By Water & Blood

On man

On man.

As for the human being, we say that he was fashioned not by certain angels according to the fables of Basilides and Cerinthus, nor by Ialdabaoth according to the thunderstruck madness of the Sethians, nor yet by Saklas according to the insanity of Manes; but by the divine and all-holy Trinity that fashioned all things. For we heard divine Scripture saying that the God of all said: “Let us make a human being according to our image and according to likeness.” And the blessed David spoke in harmony: “For your hands,” he says, “made me and fashioned me; give me understanding, and I shall learn your commandments.”

We understand the hands of God not as certain bodily parts, but as his creative power. For the incorporeal and unbounded nature is not composite, according to the madness of Audaios, but simple and formless and shapeless, and encompassing all things.

When, therefore, we hear the Mosaic history narrating that God took dust from the earth and fashioned the human being, we seek the sense of the letter, and we understand the disposition which the God of all has in a distinctive way toward human nature. For the great prophet, making this plain, said that the God of all made the other things by a word, but fashioned the human being with hands. And neither in those cases do we understand the command as a spoken utterance, but as will and wish; nor here do we understand the fashioning of the body as a working of hands, but as the greater disposition toward this product.

For just as now, when he wills, the embryo is created in the womb, and nature follows the limits set by him from the beginning, so then, when he willed, a human body was compacted from the earth, and the clay became flesh and blood and skin and fat and sinews and veins and arteries and brain and marrow and the supports of the bones, and the coats of the eyes, and the purity of the pupil, and the spiral channels of the ears, and the reception of smells, and the rational organ of the mouth, in which the teeth fulfill the role of the strings, and the tongue imitates the plectrum, and the mind the musician’s right hand.

But who is sufficient to marvel worthily at the fashioning of this living creature, which many others also attempt to slander, and not least the successors of Manes? For this reason they say that God did not fashion this, but Saklas, the ruler of matter. But the wise among the Greeks—Socrates and Hippocrates and Plato and Xenophon and Aristotle and Galen and countless others—are astonished at the harmony of the human body, marvel at the usefulness of each part, and confess that the word of praise is overcome by the wisdom of the master-craftsman of all that is contemplated in this living creature. So much superior to the ill-named heretics are those who neither received prophetic cultivation nor enjoyed apostolic guidance, but entrusted the knowledge of divine things to reasoning alone.

And I say these things not as apologizing for the polytheistic error of those called philosophers, but showing that those who pride themselves on the name of Christ are more impious not only than the philosophers but even than the demons. For what is more unholy than these, who make everything whatsoever a pretext for blasphemy against the Creator? But we have been taught to hymn over all things—not only over what seems pleasant, but also over what is thought painful. But this is not yet to be treated; for the discourse ought to preserve the harmony of the arrangement.

We say, then, that the body was fashioned from the four elements. For it has heat from fire, cold from air, dryness from earth, and moisture from water. And the soul we say is simple and rational and immortal, yet does not preexist the body.

For Pythagoras and Plato and Plotinus and those of his company, having agreed that the souls are immortal, said that these preexist the bodies, and that there is a certain people of countless souls, and that those who go astray are sent down into bodies, so that, purified by such discipline, they may return again to their own place; and that those who even in bodies embraced a lawless life are sent down into irrational animals—the bitter and venomous into creeping things, the rapacious into wolves, the bold into lions, and the crafty into foxes; and they fabricated such nonsensical fables. And they say that the Peripatetics even strip away the immortality of the souls by their reasoning.

And the wisest of the physicians named the good temperament of the body “soul,” having taken this opinion from the affections that befall the body—epilepsy, I mean, and apoplexy, and frenzy. For since each of these affections injures the rational faculty and makes it vanish, they supposed that the good temperament of the body is soul. But they ought to have understood that even the lyre-player, when the lyre is not well prepared, does not display his own skill. For the strings, when overstretched, and indeed also when become slack, spoil the harmony. And if some are cut through, they render the musician altogether idle. One can see this also with flutes and with other instruments. Thus a soaked hull, or one constructed contrary to the principle of the art, harms the pilot’s skill. And limping horses, or those slow by nature, and indeed the afflictions of chariots, injure the charioteers. In just this way certain bodily affections also do not allow the soul to show the activity of the rational faculty. But when the affection occurs in the tongue, speech is checked; and when in the eyes, the power of optical activity no longer passes through the part. And if the disease falls upon the meninges, the badness of the vapors and humors harms the brain, and being flooded by these it does not receive the soul’s activity, but resembles one who has become submerged and moves hands and feet and the other parts of the body at random. Therefore the good temperament of the body is not the essence of the soul; but in the good temperament of the body the essence of the soul shows its own wisdom. These, then, fell into this irrationality.

But the impious heretics—Carpocrates and Epiphanes and Prodicus and the Cainites and the Antitactae and the Eutychites—acquired a far more unholy chatter than these; for they said that the souls are sent down into bodies so that, having worked every unchastity and lawlessness in them, they might serve the world-making angels by practices of impiety.

But the Church, obeying the divine words, especially abhors the discourse of these, and also turns away from the fables of the others; and obeying divine Scripture it says that the soul is created together with the body, not having the starting points of creation from the matter of the seed, but being constituted by the will of the maker after the fashioning of the body. For the most divine Moses first said that Adam’s body was fashioned, and then that God breathed in the soul. For “God took dust from the earth and fashioned the human being, and breathed into his face a breath of life, and the human being became a living soul.” And that breath we do not say is some part of the divine essence, according to the madness of Cerdo and Marcion; but we say that through this the nature of the soul is indicated, that the soul is a spirit, both rational and intellectual.

And again in the laws the same prophet taught us more clearly that first the body is formed, and then the soul is implanted. For concerning the one who struck a pregnant woman he said: “If the embryo comes forth fully formed, he shall pay eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” and so on. “But if it does not come forth fully formed, he shall be fined”—teaching thereby that what has been formed is ensouled, but what has not been shaped is without soul.

And the all-praised Job also spoke thus to the Lord: “Remember that you fashioned me as clay, and you turn me back again into earth. Did you not milk me like milk, and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.” And having shown through these the prior fashioning of the body, he thus added the hymnody concerning ensoulment: “For life,” he says, “and mercy you set with me.” And he also mentions the care after these things: “And your visitation guarded my spirit.” Then he proclaims the omnipotence of God: “Having these things in yourself, I know that you can do all things, and nothing is impossible for you.”

And God has honored the body with the privileges of time, providing equality. For since he made the soul immortal, but the body mortal, he assigned to the body the prerogatives of time, lest the soul boast against it, having the advantage both by nature and by time.