Chapter X. Confutation and Overthrow of Their Forced Explanation

THESE then being the principles from which the poet started, whence, or how, or from whom did he receive the conception in his verses of the God who is above and beyond the world, and is the Maker of sun, and moon and stars, and of the heaven itself and the whole world?

And whence did he get his knowledge of things incorporeal?

Nay, of these things he knows nothing; for neither does the creative mind of the universe consist of many parts, nor can, the heaven be its head, nor fire and water and earth its body, nor yet sun and moon its eyes. And how can ‘the wide expanse of air, and earth, and lofty hills’ be the shoulders, and breast, and back, and belly, of the Divine Creator of the universe? Or how can the ether ever be thought of as the mind of the Maker of the universe, or of the creative mind?

There is no need, then, to argue further that these are sophistic devices of the interpreter of the poem. For my part, indeed, I say that the man who asserts that the parts of the world are parts of God is guilty of the utmost impiety, and still more he who declared that God is the same as the world, and besides these the man who thinks that the creator of the universe is the mind of the world.

For piety declares that He is the Maker and Preserver of the world, being distinct from that which He has made: but to say that He is the mind of the world, just like the soul of some animal, made altogether one therewith, and clothed with the universe, must pass the bounds of reverence.

Yet certainly our sacred oracles teach us that He is present with the whole, and governs the world by His providence, and they speak of God in a worthy and becoming manner when they say: ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.’[1] And again: ‘He is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath.’[2] And again: ‘For in Him we live, and move, and have our being;’[3] not, however, as in a part of the world, nor as in its soul and mind.

But if there is occasion to use a simile, the sacred word somewhere exclaims in a manner more worthy of God and akin to truth: ‘The heaven is My throne, and the earth is the footstool of My feet.’

For if it was necessary to personify God at all in human language, mark the difference in the theology. For He who called the heaven His throne set apart God the universal Monarch above the throne and far higher than the universe, and yet did not sever the earth from His providence; for He teaches that the providential powers of His Godhead condescend even to things here below, and therefore He says: ‘The earth is the footstool of My feet.’

But neither the footstool, nor yet the throne, is the body of Him that is seated there, nor could ever be called parts of Him. And he who said that the heaven and the things therein are the head of god, and the ether his mind, and the other parts of the world his limbs and body, is convicted of knowing neither creator nor god.

For he could not create himself, nor, since the ether was his mind, could he still himself be called mind. What sort of god too would he be. whose members were the earth and the mountains on the earth, mere senseless heaps of corporeal atoms? How too can it be reasonable to proclaim as god the kinsman and brother of fire, and air, and water, products of senseless and perishing matter?

If, again, the mind of Zeus was nothing else except the aforesaid ether, and if ether is the highest and most fiery kind of air, and has received this name, as they say, from ἄθεσθαι ,which means ‘to be on fire,’ and if both the air and the ether are material substances, see to what your mind of Zeus has come down.

And who in his right senses would still address as god him who had a mind devoid of mind and of reason, since such is the nature of every material body? Wherefore we in our thoughts of God must receive the entire contrary to the doctrines which have been mentioned; that He is not the heaven, nor ether, nor sun, nor moon, nor the whole choir of the stars, nor the whole world itself together: but these are works of His hands, still small and petty in comparison with His incorporeal and intelligent powers: because all body is perishable and irrational, and such is the nature of things visible. But the things beyond in the invisible world being rational and immortal, and co-eternal with the blessed life of God the King of all, must be far better than all the things that are seen.

Rightly therefore do the sacred oracles teach us concerning the visible parts of the world as follows: ‘I will behold the heavens, the works of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained.’[4] And again: ‘Thou Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thy hands.’[5] And again: ‘Lift up your eyes on high, and see who hath created all these.’[6]

Let this, then, suffice for answer to the first interpretation of the poem; and let us go on to examine what follows. Since it was not possible, he says, ‘to make such an image as their description indicated, therefore they have made the representation of Zeus in human form, because it was according to mind that he wrought, and by generative laws brought all things to completion.’[7]

But how, if it was not possible to make an image such as the description indicated, and if, as we have seen, it indicated the parts of the sensible and visible world, heaven and the things in heaven, the air also, and earth, and all that is therein----if then, I say, it was not possible to compose an image of the visible parts of the world, how, inasmuch as god was mind, could any one make an image of him?

And what likeness can a human body have to the mind of God? For my part I think there is nothing in it answering even to the mind of man, since the one is incorporeal, uncompounded, and without parts, while the other, being the work of common mechanics, is the imitation of the nature of a mortal body, and represents a deaf and dumb image of living flesh in lifeless and dead matter.

Rather does the rational and immortal soul and the impassible mind in man’s nature seem to me to be rightly spoken of as preserving an image and likeness of God, inasmuch as it is immaterial and incorporeal, and intelligent and rational in its essence, and is capable of virtue and wisdom.[8]

If then any one were able to fabricate an image and form of the soul in a statue, such a man might also make some representation of the higher natures; but if the mind of man is without form and cannot be seen or figured, neither discernible by sight, nor in its essence comprehensible by speech and hearing, who would be so mad as to declare that the statue made in the likeness of man bears the form and image of the Most High, God?

Rather is God’s nature imagined apart from all perishable matter, being contemplated by purified souls in lucid thought and in silence: whereas, in the representation of the visible Zeus, the figure must be an image of a man of mortal nature, yet not an imitation of the whole man, but of one and that the worse part of him, because it conveys not a trace of life and soul.

How then can the God who is over all, and the mind which is the creator of the universe, be that same Zeus who is seen in the bronze or in the dead ivory? And how could the mind that was the creator of the universe be forsooth that very Zeus, the father of Hercules by Alcmena, and of the other men fabled to be sons of Zeus, who, having ended their mortal life in the way common to all men, have left indelible monuments of their proper nature to those who came after them?

Accordingly, the first theologians among the Phoenicians, as we showed in the first Book, related that Zeus the son of Kronos, mortal son of mortal father, was a Phoenician by race: while the Egyptians, claiming the man as their own, confessed again that he was mortal, and agreed in this point at least with the Phoenicians.

But further the Cretans, showing the grave of Zeus in their midst, would be third witnesses of the same fact. The Atlantians also, and all who have been previously mentioned as claiming Zeus for their own according to their native history, all alike declared him mortal, and recorded his deeds as those of a mortal man, but not deeds of a respectable or philosophic kind, being full of all indecency and wantonness.

To those who have professed to give a more respectable turn to the legends Zeus was at one time a hot and fiery force, and at another the wind: but now, somehow or other they have made him appear as the creative mind of the universe.

We must inquire, therefore, whom would they name as his father, and his father’s father? For according to all the theologians Zeus is acknowledged to be the son of Kronos, and the verses of Orpheus before quoted made mention of ‘the mighty son of Kronos’: and Kronos was son of Uranus. Let us, therefore, grant to them that Zeus is the god over all, and the mind which created all. Who then was his father? Kronos. And who his grandfather? Uranus.

But if Zeus as creator of all was before all, then those who were made by him ought to be counted as second and after him. For if either Kronos be time, as being by nature the offspring of heaven, that is of Uranus, or if time came into existence together with heaven, or if Uranus himself was the father of Kronos, and time subsequent to this latter, at all events the god who was the cause of the universe and creator of heaven and of time, was before them. And if so, Zeus could not be the third from Uranus.

How then, among all Egyptians, and Phoenicians, and Greeks, and philosophers, is the mind that created the universe reckoned third in descent from Uranus? So the fiction of our philosopher is plainly detected, and will be still more fully detected from what he goes on to say, as follows.[9]