Book 3 of the Stomateis of Clement of Alexandria was not translated but left in the Latin in the Ante Nicene Fathers when it was published. In the public interest, this translation by John Ferguson published by the Catholic University of America Press (1991) is reproduced with their permission.

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Fathers of the Church Series Vol. #85
Clement of Alexandria - Stromateis
Translated by John Ferguson

Copyright © 1991

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS
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1(1) The sect of Valentinus justify physical union from heaven from divine emanations, and approve of marriage. The followers of Basilides say that when the apostles enquired whether it was not better to refrain from marriage, the Lord answered, "It is not everyone who can accept this saying: some are eunuchs from birth, others from necessity." ¹ (2) They explain the saying something as follows. Some men have from birth a physical aversion in relation to women. They follow their physical make-up and do well not to marry. (3) These, they say, are the eunuchs from birth. Those who are eunuchs from necessity are those ascetics who like the limelight and exercise control over themselves in hope of being newsworthy. Those who have suffered castration accidentally have become eunuchs from necessity. ² It follows that those who are eunuchs from necessity are not eunuchs for any rational cause. (4) But those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the eternal kingdom are making a choice of reasoned principle in their view because of the incidentals of married life; they are afraid of the amount of time spent on the provision of necessities.

2(1) Their view is that the Apostle’s words "It is better to marry than to burn" ³ mean "Do not hurl your soul into the fire, clinging on night and day in fear of falling away from abstinence. A soul directed towards clinging on is being cut off

from hope." (2) "So, if you have a quarrelsome wife" (I am quoting Isidore’s Ethics), "be patient with her, to avoid being wrenched violently out of God’s grace; get rid of the fire with your semen; then go to prayer with a good conscience." ⁴ (3) "When your prayer of gratitude," he goes on, "sinks to a petition, and your petition is that in future you may not act wrongly, rather than that you may act rightly – get married. (4) A man may be young or poor or highly sexed and unwilling to follow the Apostle’s advice and get married. He must not be cut off from his Christian brother. He should say, ‘I have entered the temple; there is nothing I can suffer.’ (5) If he has an inkling of what is happening to him, he should say, ‘Brother, lend me a hand to save me from going wrong.’ Then he will receive help, spiritually and physically. He has only to desire to achieve ⁵ the good, and he will attain it.

3(1) "But sometimes we say with our lips, ‘We do not want to sin,’ but our intention is disposed towards sin. Such a person refrains from doing what he wants to do out of fear of punishment being set to his account. (2) The human condition involves some things which are natural and necessary, others which are merely natural. ⁶ To wear clothes is natural and necessary; all this business of sexual intercourse is natural but not necessary." ⁷ (3) I have passed on these statements to expose those followers of Basilides who do not lead upright lives, claiming that they have the authority actually to commit sin because of their perfection, or that they will in any event be saved by nature, even if they do sin, because of their ingrained election; their predecessors in the sect do not allow anyone to do the same ⁸ as they are doing. (4) So they should not wear the name of Christ as a cloak, live more licentiously than the most intemperate of the pagans, and bring ill-repute upon the

name. [The Scripture text is] "Such men are false apostles, crooked workers" down to "whose doom shall match their acts." ⁹

4(1) Self-discipline means disdain of the body, following obedience ¹⁰ to God. Self-discipline applies, not just to sexual matters, but to everything else for which the soul lusts improperly, because it is not satisfied with the bare necessities. (2) Self-discipline applies to speech, possessions and their use, desire generally. ¹¹ It is not just that it teaches us self-control. It offers us the gift of self-control, a divine power and grace of God. ¹² (3) I must tell you our people’s view of the matter. We bless abstention from sexual intercourse and those to whom it comes as a gift of God. We admire monogamy and respect for one marriage and one only. We say that we ought to share in suffering and "bear one another’s burdens," ¹³ for fear that anyone who thinks he is standing firmly should in fact fall. ¹⁴ It is about second marriages that the Apostle says, "If you are on fire, get married." ¹⁵

5(1) The followers of Carpocrates and Epiphanes think that wives should be held in common. ¹⁶ It is through them that the greatest ill-repute has accrued to the name of Christ. (2) This

Epiphanes, whose writings I actually possess, was Carpocrates’ son. His mother’s name was Alexandria. On his father’s side he was an Alexandrian, on his mother’s he was from Cephallenia. His life lasted only seventeen years. At Same in Cephallenia he has been honored as a god. A shrine of quarried blocks of stone was built and dedicated to him there, together with altars, sacred precincts, and a university. The inhabitants of Cephallenia gather at the shrine at the time of the new moon, and offer sacrifice to Epiphanes to celebrate his apotheosis as if it were his birthday. There are libations, feasts and the singing ¹⁷ of hymns. (3) He was educated by his father in the general curriculum and in Platonic philosophy, and taught the knowledge of the Monad, ^l8 the source of the heresy of the Carpocratians.

6(1) In his work On Righteousness ¹⁹ he says, "God’s righteousness is a kind of social equity. ²⁰ There is equity in the way the sky is stretched out in all directions and embraces the whole earth in a circle. The night is equitable in displaying all the stars. From above, God pours out the light of the sun, which is responsible for the day and father of the light, over the earth equally for all those with the power of sight. The gift of sight is common to all. (2) There is no distinction between rich and poor, ruler and ruled, ²¹ fools and wise, female and male, slave

and free. ²² He treats even the irrational animals no differently; on all the beasts he pours out his sunlight equally from above; he ratifies his righteousness to good and bad, so that none can have more than their share or deprive their neighbors so as to have twice as much light as they. ²³ (3) The sun draws up ²⁴ from the ground food for all animals alike; his righteousness is shared by all and given to all equally. In this respect it is exactly the same for individual cows and cattle as a whole, individual pigs and pigs as a whole, individual sheep and sheep as a whole, and so on. (4) It is this common shared quality which is revealed as righteousness among them. The same principle of commonality applies to all the species of plants alike in their seeding. Food is available in common to all animals that pasture on the land, and to all equally. It is not regulated by any law, but is there for all, as it were, in unison, by the generous provision of the giver, the ²⁵ one who has authorized it so. This, is his righteousness. ²⁶

7(1) "Matters concerning the production of offspring do not involve any written law either (or it would have been handed down in writing). All beings sow their seeds and produce their offspring on equal terms, possessing an innate common disposition from the hands of righteousness. The author and Father of all gave to all alike on equal terms an eye to enable them to see. He made this dispensation out of his righteousness. He made no distinction between male and female, rational and irrational, no distinction of any kind. He dispensed sight by his grace to all alike by a single ordinance in accordance with the principle of equal sharing. (2) The laws," he goes on, "by their incapacity to punish human ignorance, actually taught illegal behavior. The individualism allowed by the laws cut damagingly at the roots of the universalism of God’s Law." He does not understand the Apostle’s dictum in the words: "It was

through the Law that I knew sin." ²⁷ (3) He suggests that "mine" and "yours" came into existence through the laws, so that the earth and possessions were no longer put to common use. ²⁸ The same applies to marriage. (4) "For God has made vines for all in common; they do not deny the sparrow or the thief. So too with corn and the other fruits of the earth. It is transgression of the principle of common sharing and equality which has produced the thief of fruits and domestic animals.

8(1) "So God created everything for humanity in common. He brings the female to the male in common, ²⁹ and joined all animals together in a similar way. In this he showed that righteousness is a combination of community and equity. (2) But those who have been born in this way have denied the commonality that unites births, and say, ³⁰ ‘A man ^3l should marry a single wife and stick to her.’ Everyone can share her as the rest of the animals show." (3) After these words, which I quote precisely, he goes on in the same vein to add, in these very words: "With a view to the maintenance of the race he has implanted in the male strong and energetic sexual desire. Law cannot make this disappear, nor can social mores or anything else. It is God’s decree." (4) How can this fellow still be listed in our church members’ register when he openly does away with the Law and the Gospels alike by these words? The former says, "You shall not commit adultery," the latter, "Everyone who looks with lust has already committed adultery." ³² (5) The words found in the Law, "You shall not lust," show that it is one single God who makes his proclamations ³³ through the Law, prophets and Gospels. He says, "You shall not lust for your neighbor’s wife." ³⁴ (6) The Jew’s neighbor is not the Jew, who is a brother of the same spirit. The alternative is that the neighbor is one of another race. How can a person who shares in the

same spirit fail to be a neighbor? Abraham is father of Hebrews and gentiles alike. ³⁵

9(1) If the adulteress and her paramour are both punished with death, it is surely clear that the commandment "You shall not lust for your neighbor’s wife" applies to the gentiles, so that anyone who follows the Law in keeping his hands off his neighbor’s wife and his sister may hear directly from the Lord: "But I say to you, you shall not lust." The addition of the pronoun "I" shows that the application of the commandment is more rigidly binding, (2) and that Carpocrates and Epiphanes are battling against God. Epiphanes ³⁶ in that notorious book, I mean ³⁷ On Righteousness, goes on like this, and I quote: (3) "So you must hear the words ‘You shall not lust’ as a joke of the Lawgiver, to which he added the even more ludicrous words ‘for your neighbor’s property.’ The very one who endows human beings with desire to sustain the processes of birth gives orders that it is to be suppressed, though he suppresses it in no other living creature! The words ‘for your neighbor’s wife’ are even more ridiculous since he is forcing public property to become private property."

10(1) These are the doctrines of our noble Carpocratians. They say that these people and some other zealots for the same vicious practices gather for dinner (I could never call their congregation a Christian love-feast), men and women together, and after they have stuffed themselves ("The Cyprian goddess is there when you are full," they say. ³⁸), they knock over the lamps, put out the light that would expose their fornicating righteousness," and couple as they will with any woman they fancy. ³⁹ So in this love-feast they practice commonality. Then by daylight they demand any woman they want in obedience –

it would be wrong to say to the Law of God – to the law of Carpocrates. I guess that is the sort of legislation Carpocrates must have established for the copulation of dogs, pigs, and goats. (2) I fancy he has, in fact, misunderstood Plato’s dictum in the Republic that wives are to be held in common by everyone. Plato really meant that before marriage they are to be available to any who intend to ask them to marry, just as the theatre is open to all spectators; but that once a woman has married she belongs to the particular man who secured her first and is no longer held in common by everyone. ⁴⁰

11(1) Xanthus in his book entitled the Works of the Magi says, "The Magi think ^4l it right to have sexual union with their mothers, daughters and sisters. The women are held in common by mutual agreement, not forcibly or secretively, when one man wants to marry another’s wife." ⁴² (2) I fancy Jude was speaking prophetically of these and similar sects in his letter when he wrote: "So too with these people caught up in their dreams" who do not set upon the truth with their eyes fully open, down to "pompous phrases pour from their mouth." ⁴³

12(1) If even Plato and the Pythagoreans, like the followers of Marcion later (though he was far from maintaining that wives should be held in common), regarded birth as something evil, Marcion’s followers held natural processes as evil because they were derived from matter that was evil, and from an unrighteous creator. ⁴⁴ (2) On this argument they have no wish to

fill the cosmos the creator brought into being, and choose to abstain from marriage. They stand in opposition to their creator and make haste towards the one they call god, who is not (they say) god in another sense. As a result, they have no desire to leave anything of theirs behind them here on earth. So they are abstinent not by an act of will but through hatred of the creator and the refusal to use any of his productions. (3) But in their irreverent war with God they stand apart from natural reason. They despise God’s generous goodness. Even if they choose not to marry, they still use the food he has produced, they still breathe the creator’s air. They are themselves his works and live in his world. They say that they have received the gospel of an alien knowledge. In one respect they ought to recognize the grace of the Lord of the cosmos; it is here on earth that they have received the gospel. ⁴⁵

13(1) We shall present precise arguments against these people when we treat the doctrine of first principles. ⁴⁶ The philosophers whom we have mentioned, from whom Marcion’s followers derived their blasphemous doctrine that birth is evil, although they prance about as if it were their own, do not, in fact, hold that it is naturally evil, but evil only to the soul which has discerned the truth. (2) They regard the soul as divine, and dragged down here onto earth as to a place of punishment. In their view, souls that have become embodied need to be purified. (3) This doctrine does not belong to Marcion’s followers, but to those who hold that souls are placed in bodies, change their integument ⁴⁷ and transmigrate. There will be another opportunity to respond to them when we discourse on the soul. ⁴⁸

14(1) Heraclitus certainly deprecates birth when he says, "Once born they have a desire to live and have their dooms," or rather enjoy their rest, "and they leave behind children to become dooms." ⁴⁹ (2) Empedocles is clearly of the same mind when he says,

and again,

and once more,

(3) Further, the Sibyl says,

This is not far from the poet’s words:

15(1) Yes, and Theognis too points to birth being evil when he speaks in the following terms:

(2) Euripides, the writer of tragic drama, writes lines that accord with these:

(3) Elsewhere he says something similar:

16(1) Herodotus is obviously making Solon say the same as this: "Croesus, every human being is a disaster." ⁵⁶ His story about Cleobis and Biton has the clear purpose of attacking birth and praising death. ⁵⁷

says Homer. ⁵⁸ (3) Plato in the Cratylus attributes to Orpheus the doctrine that the soul is in the body as a punishment. Here are his words: "Some people say that it is the burial place of the soul, which is at the present time entombed in it. (4) Because the soul uses the body to mention whatever it would mention, the body is rightly called the soul’s burial place. However, it is the followers of Orpheus who seem to have established the name above all others, saying that the soul is paying the penalty for acts that have earned the penalty." ⁵⁹

17(1) It is also worth noting Philolaus’ remark. The follower of Pythagoras says, "The theologians and seers of old are witnesses that the soul is yoked to the body to undergo acts of

punishment and is buried in it as in a grave." ⁶⁰ (2) Pindar, speaking of the Eleusinian mysteries, adds,

(3) Accordingly, Plato in the Phaedo does not hesitate to write as follows: "These men who established our mysteries" in the same vein down to "he will live with the Gods." (4) What about when he says, "As long as we have the body, and our soul is compounded with such an evil thing, we shall never adequately grasp the object of our desire"? Is he not enigmatically suggesting that birth is the cause of the greatest evils? (5) In the Phaedo he adds his witness: "All those who apply themselves to philosophy in the right way run the risk of the rest failing to notice that they are simply practicing the state of dying and of death." ⁶²

18(1) And again, "So on earth too the soul of the philosopher particularly despises the body, tries to escape from it, and seeks to secure an existence on its own." ⁶³ (2) This clearly harmonizes with the divine Apostle’s words: "Wretch that I am, all too human, who shall rescue me from this body of death?" ⁶⁴ – unless he is using the phrase "body of death" metaphorically of the common mind of those who have been seduced into vice.

(3) Long before Marcion, Plato, in the first book of the Republic, clearly saw sexual intercourse as the origin of birth and rejected it accordingly. (4) In the course of his praise of old age he adds, "I would have you know that as the other pleasures, the physical ones, die down, my delight and pleasure in conversation correspondingly increases." (5) He remarks on the practice of sex: "Hush, my dear fellow. I took the greatest pleasure in escaping from it, as in escaping from a crazy fierce dictator." ⁶⁵

19(1) Again in the Phaedo he writes disparagingly of birth: "The secret teaching on this matter is that human beings are in a kind of prison." (2) And again, "Those who have a reputation for holy living that sets them apart from others are the people who are set free and liberated from these areas on earth as from a prison, and reach the pure home above." ⁶⁶ (3) All the same, even in that condition he recognizes the excellence of the government of the world, saying, "A man ought not to release himself from that prison and run away." ⁶⁷ (4) To sum up, he does not offer Marcion grounds for thinking ⁶⁸ matter evil, when he himself speaks reverently about the world: (5) "All that is good is got from the supreme disposer. From its previous state all that is chaotic or corrupt in the sky comes into being; from that state the world has the same qualities and produces them in living things." ⁶⁹

20(1) He proceeds to add with even more clarity: "The physical element in its make-up was responsible for all this; this was at one time tied up with its primeval nature since it was a disorderly chaos before coming into its present state of order." ⁷⁰ (2) With equal power in the Laws as well, he expresses grief at the state of humankind in these words: "The gods took pity on humankind, born to labor as they were, and established the

succession of festivals as a respite from their labors." ⁷¹ (3) In the Epinomis he goes through the causes of this pitiful state and says, "From the first, birth was difficult for every living creature, first in achieving the state of an embryo, then in the process of birth, and again in growing up and being educated. It all takes place through countless difficulties. Everyone agrees on that." ⁷²

21(1) Well! Doesn’t Heraclitus call birth a death, in conformity with Pythagoras and with Socrates in the Gorgias in this passage: "Death is all that we see when awake, dreams all that we see when asleep."? ⁷³ But enough of this! When we discourse about first principles we will consider ⁷⁴ the contradictions between the obscure sayings of the philosophers and the dogmatic assertions of Marcion’s followers. Except that I think I have shown clearly enough that Marcion took the impulse for his "strange" ⁷⁵ doctrines from Plato without acknowledgment or understanding.

22(1) To proceed with our account of self-control. We were maintaining that the Greeks were highly critical of childbirth, looking askance at its inconveniences, and that Marcion’s followers understand this in a godless sense and show no gratitude to the creator. (2) Tragedy says,

(3) More in the same vein he writes,

(4) But in these lines he clearly attributes the cause of evils to the primal beginnings with the words,

23(1) Again he presents similar ideas in the following passage:

24(1) On these grounds it is said that the Pythagoreans abstain from sex. My own view, on the contrary, is that they marry to produce children, and after raising a family they want to keep sexual pleasure under control. (2) This is why they place a mystic ban on eating beans, not because they lead to belching,

indigestion, and bad dreams, ⁸² or because a bean has the shape of a human head, as in the line

but rather because eating beans produces sterility in women. (3) Anyway, Theophrastus in the fifth book of his Causes of Plants ⁸⁴ records that bean-pods set around the roots of young trees cause the shoots to dry up, and that if birds that haunt houses eat bean-pods for any length of time they become infertile.

25(1) From the heretics we have spoken of Marcion from Pontus who deprecates the use of worldly things because of his antipathy to their creator. (2) The creator is thus actually responsible for his self-control, if you can call it self-control. This giant who battles with God and thinks he can withstand him is an unwilling ascetic who runs down the creation and the formation of human beings. ⁸⁵ (3) If they quote the Lord’s words addressed to Philip, "Let the dead bury their dead; for your part follow me," ⁸⁶ they should also reflect that Philip’s flesh was of the same formation, and he was not endowed with a polluted corpse. (4) Then how could he have a body of flesh without having a corpse? Because when the Lord put his passions to death he rose from the grave and lived to Christ. ⁸⁷ (5) We have spoken of the lawless communism in women held by Carpocrates.

But when we mentioned Nicolaus’ remark we omitted one point. (6) They say that he had a pretty wife. After the Savior’s resurrection he was accused of jealousy by the apostles. He brought his wife out into their midst and offered her to anyone who wanted her in marriage. (7) They say that his action was consistent with the saying "The flesh is to be treated with contempt." ⁸⁸ Those who are members of his sect follow his word and act simply and uncritically, and indulge in unrestrained licence.

26(1) However, I learn that Nicolaus had relations with no woman other than his wedded wife, and of his children the girls grew to old age as virgins, and the son remained innocent. (2) In these circumstances it was a rejection of the passions to wheel ⁸⁹ out the wife, over whom he was charged with jealousy, into the middle of the apostles; and his control of the generally acknowledged pleasures was a lesson in "treating the flesh with contempt." I suppose that, following the Savior’s command, he did not want "to serve two masters," ⁹⁰ pleasure and God. (3) Anyway, they say that Matthias taught the lesson of fighting against the flesh, holding it in contempt, never giving in to its desire for unrestrained pleasure, and enabling the soul to grow through faith and revealed knowledge. ⁹¹

27(1) Those who call Licentious Aphrodite a mystical communion insult the latter name. ⁹² (2) It is called an action alike whether you do something wrong or right. In the same way communion is a good thing ⁹³ when it involves a sharing of money, food, or clothing. But they use the word irreligiously

in applying it to any kind of sexual intercourse. (3) Anyway, there is a story that one of them encountered one of our beautiful virgins and said, "It is written, ‘Give yourself to anyone who asks.’" ⁹⁴ She did not understand the fellow’s impudence and replied with the height of propriety, "If the subject is marriage, speak to my mother." (4) What godlessness! These communists in sexual freedom, these brothers in lustfulness, actually pervert the Savior’s words. They are a disgrace not just to philosophy but to the whole of human life. They deface the truth, or rather raze it to the ground insofar as they can. (5) The wretches make a religion out of physical union and sexual intercourse, and think that this will lead them into the kingdom of God.

28(1) It is to the brothels that that sort of communism leads. Pigs and goats should be their companions. It is the whores who preside over the bordello and indiscriminately receive all comers who have most to hope from them. (2) "That is not how you have learned Christ, if you have been told of him, if you have learned your lessons in him, as the truth is in Jesus Christ – to leave on one side your former way of life, to put off the old human nature, which is deluded by its lusts and on the road to destruction. (3) Be made new in mind and spirit. Put on the new human nature, created in God’s way, in the righteousness and holiness which truth demands, following the likeness of the divine." ⁹⁵ (4) "Become imitators of God, like dear children, and set your course in love, as Christ loved you and gave himself up for us as an offering and sacrifice to God producing a pleasing fragrance. (5) Fornication, indecency of any kind, the profit motive, coarseness, trivial talk should never even be mentioned among you as is right for God’s people." ⁹⁶ (6) Yes, and the Apostle teaches the practice of chastity in speech when he writes, "Know well that everyone who practices fornication" and so on down to "but rather show them up." ⁹⁷

29(1) Their doctrine was derived from an apocryphal work. ⁹⁸ In fact I will quote the passage which is the mother of their impropriety. Whether the actual authors of the book are responsible (see their senselessness if in their licentiousness they falsely impugn God), or whether they encountered some others, they heard sound doctrine and held distorted ideas about it. (2) This is how the passage runs: "All things were one. Since this Unity thought it right not to be left alone, a Spirit of Inspiration emerged from it. It had intercourse with this and produced the Beloved. From the Beloved emerged its own Spirit of Inspiration, with which it had intercourse, producing Powers, invisible and inaudible" down to "each by her own name." (3) If these people were speaking of spiritual unions, like Valentinus’ followers, then one might perhaps accept ⁹⁹ their assumption. But only a person who has renounced salvation could attribute to the holy spirit of prophecy a union consisting in sexual violence.

30(1) Similar doctrines are expressed by Prodicus’ school, ¹⁰⁰ who falsely claim the name of Gnostics for themselves, calling themselves natural sons of the primal god. They make wrong use of their high birth and freedom to live as they will. What they will is a life of pleasure-loving, having come to the conclusion that they are inferior to none, being lords of the sabbath, and born princes superior to all humankind. For a king, they say, there is no written law. (2) In the first place, ¹⁰¹ they do not do all they want; many things will stand in the way of their desires and efforts. Further, what they do do, they do not as kings but as slaves liable to flogging; they are in fear of discovery in their secret adulteries; they are evading condemnation; they are afraid of punishment. (3) How can a

combination of immoderation and dirty language be freedom? "Everyone who sins is a slave," says the Apostle. ¹⁰² 31(1) How can the man who has given himself over to every lust be a citizen according to the Law of God when the Lord has declared, "I say, you shall not lust"? ¹⁰³ (2) Is a person to take a decision to sin deliberately, and to lay it down as a principle to commit adultery, to waste his substance in high living, and to break up other people’s marriages, when we actually pity the rest who fall involuntarily into sin? (3) Even if they have arrived in an alien world, if they prove unfaithful in what belongs to another, ¹⁰⁴ they will have no hold on the truth. (4) Does a foreigner insult the citizens? Do them wrong? Does he not rather behave as a visitor ¹⁰⁵ and live out his life in conformity with the regulations without offending the citizens? (5) How can they say that they are the only people with a knowledge of God when they behave in the same way as those the gentiles hate for their failure to obey the laws’ injunctions – criminals, immoralists, the avaricious, and adulterers? (6) They ought to be living virtuous lives in a foreign land too, so as to show that they really are of royal blood.

32(1) As it is, they have taken the decision to live lawlessly, and won the hatred alike of human legislators and of the Law of God. At any rate, the man who speared through the fornicator in Numbers is shown to be blessed by God. ¹⁰⁶ (2) "If we say," says John in his letter, "that we have communion with him" – that is, God – "and walk in darkness, we are lying and not acting out the truth. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we enjoy communion with him, and the blood of his son Jesus cleanses us from sin." ¹⁰⁷

33(1) How then are those who behave in this manner superior to the worldly? They are like the dregs of the worldly. Like acts reveal like natures, I suppose. (2) Those who claim

superiority of birth ought to show superiority of character, if they want to escape incarceration in prison. ¹⁰⁸ (3) It really is as the Lord said: "If your righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of God." ¹⁰⁹ (4) Scripture shows in Daniel the principle of abstinence in food. ¹¹⁰ To sum up, David in the Psalms speaks about obedience: "How shall a young man keep his path straight?" The answer comes immediately: "By keeping your Word with his whole heart." ¹¹¹ (5) Jeremiah says, "These are the Lord’s words: do not follow the paths of the gentiles." ¹¹²

34(1) In consequence, some other worthless scoundrels ¹¹³ say that humanity was fashioned by different powers, the body down to the navel being the product of divine craftsmanship, and below that of inferior work; which is why human beings yearn for intercourse. ¹¹⁴ (2) They forget that the upper parts of the body call out for food, and in some people show lust. They contradict Christ’s statement to the Pharisees that the same God made our outer and our inner man. ¹¹⁵ In addition, desire does not come from the body, even though it expresses itself through the body. ¹¹⁶ (3) There is another group whom we call the Opponents. They affirm that the God of the universe is our father by nature, and everything that he has made is good. But one of those who came into being from him sowed weeds, ¹¹⁷ and brought into being the growth of evil things. He has surrounded us all with these evils and so set us in opposition to the Father. (4) For this reason we set ourselves to vindicate the Father in opposition to him, counteracting the will of this second being. So, since it is the latter who said,

"You shall not commit adultery," ¹¹⁸ we should, they say, commit adultery ¹¹⁹ so as to annul his order.

35(1) To these people we would say that we have been taught to recognize false prophets and those who merely make a pretense of the truth by their actions. ¹²⁰ Your actions are evidence against you. How can you say that you still adhere to the truth? (2) Either there is no such thing as evil, in which case the one you charge with opposition to God does not merit reproof, and has never created anything evil (the tree and the fruit are eliminated together), or else, if evil really does exist, they must tell us what is their view of the commandments ordained about righteousness, self-control, patience, forbearance and so on: are they bad or good? (3) If the commandment which bans the performance of the vast majority of disgraceful actions is not good, then vice will be legislating against itself to its own undoing – which is impossible. If it is good, then in opposing good directions they admit that they are opposing the good and acting wickedly.

36(1) The Savior himself, the only person they think warrants obedience, has set himself in the way of hatred and abusiveness, ¹²¹ and says, "When you go to court with an opponent, try and achieve an amicable reconciliation." ¹²² (2) So they will either reject Christ’s recommendation and remain in opposition to their opponent, or they will become friends and drop their suit against him. (3) Well? Can’t you see, good people (I want to speak as if you were here with me), that in fighting against these excellent commandments, you are in conflict ¹²³ with your own salvation? It is not these admirable directions you are undermining. It is yourselves. (4) "Your good actions should shine out," the Lord said. ¹²⁴ It is your immorality that you display. (5) Besides, if your aim is to undo the lawgiver’s commandments, why on earth do you aim to undo by your immorality "You shall not commit adultery" and

"You shall not corrupt boys" ¹²⁵ and all that bears on self-control? Why do you do away with winter – he made it! – to produce summer when it is still the middle of winter? Why do you not make the land navigable and enable people to walk on the sea as the compilers of history say that Xerxes, a non Greek, wanted to do? ¹²⁶

37(1) Why do you not oppose all the commandments? He said, "Increase and multiply." ¹²⁷ In your opposition to him you should have totally refrained from sexual intercourse. He said, "I gave you everything for food and delight." ¹²⁸ You ought not to have had any delights. (2) Besides, he says, "An eye for an eye." ¹²⁹ You ought never to have met opposition with opposition. He told the thief to make fourfold restitution. ¹³⁰ You ought to have paid the thief something in addition. (3) Similarly with the command "You shall love the Lord": ¹³¹ You ought to have opposed it and to have shown no love towards the God of the universe. Again he said, "You shall not make an image by carving or by melting metal." ¹³² The logical conclusion was for you to offer worship to statues.(4) It is irreligious of you to oppose, on your own admission, the creator, and to try and rival prostitutes and adulterers in your behavior. (5) Can’t you see that you are in fact exalting the very one you regard as weak, if it is his will that finds fulfillment rather than the will of the good God? The other side of this is that you yourselves ¹³³ are demonstrating the weakness of the one you call your father.

38(1) These people also collect passages from extracts of the prophets, making an anthology and cobbling them together quite wrongly, taking literally ¹³⁴ what was meant allegorically.

(2) They say that Scripture has this: "They opposed God and found salvation." ¹³⁵ But they add, "the shameless God." They accept this saying as advice extended to them. They think that it is salvation to oppose the creator. (3) Scripture does not say, "the shameless god." And even if it did, you idiots, it would be talking of the one we call the devil as shameless, whether as the maligner of humanity, or as the prosecutor of sinners, or as an apostate. (4) At any rate, the people referred to in the passage objected to being disciplined for their sins; they protested and murmured at the passage quoted because the other nations were not being punished for their offenses while they alone were put down for every single offense. Even Jeremiah was led to say, "Why is the path of the wicked easy?" ¹³⁶ The passage ^l37 from Malachi already quoted is to the same effect: "They opposed God and found salvation." (5) The prophets in their oracular utterances do not merely say that they have heard certain messages from God; they demonstrably report the popular conversations, replying to objections voiced, as if they were officially recording questions from human sources. The saying before us is an example of this.

39(1) It may be these people whom the Apostle is inveighing against in his Epistle to the Romans when he writes, "We are slanderously charged by some people with saying that we are to do evil things so that good consequences may follow. No! Such a view is justly condemned." ¹³⁸ (2) These are the people who, when they read, twist the Scriptures by their tone of voice to serve their own pleasures. They alter some of the accents and punctuation marks in order to force wise and constructive precepts to support their taste for luxury. ¹³⁹ (3) "You who have provoked God with your words," says Malachi, "have actually

said, ‘In what have we provoked him?’ You do this by saying, ‘Everyone who acts immorally is good in the Lord’s sight and he approves of them,’ and, ‘Where is the God of righteousness?’" ¹⁴⁰

40(1) We have no intention of making a closer examination of this topic or mentioning more implausible heresies. We have no intention of being forced to an individual discussion of each of them in all their scandalous nature or prolonging these notes to a vast length. Let us answer them by dividing all the heresies into two groups. ¹⁴¹ (2) Either they teach a way of life which makes no distinction between right and wrong or their hymn is too highly strung ¹⁴² and they acclaim asceticism out of a spirit of irreligious quarrelsomeness. (3) I must first expound the former division. If it is legitimate to choose any way of life, then clearly it is legitimate to choose the way that involves asceticism. If there is no way of life which carries danger for the elect, then clearly this is particularly true of the life ¹⁴³ of virtuous self-discipline. (4) If the Lord of the sabbath ¹⁴⁴ has been granted freedom from accountability for a life of licentiousness, the man whose social life is orderly will be far freer from accountability. (5) The Apostle says, "Everything is legitimate for me; not everything is expedient." ¹⁴⁵ If everything is legitimate, that obviously includes self-discipline.

41(1) So just as the person who uses his legitimate choice to live a virtuous life is worthy of praise, so the one who gives us this free and sovereign right of legitimate choice, allowing us to live as we wish, is far more to be reverenced and honored in not allowing our positive or negative choices to fall into

inescapable slavery. ¹⁴⁶ (2) Neither has occasion for fear from the choice of license or discipline; but they are not held in the same respect. The person who drifts into pleasures is gratifying his body; the ascetic is freeing his soul from passions, and the soul has authority over the body. (3) If they tell us that we are called to freedom, we are not, as the Apostle puts it, to present that "freedom as an opening for our lower selves." ¹⁴⁷ (4) If we are to gratify lust, if we are to think a reprehensible way of living a matter of moral indifference, as they assert, either we ought to obey our lusts at all points and, if so, to engage in the most immoral and irreligious practices in conformity with our teachers, (5) or we shall turn away from some of our desires, no longer compelled to live by amoral standards, no longer in unbridled servitude to our least honorable parts – stomach and sex-organs – pampering our carcass to serve our desire. (6) Lust is nurtured and vitalized if we minister to its enjoyment; on the other hand, it fades away if it is kept in check.

42(1) How is it possible for a person who is overpowered by physical pleasures to grow like the Lord or have a true knowledge of God? Every pleasure has its origin in a desire. Desire is a form of pain, a care which yearns for something it lacks. ¹⁴⁸

and choosing an evil "they have brought on themselves" ¹⁵⁰ for the present and the future. (3) So if everything were legitimate and there were no fear of missing out on the ultimate hope because of immoral actions, then they might have some excuse for their wretchedly vicious lives. (4) Through the commandments we have a demonstration of the blessed life. We all

ought to pursue it without misunderstanding any of the statements or neglecting any of the properties, even the slightest of them. We are to follow where the Word leads. But ¹⁵¹ if we do slip up, we cannot avoid falling into "undying evil." ¹⁵² (5) We must follow God’s Scripture, the road taken by the faithful, and we will, so far as possible, become like the Lord. ¹⁵³ We are not to live amorally. We are, so far as possible, to purify ourselves from pleasures and lusts, and take care of our soul which should continue to be engaged solely with the divine. (6) For if it is pure and freed from all vice, the mind is somehow capable of receiving the power of God, when the divine image is established within it. Scripture says, "Everyone who has this hope in the Lord is purifying himself as the Lord is pure." ¹⁵⁴

43(1) It is impossible for those who are still under the direction of their passions to receive true knowledge of God. It follows that if they have not achieved any knowledge of God, they do not have any experience of final hope either. The person who fails to attain this end looks liable to the charge of ignorance of God. Ignorance of God is displayed by one’s way of living. (2) It is absolutely impossible to combine actual scientific knowledge with a failure ¹⁵⁵ to show shame at giving in to the demands of the body. It is impossible to harmonize the view that the supreme good consists in pleasure with the view that beauty of character ¹⁵⁶ is the only good: This is seen only in the Lord, God alone is good and the sole fit object of love. (3) "You have been circumcised in Christ with a circumcision not performed with hands in stripping yourselves of your fleshly body, that is, in Christ’s circumcision." (4) "So if

you are risen together with Christ, look for the things above, fix your mind on them, not on earthly things. For you are dead, and your life has been buried in God together with Christ" – this hardly applies to the sexual immorality which they practice! (5) "So mortify your earthly members – fornication, filthiness, passion, lust; through these the visitation of anger is on its way." So they too should put away "anger, temper, vice, slander, dirty talk from their mouths, stripping themselves of the old human nature with its lusts and putting on the new human nature, which is renewed for full knowledge in accordance with the likeness of its creator." ¹⁵⁷

44(1) The nature of a person’s way of living shows up clearly those who have come to know the commandments, since the behavior follows the inward reason. (2) The tree is known by its fruits, not by its flowers and leaves. ¹⁵⁸ True knowledge is discerned from the fruits of behavior, not from the flower of theory. (3) We do not call bare theory knowledge; knowledge is a kind of divine understanding; it is that light engendered in the soul from obedience to the commandments which makes everything clear and enables a person to know what is in a state of change, to know his own humanity, to know himself, ¹⁵⁹ and teaches him to establish himself within reach of God. For knowledge stands to the mind as the eye to the body. ¹⁶⁰ (4) They should not call enslavement to pleasure freedom any more than they should call bitter sweet. We have learned to call freedom the freedom with which the Lord alone endows us, delivering us from pleasures, lusts and the other passions. (5) "Anyone who says, ‘I know the Lord,’ and fails to keep his commandments, is a liar, and there is no truth in him," says John. ¹⁶¹

45(1) What about those who use religious language for irreligious practices involving abstinence against creation and the holy creator, the one and only almighty God, and teach that we ought not to accept marriage and childbearing or introduce yet more wretches in their turn into the world to provide fodder for death? This is what we must say to them; first, in the words of the apostle John: (2) "Now many antichrists have come, from which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but were not of our company: if they had been, they would have stayed with us." ¹⁶² (3) Next we must turn their statements on the grounds that they destroy the sense of their citations. Here is an example: When Salome asked, "How long will death maintain its power?" the Lord said, "As long as you women bear children." ¹⁶³ He is not speaking of life as evil and the creation as rotten. He is giving instruction about the normal course of nature. Death is always following on the heels of birth.

46(1) The design of the Law is to divert us from extravagance and all forms of disorderly behavior; this is its object, to draw us from unrighteousness to righteousness, making us responsible in marriage, engendering children, and living well. (2) The Lord "comes to fulfill, not to destroy the Law." ¹⁶⁴ Fulfillment does not mean that it was defective. ¹⁶⁵ The prophecies which followed the Law were accomplished through his presence, since the qualities of an upright way of life were announced to people of righteous behavior before the coming of the Law by the Word. ¹⁶⁶ (3) The majority know nothing of self-discipline. They live by the body, not by the spirit. Without

the spirit the body is earth and dust. ¹⁶⁷ (4) The Lord condemns adultery in thought. ¹⁶⁸ Well? Is it not possible to practice self-discipline within marriage without trying to pull apart "that which God has joined"? ¹⁶⁹ That is the sort of thing taught by the dissolvers of the marriage bond. Through them the name of Christian comes into bad repute. (5) These people say that sexual intercourse is polluted. Yet they owe their existence to sexual intercourse! Must they not be polluted? Personally, I think that the seed coming from consecrated people is sacred too.

47(1) So it is not just our spirit which ought to be consecrated. It is our character, our life, our body. What is the sense of the Apostle Paul’s words that the wife is consecrated by her husband, and the husband by his wife? ¹⁷⁰ (2) What was it that the Lord said to those who questioned him about divorce, asking whether it was permissible to get rid of one’s wife on the authority of Moses? He said, "Moses wrote this with an eye to your hardheartedness. But have you not read what God said to the first-formed male: ‘You two shall come into one single flesh’? So, anyone who disposes of his wife except by reason of sexual immorality is making an adulteress of her." ¹⁷¹ (3) But "after the resurrection," he says, "they do not marry and are not given in marriage." ¹⁷² Yes, and this is what is said about the stomach and food: "Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will put an end to both." ¹⁷³ He is rebuking those who think to live like boars or goats, to stop them eating and copulating without any sense of respect.

48(1) If, as they claim, they have already attained the state of resurrection, ¹⁷⁴ and for that reason repudiate marriage, they should stop eating and drinking. For the Apostle said ¹⁷⁵ that the stomach and food would be dispensed with in the

resurrection. (2) Then how can they hunger and thirst and suffer the flesh and all the other things from which the person who has attained through Christ the fullness of the expected resurrection will be free? Even those who worship idols fast and practice sexual abstinence. (3) "The kingdom of God does not consist in eating and drinking," he says. ¹⁷⁶ It is possible even for the Magi by a mental effort to abstain alike from wine, animal food, and sex, although they worship angels and spiritual beings. ¹⁷⁷ Just as humility is a form of meekness and does not mean maltreating the body, so asceticism is a virtue of the soul practiced privately, not openly.

49(1) There are those who say openly that marriage is fornication. They lay it down as a dogma that it was instituted by the devil. They are arrogant and claim to be emulating the Lord who did not marry and had no worldly possessions. It is their boast to have a profounder understanding of the gospel than anyone else. (2) To them Scripture says, "God is against the proud and gives grace to the humble." ¹⁷⁸ (3) Next, they do not know the reason why the Lord did not marry. In the first place, he had his own bride, the Church. Secondly, he was not a common man to need a physical partner. ¹⁷⁹ Further, he did not have an obligation to produce children; he was born God’s only Son and survives eternally. (4) It is this very Lord who says, "Let no human being part that which God has joined together." ¹⁸⁰ And again, "The Son of Man’s coming shall be as in the days of Noah, when they were marrying, giving in marriage, building, planting, and as in the days of Lot." ¹⁸¹ (5) Since he is not speaking in relation to the gentiles, he adds, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find

faith on the earth?" ¹⁸² (6) Again, "It will be bad for women pregnant or with child at the breast in those days." ¹⁸³ (But these words are an allegory.) There was a particular reason why he did not even define the times "that the Father has established within his own authority." ¹⁸⁴ It is so that the world should continue generation after generation.

50(1) What about these words: "Not everyone can take this saying. There are some eunuchs born as eunuchs, and some who were made eunuchs by human action, and some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone who can accept the words accept them." ¹⁸⁵ (2) They do not recognize that it was after his words about divorce that some of them asked whether, if that is the position with regard to the wife, it is not better to refrain from marriage, and it was then that the Lord said, "Not everyone can take this saying, only those who have a gift." (3) Those asking the question wanted to find out whether, when a wife had been condemned for sexual misconduct and removed, there was any advantage in marrying another. (4) Tradition records that quite a number of athletes have abstained from sexual intercourse as part of the discipline of physical training. Examples are Astylus of Croton and Crison of Himera. ¹⁸⁶ The lutenist Amoebeus, newly married as he was, did not touch his bride. ¹⁸⁷ Aristotle of Cyrene was the only man to turn up his nose at Lais’ love. ¹⁸⁸

51(1) He promised the courtesan on oath that he would take her back to his homeland, if she helped him against his antagonists in some matter. She did so, and he fulfilled his oath in an amusing way. He painted the closest possible likeness of her and set it up in Cyrene – the account will be found in the Character of Sports by Istrus. ¹⁸⁹ It follows that celibacy is not particularly praiseworthy unless it arises through love of God. (2) The blessed Paul says of those who show a distaste for marriage: "In the last times people will abandon the faith, attaching themselves to deceitful spirits and the teachings of daemonic powers that they should abstain from food, at the same time forbidding marriage." ¹⁹⁰ (3) Again he says, "Do not let anyone disqualify you in forced piety of self-mortification and severity to the body." ¹⁹¹ The same author writes these words: "Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek a dissolution. Have you been divorced? Do not go looking for a wife." ¹⁹² Again he says, "Every man should have his own wife to protect him from temptation by Satan." ¹⁹³

52(1) Well? Did not the righteous of past days share gratefully in God’s creation? Some of them married and produced children without loss of self-control. The ravens brought bread and meat as food to Elijah. ¹⁹⁴ The prophet Samuel brought the leftovers from the haunch which had provided him with a meal and gave it to Saul to eat. ¹⁹⁵ (2) They claim to be their superiors in lifestyle, but they will never remotely be able to match their praxis. (3) So "if anyone refrains from eating, he is not to denigrate one who eats. If anyone eats, he is not to judge one who abstains, since God has accepted him." ¹⁹⁶ (4) Furthermore, the Lord says of himself, "John came abstaining from food and drink, and they say, ‘He is possessed.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and

they say, ‘Look at him, a greedy drunkard, a friend of tax officers, a sinner!’" ¹⁹⁷ Are they not criticizing the apostles? Peter and Philip produced children, and Philip gave his daughters away in marriages. ¹⁹⁸

53(1) In one of his letters Paul has no hesitation in addressing his "yokefellow." ¹⁹⁹ He did not take her around with him for the convenience of his ministry. (2) He says in one of his letters, "Do we not have the authority to take around a wife from the Church, like the other apostles?" ²⁰⁰ (3) But the apostles in conformity with their ministry concentrated on undistracted preaching, and took their wives around as Christian sisters rather than spouses, to be their fellow-ministers in relation to housewives, through whom the Lord’s teaching penetrated into the women’s quarters without scandal. (4) We know the dispositions made over women deacons by the admirable Paul in his second letter to Timothy. ²⁰¹ Furthermore, this same writer said strongly that "the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking" – or abstinence from wine or meat – "but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit." ²⁰² (5) Which of them goes around like Elijah wearing sheepskin and a leather belt? Which of them wears no shoes and nothing but a piece of sackcloth like Isaiah? Or with nothing on but a linen apron, like Jeremiah? ²⁰³ Which of them will imitate John’s Gnostic way of life? ²⁰⁴ The blessed prophets lived like that and still gave thanks to the creator.

54(1) This is the way to undermine the "righteousness" of Carpocrates and those who match him in sharing in a fellowship

of immorality. In the moment of saying, "Give to anyone who asks," Scripture goes on, "and do not turn away anyone who wants a loan." ²⁰⁵ This is the sort of fellowship Scripture teaches, not fellowship in lust. (2) How can there be a person who asks, receives, and borrows if there is no one who possesses, grants, and lends? (3) What does the Lord say? "I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me into your home. I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear." Then he adds, "Insofar as you have done so to one of the humblest of these, you have done so to me." ²⁰⁶ (4) The same law is established in the Old Testament in the words "Anyone who gives to a begger is making a loan to God" and "Do not evade doing good to one in need." ²⁰⁷

55(1) And again it was written, "Do not drop almsgiving and positions of trust" and "Poverty brings a man low, but the hands of the vigorous become wealthy," adding, "Look! A man who has never let his money out on interest is accepted and "A man’s personal wealth is adjudged his soul’s ransom" (a clear and open statement). ²⁰⁸ So as the universe is compounded of opposites, hot and cold, dry and wet, ²⁰⁹ so too it is compounded of those who give and those who receive. (2) Again when he says, "If you want to be perfect, sell your property and give the proceeds to the poor," he is showing up the man who boasts of "having kept all the commandments from his youth." ²¹⁰ He had not fulfilled "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." ²¹¹ At that moment the Lord wanted to bring him to perfection and was teaching him to share out of love.

56(1) So he has not stopped the proper acquisition of wealth but its unjust and insatiable acquisition. For "possession illegally promoted is reduced." ²¹² For "there are some who sow more and reap more, and some who find their resources reduced by hoarding." ²¹³ About these it is written, "He made distributions and gave to the poor: his righteousness endures to eternity." ²¹⁴ (2) The one who "sows and gathers in more" is the one who, by sharing his earthly, temporal property, gains an eternal reward in heaven; the other is the one who refuses to share with anyone but vainly "lays up treasure on earth, where moth and rust eat it away." ²¹⁵ It is written about such a person as this: "In collecting his money he put it into a purse with a hole in it." ²¹⁶ (3) This is the man of whose land the Lord says in the gospel that it prospered, and when next he wanted to store the harvest, he proposed to build larger barns and said to himself in the words of the story, "You have many good things in store for you for many years. Eat, drink, enjoy yourself." So the Lord said, "You are a fool. This very night they are demanding your life from you. Then who is to possess the things you have laid ready?" ²¹⁷

57(1) Human self-control (I am referring to the views of the Greek philosophers) professes to counter desire rather than minister to it, with a view to praxis. Our idea of self-control is freedom from desire. It is not a matter of having desires and holding out against them, but actually of mastering desire by self-control. (2) It is not possible to acquire this form of self-control except by the grace of God. That is why he says, "Ask, and it shall be granted you." ²¹⁸ (3) Moses, though the needs of his body were covered with clothing,

received this grace and for forty days felt no hunger or thirst. ²¹⁹ (4) Better to be healthy than to be ill and talk about health. Better for there to be light than to be chattering about light. Better genuine self-control than the sort taught by the philosophers. (5) Where there is light, there is no darkness. But where there is deep-seated desire, even if it is solitary, even if it is actually physically quiescent, union with the absent object takes place in memory.

58(1) In general, let our affirmation about marriage, food and the rest proceed: ²²⁰ we should never act from desire; our will should be concentrated on necessities. We are children of will, not of desire. ²²¹ (2) If a man marries in order to have children he ought to practice self-control. He ought not to have a sexual desire even for his wife, to whom he has a duty to show Christian love. ²²² He ought to produce children by a reverent, disciplined act of will. We have learned not "to pay attention to physical desires," "walking decorously as in the light of day" – that is, in Christ and the shining conduct of the Lord’s way – "not in drunken carousing, sexual promiscuity, or jealous quarreling." ²²³

59(1) Further, we ought to examine not merely one single form of self-control in sexual matters, but the other objects which our soul self-indulgently desires, not content with bare necessities but making a fuss about luxury. (2) Self-control means indifference to money, comfort, and property, a mind above spectacles, control of the tongue, mastery of evil thoughts. ²²⁴ It actually happened that some angels suffered a failure of self-control, were overpowered by sexual desire, and fell from heaven to earth. ²²⁵ (3) Valentinus in his letter to Agathopus

says, "Jesus showed his self-control in all that he endured. He lived in the practice of godhead. He ate and drank in a way individual to himself without excreting his food. Such was his power of self-control that the food was not corrupted within him, since he was not subject to corruption." ²²⁶ (4) So we embrace self-control out of the love we bear the Lord and out of its honorable status, consecrating the temple of the Spirit. ²²⁷ It is honorable "to emasculate oneself" of all desire "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" and "to purify the conscience from works of death to the service of the living God." ²²⁸

60(1) There are some who in their hatred of the flesh ungratefully yearn to be free from marital agreement and participation in decent food. They are ignorant and irreligious. Their self-control is irrational. It is so with most of the other peoples of the world. (2) For instance, the Brahmans ²²⁹ do not eat meat or drink wine. But some of them allow themselves food daily, as we do, others every other day, as Alexander Polyhistor says in his History of India. ²³⁰ They despise death and set no value on life, believing in reincarnation. (3) They worship Heracles and Pan as gods. The so-called Holy Men of India also live out their lives in a state of nudity. These also rigorously pursue truth and make predictions about the future. As divine beings ²³¹ they honor a kind of pyramid under which they believe the bones of some god are resting. ²³²

(4) The Gymnosophists ²³³ and the so-called Holy Men do not have wives. They regard this as unnatural and illegal. This is why they keep themselves chaste. The Holy Women also live in virginity. The indications are that they observe the heavenly bodies and prophesy future events from their signs.

Scripture Passages Cited by Heretics Censuring Marriage

61(1) Those who drag in a doctrine of moral indifference do violence to some few passages of Scripture, thinking that they support their own love of pleasure; in particular, the passage "Sin shall have no authority over you; for you are not subject to sin but to grace." ²³⁴ But there are other such passages, which there is no good reason to record for these purposes, as I am not equipping a pirate ship! Let me quickly cut through their attempt. (2) The admirable Apostle in person will refute their charge in the words with which he continues the previous quotation: "Well then! Shall we sin because we are no longer under Law but under grace? God forbid!" ²³⁵ With these inspired prophetic words, at a single stroke he undoes the sophistical skill at the service of pleasure.

62(1) So they have not understood, ²³⁶ it seems, that "we must all appear before Christ’s tribunal, where each must receive what is due to him for his physical conduct, good or bad," ²³⁷ that is, where a person may receive recompense for what he has done by means of his body. (2) "So that, if a person is in Christ, he is recreated" ²³⁸ in a way no longer subject to sin. "The past is gone" – we have washed away the

old life. "Look, new things have emerged" – chastity instead of sexual looseness, self-control instead of license, righteousness instead of unrighteousness. "What have righteousness and lawlessness in common? What fellowship is there between light and darkness? Can Christ agree with Beliar? (3) What have the faithful to do with the faithless? Can there be a compact between the Temple of God and idols?" ²³⁹ "These are the promises made to us. Let us purify ourselves of anything that can stain flesh or spirit, aiming at the goal of holiness in the fear of God." ²⁴⁰

Heretics Quote the Words Spoken to Salome to Censure Marriage

63(1) Those who attack God’s creation under the pious name of self-control quote the words spoken to Salome, which we have mentioned previously. ²⁴¹ I fancy the passage comes from the Gospel according to the Egyptians. (2) They maintain that the Savior personally said, "I am come to destroy the works of the female." "Female" refers to sexual desire, and its works are birth and decay. So what are they to say? Has this world order been undone? They could never say so. The universe remains in the same condition. (3) But the Lord did not speak falsely. In reality he brought to nothing the works of desire – the love of money, or winning, or glory, craziness over women, a passion for boys, gluttony, profligacy and the like. The birth of these means decay in the soul, if we become "dead in sins." ²⁴² This is what is meant by "female" lack of self-control. (4) Birth and decay in creation are bound to take place in accordance with the divine principle ²⁴³ until the time of total dissolution and the restoration of the elect, an event through which the beings which are mixed up with the material world are also assigned to their true condition.

64(1) It follows, as the argument reveals, ²⁴⁴ that it is in relation to the final consummation that Salome says, "How long will human beings go on dying?" Scripture uses the word "human being" in two senses, the visible and the spiritual ²⁴⁵ one subject to salvation and one not. Sin is called the death of the soul. That is why the Lord answers with circumspection, "As long as women give birth," that is to say, as long as sexual desire is still at work. (2) "Therefore as sin entered the world through one human being, and death penetrated to all human beings through sin in that all sinned, death also held dominion from Adam to Moses," says the Apostle. ²⁴⁶ By natural necessity of divine dispensation, death follows birth, and the union of soul and body is followed by their dissolution. ²⁴⁷ (3) The object of birth is learning and knowledge, the object of dissolution is restoration. Woman is regarded as the cause of death because of giving birth, but for the same reason she is also to be regarded as the cause of life.

65(1) The woman who initiated transgression was called "Life," because she was responsible ²⁴⁸ for the succession of those who came to birth and sinned, mother of righteous and unrighteous alike; each one of us shows himself just or renders himself disobedient. (2) As a result, I do not think that the Apostle is disparaging life in the flesh when he says, "I shall speak out. Christ will now and always be glorified in my body, whether through my life or through my death. For to me life is Christ, and death is gain. But if life in the flesh means for me some fruitful work, I do not know what to choose. I am torn two ways. I have a desire to weigh anchor and to be with Christ; that is far better. But I feel a deeper constraint to remain in the flesh for your sake." ²⁴⁹ (3) In these words he showed clearly that love of God is the crowning reason for leaving the body, whereas to remain behind graciously for

those in need of salvation is the reason for being in the flesh.

66(1) These people do anything rather than walk by the canon of the gospel in conformity with truth. Why do they omit what follows in the words spoken to Salome? ²⁵⁰ She said, "Then would I have done better if I never had a child?" (2) suggesting that childbearing was not a necessary obligation. The Lord replied in the words, "Eat every plant but do not eat a plant whose content is bitter." (3) By these words he is indicating that the choice of celibacy or wedlock is in our power and not a matter of the absolute constraint of a commandment. He is also clarifying the point that marriage is cooperation with the work of creation.

67(1) So no one should ever think that marriage under the rule of the Logos ²⁵¹ is a sin, if he does not find it bitter to bring up children; indeed, for many people, childlessness is the most grievous experience of all. At the same time, if he does not regard the production of children as bitter because it drags him away from the things of God, for which there is necessarily no time, but does not look favorably upon life as a bachelor, then he can look forward ²⁵² to marriage, since there is no harm in disciplined pleasure, and each of us is in a position to make a decision over the engendering of children. (2) I realize that there are some people who have used the excuse of marriage to abstain from it ²⁵³ without following the principles of sacred knowledge and have fallen into hatred of humankind so that the spirit of Christian love has vanished from them; others have become embroiled in marriage and indulged their taste for pleasure within the authority of the Law, ²⁵⁴ and as the prophet says, "have become like cattle." ²⁵⁵