Письмо VI. Святейшему и блаженнейшему архиепископу Иоанну о том, что душа бестелесна

Having received the precious message of your perfect virtue, adorned with abundantly majestic modesty, I was simultaneously delighted and frantic: how did you manage, directing your thoughts here and there, to remain the same person, without becoming either unapproachable because of greatness, or despised because of humility? After all, by a wise mixture of both, you have created a single virtue for yourself, and in an incredible way you show the opposite in the opposite: in the low, the high, and in the high, on the contrary, the low. For this reason, servant of God, I accept without controversy your order, forcing me to show by natural reasoning, without resorting to the testimony of Scripture and the Fathers, whether the soul was created incorporeal. And I will trust in those drops of your teaching with which you generously sprinkled my burning ignorance. What kind of people are these who resolutely reject the possibility of incorporeal creation? And with what empty fictions do they oppose the truths contained in your reasoning? How, unless they persist in the argument more than necessary, were they not overwhelmed by your proof, which is completely unattainable for any objection? And in order for my reasoning about this to develop more harmoniously, I will begin my own speeches [239] with your wise proof itself, which is irresistibly in conflict with the truth, and I will be proud that I use your approach. 1. If the body by its own nature is motionless, and the soul is also a body, albeit the most subtle one, as they say, then as a body it will remain motionless. And if this is so, then where does movement come from in us? And so on ad infinitum, until we reach the incorporeal creation. If they say that we initially move from God, then, since it is known that for the most part our movements are absurd and vile, our opponents will inevitably have to declare the Divinity as their cause. 2. Another reasoning. Again, since every existing material body in any way, determined by true understanding by quality and quantity, limits the idea of ​​itself by weight and appearance, and texture, and form, being contained within strict boundaries 175. So outside these boundaries it is impossible for the student of matter to imagine anything; if the soul is also a body, then it is certainly determined either by its constituent parts, or by its substance, or by quality, or by something like that; however, it is not determined by substance, quality, or anything like that; This means that the soul is not the body. 3. Another reasoning. If our opponents do not doubt the existence of the soul, and in its existence it is none of those things comprehended by thought of which bodies are composed or are - neither color, nor shape, nor hardness, nor weight, nor size, nor three-dimensional extension, and in general is nothing of what is conceivable regarding the corporeal nature - then since the soul is not any of these, as reasoning has proven, it will be completely incorporeal, if it exists at all. 4. Another reasoning. In addition, if all compression, expansion, and division are inherent in bodies, and that which is free from all compression, expansion and any division is completely incorporeal, then it means that the soul is incorporeal, completely alien to all these processes. 5. Another reasoning. Since everything corporeal is divided into animate and inanimate, then if the soul is a body, it will certainly be either an animate body or [240] inanimate. And if animate, then the animate will, of course, be either an animate essence, or a force, or by chance. After all, it’s funny to say that the soul becomes animated like light glows or like fire heats up. And if we say that what animates the soul is essence, then again it will have to be considered either corporeal or incorporeal. And if corporeal, then similar reasoning about this will again and again follow the same paths from absurdity to absurdity, until it is agreed that the soul is incorporeal. If we say that what animates the soul is a force or quality, then the life-giving and moving principle of the essence will turn out to have no will of its own and no independent existence. Moreover, a reverse unnatural difference arises regarding dominion and subordination, if the soul, naturally created to rule over the body as an incorporeal entity, as a body, according to our opponents, is subject to what is not an entity, that is, a qualitative force, while it, by universal assumption, exists as an independent entity. If we say that the soul is an inanimate body, then it will turn out to be insensitive, without consideration, meaningless and unreasonable. However, all these abilities are both present and perceived in the soul; This means that the soul is not the body. And that the body belongs to the soul as something of another essence, we know very well and do not refuse to admit; but to declare this is the height of both insolence and ignorance together! - that it is corporeal, we will not at all understand that there is a great difference between possession and being. If, because the Divinity is called incorporeal, our opponents refuse to accept the incorporeality of the soul, tormented by an empty fear of making God and the soul equal, then they thereby deprive us, so that the triumph of madness may be complete among them, of all other names by which we are called by the Divinity, as partakers, or God - by us, as the doer and giver or dispenser. What am I talking about? About being, life, radiance, goodness, reasoning, thinking; Of these names, some are transferred to us by being, others by movement, or will, or mental disposition. We are called [241] existing, and living, and shining, and good, and intelligent, and reasonable. In the same way, we call God existing, and living, and light, and good, and mind, and meaning, and we call Him with these names of ours, either because we become such thanks to Him and are called, or because we exist by His action (ὡς ἐνεργούμενοι). What kind of reason do those who argue with us have, when they allow the soul all these names, in addition to many others, both in words and in essence, but not incorporeality: this is God’s! Either we should not be called that, because these are God’s names, or we should not call God that, just like us. However, we are called this way both in essence and in words - not because through this we become identical with God, but because what is caused by a cause is called because of its reason, or what has a part - because of what it has a part in, or what exists - because of its existence. This is not done in a comparative manner or unambiguously, as in relation to things of the same essence, but in a co-nominal and, so to speak, participatory manner, for by nature God and people are phenomena infinitely far apart from each other, and if anyone wants, one can truly say that the Divine is above nature and phenomena. In what way, finally - again, if, according to our opponents, we recognize the soul as a body - will the property of similarity in the image be preserved, unless we say that the entire soul has a resemblance to the prototype? Just as we call the image of the rational, the image of the immortal, indestructible and invisible, reasonable by these properties, by which it is recognized, we will also call the image incorporeal by the incorporeal prototype, because the soul eludes the concept of mass, as well as any dimension of extension; however, let us say that it is something other than the prototype, according to the property of its nature. Otherwise there would no longer be similarity in the image, but an unchangeable identity. And in what the prototype is seen in the uncreated, unchangeable and beginningless nature, in the same thing, as we believe, the created rational nature is clearly manifested, although not in the same way, but as if in the last echoes that convey to us the meaning of speech. And how, in what happens in existence in accordance with the structure of the whole world, the adulterous mind, directing the power of its thinking to the pure and immaterial, [242] separates everything that is moved from the mover, and the one, and the only one, and the whole, and the self-existent ( αὐτὸ ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ ὑπάρχον), and unchangeable, and having a creative cause in the eternal inviolability of its self-identity, and recognizes it by nature as inaccessible to everything else: it is unchangeable because it is motionless, for there is nowhere for that which creates, and fills existing things, and exists above all existing things to move; it is all-encompassing, because it creates and even before the appearance, by its infinite power, it cognizes everything (Dan. 13:42), in the same way, through speculation and from the many different and ingenious movements of the members and parts of the small world - I mean man - deducing the moving cause, it comprehends - that it is something other in essence than the soulless existence of the body, and not a body in the body, as it seems to the new sages and teachers of the unprovable; but he sees it whole and united in the scattered, and boundless in the limited, and changeable, because it is movable, and movable, because it has somewhere to move; he sees the reason for the change in movement not in nature, but in judgment when it turns out to be erroneous. The change occurs, I think, not in relation to the very essence of the soul - otherwise, if it has changed many times, it will no longer remain of its essence by itself - but in relation to the movement that depends on us and is carried away by the omnipotent will. That is why both the speeches and statements of those who object to us that the incessant movement of the soul itself in relation to the Divine has the ability to change, seem not to be the words of those affirming the truth, but the conversations of people pompously seeking subtlety, and not the God-fearing exact understanding. Who, who has any sense and is not completely devoid of love for virtue, does not know that the incessant movement of the soul towards the good is nothing more than a natural action, carried out for the same reason and for the same reason for which and for which the soul arose? Change is an unnatural movement, introducing a deviation from this cause. For change, in my opinion, is nothing other than weakness and decay of natural [243] actions. Please tell these talkers: “Don’t you dare compare God and creation anymore!” Since the Divinity in the proper sense is neither a body, nor something incorporeal, nor an essence, and indeed nothing at all that is conceivable or expressible in words, so that I do not list everything one by one; but even that which is conceivable remains incomprehensible, and that which is called remains ineffable. This is what we will say, exploring, but not teaching; and if this is enough to resolve the issue, as far as brevity in a letter allows, and I have not deviated far from the greatness of your thoughts, then glory to God and to you, who prompted me to write. If you want, if those who object to us are not convinced that I have composed something more militant against them, we, with God’s help, are ready to release on them the cloud of holy witnesses and testimonies that surrounds us (Heb. 12:1), so that, freed from the burden of the arduous consideration of this issue and from the annoying verbal struggle of the disputants, we can serenely hold on to the true knowledge of God and His creations. And if my speeches are insufficient, which is inevitable, and do not reach the goal, because they were expressed out of ignorance of thought and weak abilities, forgive me, beloved, because God, who searches hearts (Ps. 7:10), knows that it was only for the sake of obedience that I dared to express all this, and condescendingly correct the one who wants to know everything that is useful, and compassionately guide the one who wants to walk the right path. Some syntactic incoherence of this sentence is intended to convey the corresponding property of the source text. – Approx. lane You might be interested in: