The Perfect Work of Love

What comes next, I think, is that I should deal with martyrdom, and with who the perfect man is. Along with that will go whatever else the subject demands: how slave and free alike must take up philosophy, and women as well as men. Then, when I have finished what has to be said about faith and inquiry, I will set out the section on symbols; and so, having brought the discussion of conduct to a quick close, I will show what advantage the Greeks gained from the philosophy of the barbarians. After that sketch comes a short explanation of the Scriptures, both against the Greeks and against the Jews, together with the points I could not fit into the earlier Miscellanies, since the sheer number of subjects made that impossible — and these, in keeping with how the work opened, I mean to finish off in a single volume. Beyond all this, once the sketch is complete and as far as our plan allows, I must give an account of what the Greeks and the barbarians teach about the natural world and its first elements, so far as their opinions have reached us, and argue against the chief theories the philosophers have thought up. [a]

After these, and after a quick look at what has been taught about God, the next thing will be to discuss what has been handed down about prophecy. Then, having shown that the Scriptures we trust hold good on the authority of the Almighty behind them, we will be able to go through them in order and show, against every one of the sects, that the law and the prophets — and the blessed good news besides — truly proclaim one God and one Almighty Lord. A great deal of contradicting awaits us as we try, in writing, to break the force of what those who teach otherwise allege, and to persuade them against their will, proving the case from the Scriptures themselves.

So, when we have finished all we have proposed in these notes — if the Spirit is willing, as we serve what is urgently needed, for it is absolutely necessary to take in what has to be said by way of preface before coming to the truth — we will turn to the true study of nature that belongs to knowledge, initiated into the lesser mysteries before the greater, so that nothing may stand in the way when the truly divine things are declared, the matters that have to be stated and detailed first having been cleared out of the road and sketched in advance. This study of nature — or rather this watching of it — as the tradition of knowledge holds it by the rule of the truth, hangs on the discussion of how the world came to be, and climbs from there to the account of God. So we will begin our report of what has been handed down with the creation as the prophets tell it, bringing in the teachings of those who teach otherwise as well, and doing what we can to refute them. But it will be written if God wills it and as he inspires it. For now we must get on with what we set out to do, and finish the discussion of conduct.

Let these notes of ours be a mixed thing — patchwork, as the very name says — as I have often told those who consult them carelessly and without skill. They move constantly from one subject to another, and in the run of the discussion they hint at one thing while demonstrating another. “Those who look for gold,” says Heraclitus, “dig up much earth and find little gold.” But those who belong to the truly golden race, mining for what is their own kin, will find much in little. The writing will find someone who understands it. So these patchwork notes help a man who is able to investigate with reason to remember the truth and to say it. And besides these you must take on other labors and other research of your own. When people set out on a road they do not know, it is enough simply to point them the direction; after that they have to walk it and find the rest for themselves. As the story goes, a slave once asked at the oracle what he should do to please his master, and the Pythian priestess answered, “You will find, if you seek.” It really is hard work, then, as it turns out, to find a good thing that lies hidden. As the poet has it: [d]

For the Lord’s “way” is in truth “narrow and hard.” And “the kingdom of God belongs to the violent.” That is why it is said, “Seek, and you will find” — keeping to the truly royal road and not turning off it. As you would expect, then, the seeds of teaching gathered into this book have great power to grow in a small space, like “all the growth of the field,” as Scripture says. So these patchwork notes are rightly named. They are remarkably like that old offering culled from every kind of thing, which Sophocles describes:

In just the same way our Stromata produce, as the farmer in the comic poet Timocles puts it, “figs, olives, dried figs, honey, as from a field that bears everything.” And because of that abundance he adds:

For the Athenians used to chant:

So we must often shake this great mixture of seeds and toss it up, as men do in winnowing sieves, in order to separate out the wheat.

Most people have a temper that is unsteady and heedless, like the behavior of storms. “Distrust has done much good, and trust much harm.” And Epicharmus says, “Do not forget to practice disbelief; it is the sinew of the soul.” Now to disbelieve the truth brings death, as believing it brings life; and to believe the lie while disbelieving the truth hurries a man to destruction. It is the same with self-control and self-indulgence. Holding yourself back from doing good is the work of vice; holding back from doing wrong is where salvation begins. So the Sabbath, by its abstaining from evil things, seems to stand for self-control. [i]

And what is it, I ask, that makes a man different from the animals, and in which God’s angels, on the other side, are wiser than he is? “You made him a little lower than the angels.” Some do not take that passage to be about the Lord, though he too wore flesh, but about the perfect man, the man of knowledge, who is lower than the angels in the matter of time and because of the clothing he wears, his body. So by wisdom I mean nothing other than sure knowledge, since one life is no different from another life. Being alive is something the mortal nature — that is, man — shares with those to whom immortality has been granted, and so are the powers of contemplation and of self-control, though one of the two is the better. On this ground Pythagoras seems to me to have said that God alone is wise, just as the apostle writes to the Romans, “for the obedience of faith among all the nations, made known to the only wise God through Jesus Christ” — and to have said that he himself was a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, because he was a friend of God. So it is said, “God spoke with Moses as a man speaks with his friend.” What is true, then, being plain to God, produces truth at once; and the man of knowledge loves the truth. “Go to the ant, you lazy man, and become the pupil of the bee,” says Solomon.

If every creature has one work belonging to its own particular nature — the ox, the horse, the dog — what shall we say is the work that belongs to a human being? He looks to me like the Centaur that the Thessalians made up, put together out of a reasoning part and an unreasoning one, of soul and body. The body works the ground and hurries toward the ground; but the soul is lifted up to God. Trained in true philosophy it speeds toward its own kin above, turning away from the cravings of the body, and from hard labor and fear besides — though we have shown that endurance and fear do belong to the good man. For those who run the law down argue that “through the law comes the knowledge of sin,” and “until the law, sin was in the world,” and yet “apart from the law sin was dead.” We answer them. When you take away sin, which is the cause of fear, you have taken away fear; and still more, you take away punishment when you take away what gives rise to craving. “The law is not laid down for a righteous man,” Scripture says. And so Heraclitus says, “They would not have known the name of Justice if these things had not existed.” And Socrates says that the law was not made for the sake of the good.

But the faultfinders did not know even this much, which the apostle states: that “the one who loves his brother does no evil.” For “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal” — and if there is any other command, it is summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So too it is said, “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And if “the one who loves his neighbor does no evil,” and if every command is summed up in this, the loving of our neighbor, then the commands, by threatening us with fear, produce love and not hatred. That is why the law brings about the feeling of fear. “So the law is holy,” and truly “spiritual,” as the apostle says.

So, as is right, in looking into the nature of the body and the being of the soul, we must grasp what each is for, and must not treat death as an evil. “For when you were slaves of sin,” says the apostle, “you were free with regard to righteousness. What fruit did you have then in the things you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. But now, set free from sin and made slaves to God, you have your fruit leading to holiness, and the end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We may risk saying, then, that it has now been shown what death is: the soul, while it is in sin, keeping company with the body. And life is the separation from sin. Many are the stakes and trenches of craving that block us, and the pits of rage and anger that have to be jumped, and all the schemes of those who plot against us that we have to dodge — men who would no longer see the knowledge of God “in a mirror.”

Scripture looks on those who are “under sin” and “sold to sin” as slaves — the lovers of pleasure and of the body — and counts them animals rather than men: “they have become like cattle, like horses neighing after their neighbors’ wives.” The man who cannot control himself is “the lustful donkey”; the greedy man is “the savage wolf”; the deceiver is “a snake.” So the separating of soul from body, taken up as a lifelong study, produces in the philosopher who has knowledge a readiness, so that he is easily able to bear the natural death that is the loosing of the chains binding soul to body. “The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world,” the apostle says; “and now, though I live in the flesh, my citizenship is in heaven.”

So, reasonably enough, when the man of knowledge is called he obeys without a struggle and hands his body over to the one who demands it. He has already stripped off the feelings that belong to this carcass. He does not insult the man who is testing him; rather, in my opinion, he trains him and wins him over. “Fallen from what honor, and from what a height of prosperity,” as Empedocles says, from now on he walks here among mortals. [v]

He bears witness, truly: to himself, that he is faithful and loyal toward God; to the one testing him, that he envied in vain a man made faithful by love; and to the Lord, that he was persuaded by inspiration about the Lord’s teaching, and will not leave it out of fear of death. What is more, he confirms the truth of the preaching by what he does, showing that the God he is hurrying toward is powerful. You will be amazed at his love, which he shows openly and with thanksgiving, being joined to what is his own kin, and shaming the unbelievers besides by his precious blood. So he does not deny Christ out of fear, because of the command; nor does he sell his faith for the hope of the gifts prepared for him; but out of love for the Lord he will leave this life most gladly, perhaps even grateful both to the man who gave him the occasion for his going and to the man who laid the plot against him — grateful for an honorable reason, one he did not provide himself, for showing what he is: to that man by his endurance, and to the Lord by love. It was by that love that he was known to the Lord even before he was born, for the Lord knew what the martyr would choose. So he goes to the Lord with good courage, to his friend, for whom he willingly gave up his body — and, as his judges supposed, his soul as well — hearing from our Savior the words of the poet, “Dear brother,” because his life has been so like his own.

We call martyrdom perfection, not because a man comes to the end of his life as everyone else does, but because he has displayed the perfect work of love. The ancients praised the deaths of those Greeks who died in war — not that they were advising anyone to die a violent death, but because the man who ends his life in war is released without the dread of dying: he is cut off from the body without going through pain first, and without his soul being worn down, as happens to people who suffer through illnesses. Those go out soft and still wanting to live, and so they do not hand over the soul clean, but carry their cravings along with them like weights of lead — all except those who have been outstanding in virtue. Some die in battle with their cravings still on them; these are no different from what they would have been if they had wasted away with a disease.

If confessing God is martyrdom, then every soul that has lived a clean life in the knowledge of God and has kept the commands is a witness, both by its life and by its words, in whatever way it is released from the body — pouring out faith like blood all its life long, right up to its departure. For instance, the Lord says in the Gospel: “Whoever leaves father, or mother, or brothers … for the sake of the good news and my name.” Such a man is blessed. He is not pointing to plain martyrdom, but to the martyrdom of the man of knowledge — the man who has lived by the rule of the good news, in love for the Lord. Knowing the Name and understanding the good news point to knowledge, not to the bare title. So he leaves his worldly relatives, his wealth and every possession, in order to live a life free of passion. “Mother,” taken as a figure, means one’s country and one’s living; “fathers” are the laws of public life. The righteous man of great soul must think little of these, and be thankful while he does it, for the sake of being God’s friend and of obtaining the place at the right hand in the holy place, as the apostles did.

Then Heraclitus says, “Gods and men honor those killed in battle”; and Plato, in the fifth book of the Republic, writes, “Of those who die on campaign, whoever dies after winning a great name — shall we not say that he is chief of the golden race? Most certainly.” But the golden race is with the gods, the ones in heaven in the fixed sphere, who hold the chief command in the care exercised over human beings. Now some of the heretics, who have misunderstood the Lord, have a love of life that is at once godless and cowardly. They say that the true martyrdom is the knowledge of the only true God — which we grant as well — and that a man who makes his confession by dying is his own murderer and a suicide; and they bring forward other clever excuses of the same cowardly kind. We will answer them at the proper time, since our disagreement with them goes back to first principles. We ourselves also say this: those who have rushed at death — for there are some who do not belong to us but only share the name, who hurry to hand themselves over, wretched men dying out of hatred for the Creator — these, we say, throw themselves away without being martyrs, even if they are executed in public. They do not keep the mark that belongs to a believer’s martyrdom, since they have not known the only true God; they hand themselves over to an empty death, as the naked philosophers of India hand themselves over to a fire that accomplishes nothing.

But since these men with the false name slander the body, let them learn that the body’s well-tuned construction contributes to the understanding that leads to a good nature. That is why, in the third book of the Republic, Plato — whom they loudly cite as an authority for running down birth into this world — says that care must be taken of the body for the sake of the soul’s harmony. It is by the body that a man who announces the proclamation of the truth finds it possible to live, and to live well. For it is by way of life and health that we come to knowledge. And the man who cannot climb to the heights without attending to necessary things, and by means of them doing what leads to knowledge — is he not to choose to live well? In living, then, living well is secured. And the man who has given himself to a good life while in the body is being sent on toward the state of immortality.