrines, being himself aware of salvation beforehand through beholding the divine, and having in his own possession, as a great and sufficient preservation of his faith, the remedy of salvation. But the man who is disabled by the blindness of wilful unbelief, and, turning away from the brightness of the light in which all may share, moves in the darkness like some creature swimming in the depths of the sea, showing no fulfilment of the good deeds of virtue, receives no praise even though he be wise apart from the light. And even though he co-operate with those who are near him, he receives no dignity; and even if he does what is righteous but does not take the light as test and judge, his labours are subject to blame, and he does not escape from accusation. And even though his soul be trained in natural righteousness, hating plunder and refraining from theft, not breaking through the rights of other men's marriages, not despising or insulting his neighbour, but fighting for his fatherland, enduring ills on behalf of his kindred, and showing all kinds of excellences in his deeds, he is without sanctification and does everything to no purpose, since he does not accept the mastership of Him who perishes not, as the judge of all that is done by him.
For as beauty has no praise apart from the beauty of the light, and a reckoning does not receive its completion apart from the measuring rule of the things that are measured, even so right action and all the virtue and ordering of men's deeds, when it does not accept as test and judge the unsleeping eye of that gaze which beholds all things, is like a pearl hidden in the mud, the beauty of which is not seen in the light but is concealed in a rubbish heap.9 For tell me, who will crown or reward the restraint of the man who has self-control? Who will honour the soldier with pay after his deed of valour? Who will deem worthy of rewards the man who has contended in the games? Is not his running, merely considered in itself, a matter of blame? Is not the success of the man who has done his soldiering to no purpose apart from his general? Is not the contest of him who has the mastery of himself a pitiable thing without one to crown him? Is not the tribute of subjects of no benefit without a king? Even thus the issue of every kind of righteousness is stripped of the reward of the good, if it be not done in the name and to the honour of the Creator. And, on the other hand, any man who believes that there is One who is potent to behold and judge his deeds and activities, even though he be full of guilt, and the servant of unholy practices, and though he have set himself to be a follower of abominable deeds, by bringing the examination of his own deeds before the eyes of the Creator (just as the sick man discloses the affections of his body to a sympathetic physician), he is freed from all grief and trouble, and is rid of the countless stripes of his transgressions. For the Saviour is able to sa--- . . .
(Here the Athens MS. ends.)
Footnotes:
1The title of the chapter uses the phrase, so familiar in early creeds, "Resurrectio carnis." And although his opponent calls it "the resurrection of the dead," the former phrase is used in his answer as well as in the title of it.
2ὑπόστασις.
3Reading τίνα for τίς (ὑπόστασιν ἐχαρίσατο;). This passage is an example of the fact that Macarius does not ordinarily use this word as meaning "person." See Introd., p. xviii, and p. 142 n. I.
4μιασμάτων—perhaps in the sense of "noxious mists."
5An unexpected word; perhaps it should be ναυαγίας, "shipwreck."
6τῆς ἀχράντου περιωπῆς.
7διὰ τὸν χαρακτῆρα.
8ἀμίαντον. It cannot be translated asbestos, as it is repeated in the ἀμίαντον ὄνομα of the next clause.
9There appears to be an intentional alliteration in οὐκ ἐν φωτὶ, ἀλλ' ἐν φορυτῷ.