THEOSISJohn Chrysostom
"For though I am absent in body, yet in spirit I am with you." The sequence would have required him to say, "Although I am absent in the flesh, nevertheless I know the deceivers." But now he ends with praise.
"Rejoicing and seeing your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ." By "order" he means good order. "And the steadfastness of your faith in Christ." This is the greatest praise.
He did not say "faith," but "steadfastness," as though he were speaking to soldiers standing in orderly and firm array. One who is steadfast will not be shaken either by enticements or by temptations.
You, he says, have not only not fallen, but no one has even disturbed your order. He placed himself among them so that they would fear him as though he were present with them.
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By this means order is preserved. Cohesion comes from steadfastness. Steadfastness arises when, having gathered many things, you glue them together tightly and inseparably.
Then steadfastness comes about, as in a wall. Love does the same. When it tightly joins and unites people who live separately, it makes them firm.
Faith does the same when it does not allow reasoning to rule in us. As reasoning divides and shakes, so faith strengthens and confirms.
Since God has granted us blessings that surpass human understanding, He rightly requires faith. For a man cannot be firm if he seeks explanations.
All our most important doctrines are foreign to speculation and accessible only to faith. God is nowhere and everywhere. What could be more incomprehensible than this to reason?
In both statements there is much that cannot be explained. He is not contained in a place, and there is no place in Him. He did not come from anyone, nor did He create Himself, nor did He begin His existence.
What reason would accept this if there were no faith? Would it not seem ridiculous? And to have no end, is this not harder than every riddle?
He is without beginning, unbegotten, uncircumscribed, and infinite. This too is incomprehensible. Can we at least explain His bodilessness by the mind? Let us see.
God is bodiless. What does "bodiless" mean? It is a bare word. The mind draws nothing from it and imagines nothing to itself.
If the mind imagined anything of the sort, it would pass over to what is material, to that from which a body is formed. Therefore, when the lips speak of the bodiless, the mind does not understand what they say.
Or it understands only this, that the bodiless is not a body. But why do I speak of God? What is the bodilessness of our soul, which has a beginning, is enclosed in the body, and is circumscribed?
Tell me, show it. But you cannot. Is it air? But air is a body, though not solid. From many phenomena it is clear that it is a fluid body.
Is it fire? But fire is a body, while the action of the soul is bodiless. Why? Because it penetrates everywhere.
If it is not a body, then the bodiless is in a definite place, and therefore is circumscribed. What is circumscribed has a figure. A figure consists of lines, and lines belong to bodies.
Again, what does formless mean? It means having neither form, nor appearance, nor image. Do you see how thought becomes entangled?
Further, evil is not proper to the divine nature. But each one becomes good only by his own will. Therefore evil would be proper to it. But this cannot be said. May it not be!
Further, does God have being by will, or against His will? But this too cannot be said. Further, does He limit the universe, or not?
If He does not limit it, then He Himself is limited by it. If He does limit it, then He is infinite by nature. Further, does He limit Himself?
If He limits Himself, then He is without beginning not in relation to Himself, but in relation to us. Therefore He is not without beginning by nature.
Everywhere we arrive at contradictory conclusions. Do you see what darkness there is, and how faith is needed everywhere? It alone is firm.
But if you wish, let us pass to lesser subjects. The divine essence acts. What, then, is activity in it? Is it some movement?
In that case it is not unchangeable, because what moves changes, passing from a state of immobility into a state of motion. Yet the divine essence moves and is never in an immobile state.
What kind of movement is this, tell me? Among us there are seven different movements: downward, upward, inward, outward, to the right, to the left, and around.
Besides these there are increase, decrease, generation, destruction, and change. But that movement resembles none of these movements. Is it performed like the movement of the mind?
Not at all. May it not be! For the mind sometimes moves foolishly. Is divine action a desire? But He desires that all men be virtuous and saved.
Why, then, is this not fulfilled? It follows that desire is not the same as action. In that case desire alone is not sufficient for action.
But how does Scripture say, "He does all that He wills" (Ps 113:11)? And how does the leper say to Christ, "If You will, You can make me clean" (Mt 8:2)?
I shall say something else too, if you wish. How did what exists come from what does not exist? How does it turn into nothing?
What is above heaven? And again, what is above that higher thing? And what is above that? And what is beyond that? And so on to infinity.
What is below the earth? The sea. And what is below it? And below that again, what? And to the right and to the left, is there not the same unknown?
But these are invisible things. Do you wish me to speak of visible things, of what has happened? Tell me, how was Jonah in the belly of the beast and did not perish?
Is this according to reason? Is the effort to explain this not in vain? How did the whale spare the righteous man? How did the heat not suffocate him?
How did it not rot him? If it is difficult merely to be in the depths of the sea, it is much harder to be in the entrails of a whale and in such heat.
How did Jonah breathe there? How was there enough air to breathe for two living beings? How did the whale vomit out the prophet unharmed?
How did Jonah speak? How did he possess consciousness and pray? Is all this likely? If we investigate by reason, it is unbelievable. But if by faith, it is very believable.
I shall say something greater than this. A grain rots in the depths of the earth and rises. See, here are two opposite miracles, and one is more wondrous than the other.
It is wondrous that the grain does not decay completely. It is also wondrous that what rots rises. Where are those who disbelieve the resurrection and say, "How will this bone be joined to that one?"
Where are those who introduce similar tales? Tell me, how was Elijah taken up in a fiery chariot (4 Kgs 2:11)? It is the property of fire to burn, not to carry upward.
How has Elijah lived for so long? In what place is he? Why did this happen? Where was Enoch translated? Does he eat the same food as we do?
What prevents him from being here? But he does not eat our food. Why was he taken from here? See how God gradually teaches us.
He translated Enoch. This is not very great. He showed us the same thing in the ascent of Elijah. He enclosed Noah in the ark. But this too is not very great.
He taught us the same thing by enclosing the prophet in the whale. Thus Old Testament events also needed forerunners and types.
As on a ladder the first step leads to the second, and one cannot step from it to the fourth, and that step is related to this one so that it serves as the path to it, and before the first one cannot step onto the second, so it is here.
Observe the signs of signs, and you will see this in the ladder that Jacob saw. It is said that the Lord was established above, while angels were ascending and descending below.
This foretold that the Father has a Son. This had to be believed. From where shall I show you signs of this? As you wish: from above downward, or from below upward?
It was necessary to show that the Father begets without passion. And so, first, the barren woman gave birth. Or better, let us begin from above.
It was necessary to believe that the Son is from the Father. What then? This too was foretold, though not clearly, as in image and shadow. Yet it was foretold.
With the passage of time it becomes somewhat clearer. Woman, Eve, came from one man, and he remained whole. In addition, there had to be some sign of the birth from the Virgin.
The barren woman gives birth, and not once, but twice, three times, and many times. Therefore the barren woman was a type of the birth from the Virgin and moves our mind toward faith.
The birth from the barren woman was also a sign that God the Father alone can beget. If man, the most perfect creature, is born even without him, without passion, then much more is He born from the essence that is more perfect than man.
There is also another birth, which is an image of the truth: our birth from the Spirit. The barren woman was an image of this birth too, because it is not of blood.
This birth from the Spirit is an image of the higher birth of the Son from the Father. That birth showed impassibility, and this one shows that He can be born from the one God and Father.
Christ is Master, above all. This had to be believed. It was shown in the image of the earth at the creation of man: "Let Us make man according to Our image and according to Our likeness, and let them have dominion over all irrational creatures" (Gen 1:26).
Thus God taught us not by words, but by deeds. Paradise showed the difference in nature and the superiority of man over all creatures.
Christ had to rise. See, then, how many types of this there are: Enoch, Elijah, Jonah, the youths in the furnace, the flood in the days of Noah, seeds, plants, and birth, as in our case.
Since doubt about the resurrection could put everything in danger, the resurrection had many types, far more than everything else.
That everything occurs not without providence can be concluded from what happens among us. Among us nothing remains without oversight. For a flock, and for everything else, someone must govern.
That everything did not come about by chance is shown by Gehenna, by the flood under Noah, by fire, by the drowning of the Egyptians, and by the miracles performed in the wilderness.
Many things were needed to foreshadow baptism, and there were such foreshadowings. There was what was done in water, and much else in the Old Testament.
There was what happened in the pool, the cleansing of the sick man, the flood itself, and the baptism of John. It was necessary to believe that God would deliver His Son to death.
A man did this beforehand. Who was it? The patriarch Abraham. Thus we shall find types of all these things, if we wish, and if we search in Scripture.
But let us not weary ourselves. Let us be content with this. Let us have firm faith and strive for the correction of our life.
Thus, giving thanks to God for all things, may we be counted worthy of the blessings promised to those who love Him, by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ.
With Him, to the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory, dominion, and honor, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.