Anastasius to John of Jerusalem About Rufinus

The kind words of approval you have addressed, my dear bishop, to your brother bishop are a fresh sign of your long-tested affection. You pay me high praise, a most generous recognition of my services. I thank you for this proof of your love; and, following you at a distance in my littleness, I bring the tribute of my words to honor the splendor of your holiness and the virtues the Lord has given you. You surpass all others so far, and the splendor of your praise shines out so plainly, that no words I can use can equal what you deserve. Yet your glory stirs such admiration in me that I cannot turn away from trying to describe it, even though I can never do it adequately. And first, the praise you have given me out of the clear heaven of your great spirit is part of your own glory. For it is the majesty of your office as bishop, shining like the sun on the opposite side of the world, that has reflected its own brightness on us. And you give me your friendship without reserve; you do not weigh me on the scales of criticism. If it is right for you to praise me, must not your praise be echoed back to you? So I beg you, for your own sake no less than mine, not to praise me any more to my face. I ask this for two reasons: if the praise is undeserved, it must cause your brother bishop pain; if it is true, it must make him blush. [a]

Let me come to the subject of your letter. Rufinus, about whom you have done me the honor of asking my advice, must bring his conscience before the judgment seat of God’s majesty. It is for him to see how he can prove to God that he keeps his true loyalty to him. [d] As for Origen, whose writings he has translated into our language, I have never known before, and do not now seek to know, either who he was or what form he gave to his thought. But I would be glad to speak with Your Holiness for a moment about the impression this matter has left on my own mind. The impression I have received is that his aim was to break apart our faith, which is the faith of the apostles and has been confirmed by the traditions of the fathers, by leading us into crooked paths. This has been brought out clearly by the reading of parts of Origen’s works among the people of our city, and by the kind of mist of blindness it spread over them. I want to know what the purpose is of translating this work into the language of Rome. If the translator means by it to put the author in the wrong and to expose his detestable deeds to the world, well and good. In that case he will hold up to well-deserved hatred a man who has long labored under the heavy weight of public opinion against him. But if by translating all these evil things he means to give his assent to them, and gives them to the world to read in that spirit, then the building he has put up at the cost of so much labor serves no other purpose than this: to make the guilt an act of his own will, and to lend the approval of his unexpected support to the overthrow of everything of first importance in the true faith, as catholic Christians have held it from the time of the apostles until now.

Far be such teaching from the catholic order of the church of Rome. It can never possibly happen that we should accept as reasonable what we condemn as a matter of law and right. So we are confident that Christ our God, whose providence reaches over the whole world, approves of us when we say that it is wholly impossible for us to admit teachings that defile the church, overturn its well-tested moral order, offend the ears of all who witness what we do, and lay the ground for strife, anger and quarrels. This is why I wrote my letter to our brother bishop Venerius. You will see its character, written as it was in my weakness but with great care and diligence, from what I now add: “Where, then, the translator of the work got this confidence in his own innocence, and how he keeps it, I am not much concerned to know; it fills me with no idle alarm. I will certainly leave nothing undone that may help me guard the faith of the gospel among my own people, and warn, as far as I can, those who are members of my body, in whatever part of the world they live, not to let any translation of profane authors creep in and spring up among them, which would try to unsettle the minds of devout people by spreading its own darkness among them. Moreover, I cannot pass over in silence something that has given me great pleasure: the decree issued by our emperors, by which everyone who serves God is warned against reading Origen, and all who are convicted of reading his impious works are condemned by the imperial judgment.” In these words my formal sentence was pronounced. [e]

You are troubled by the complaints people make about our treatment of Rufinus, so much so that you pursue certain persons with vague suspicions. But I will answer this feeling of yours with an example from holy Scripture, where it is said: “Man does not see as God sees; for God looks on the heart, but man on the face.” So, my dearly beloved brother, put away all your prejudice. Weigh Rufinus’s conduct with your own unbiased judgment. Ask yourself whether he has not translated Origen’s words into Latin and approved them, and whether a man who encourages wicked acts committed by another differs at all from the guilty party. In any case, I beg you to be sure of this: he is so completely cut off from any share or part with us that I neither know nor want to know what he is doing or where he is living. I have only to add that it is for him to consider where he may obtain absolution. [g]