Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John: Tractate XXIII
9. I have, sayest thou, another method of showing; for so well instructed is my son, that he hears without my speaking, but I show him by a nod what to do. Lo, show him by a nod what thou wilt, yet certainly the mind holds within itself that which it would show. By what dost thou give this nod? With the body,—namely, with the lips, the look, the brows, the eyes, the hands. All these are not what thy mind is: these, too, are media; there was something understood by these signs which are not what thy mind is, not what the mind of thy son is; but all this which thou doest by the body is beneath thy mind, and beneath the mind of thy son: nor can thy son know thy mind, unless thou give him signs by the body. What, then, do I say? This is not the case there; there all is simplicity. The Father shows to the Son what He is doing, and by showing begets the Son. I see what I have said; but because I see also to whom I have said it, may such understanding be some time or other formed in you as to grasp it. If ye are not able now to comprehend what God is, comprehend at least what God is not: you will have made much progress, if you think of God as being not something other than He is. God is not a body, not the earth, not the heaven, not the moon, or sun, or stars—not these corporeal things. For if not heavenly things, how much less is He earthly things! Put all body out of the question. Further, hear another thing: God is not a mutable spirit. For I confess,—and it must be confessed, for it is the Gospel that speaks it,—“God is a Spirit.” But pass beyond all mutable spirit, beyond all spirit that now knows, now knows not; that now remembers, now forgets; that wills what before it willed not, that wills not what before it willed; either that suffers these mutabilities now or may suffer them: pass beyond all these. Thou findest not any mutability in God; nor aught that may have been one way before, and is otherwise now. For where thou findest alternation, there a kind of death has taken place: since, for a thing not to be what it was, is a death. The soul is said to be immortal; so indeed it is, because it ever lives, and there is in it a certain continuous life, but yet a mutable life. According to the mutability of this life, it may be said to be mortal;
because if it lived wisely, and then becomes foolish, it dies for the worse; if it lived foolishly, and becomes wise, it dies for the better. For the Scripture teaches us that there is a death for the worse, and that there is a death for the better. In any case, they had died for the worse, of whom it said, “Let the dead bury their dead;” and, “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light;” and from this passage before us, “When the dead shall hear, and they that hear shall live.” For the worse they had died; therefore do they come to life again. By coming to life they die for the better, because by coming to life again they will not be what they were; but for that to be, which was not, is death. But perhaps it is not called death if it is for the better? The apostle has called that death: “But if ye be dead with Christ from the elements of this world, why do ye judge concerning this world as if ye were still living?” And again, “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” He wishes us to die that we may live, because we have lived to die. Whatever therefore dies, both from better to worse, and from worse to better, is not God; because neither can supreme goodness proceed to better, nor true eternity to worse. For true eternity is, where is nothing of time. But was there now this, now that? Immediately time is admitted, it is not eternal. For that ye may know that God is not thus, as the soul is,—certainly the soul is immortal,—what, however, saith the apostle of God, “Who alone hath immortality,” unless that he openly says this, He alone hath unchangeableness, because He alone hath true eternity? Therefore no mutability is there.
10. Recognize in thyself something which I wish to say within, in thyself; not within as if in thy body, for in a sense one may say, “in thyself.” For there is in thee health, thy age whatever it be, but this in regard to the body. In thee is thy hand and thy foot; but there is one thing in thee, within; another thing in thee as in thy garment. But leave outside thy garment and thyself, descend into thyself, go to thy secret place, thy mind, and there see, if thou canst, what I wish to say. For if thou art far from thyself, how canst thou come near to God? I was speaking of God, and thou believedst that thou wouldst understand. I am speaking of the soul, I am speaking of thyself: understand this, there I will try thee. For I do not travel very far for examples, when I mean to give thee some similitude to thy God from thy own mind; because surely not in the body, but in that same mind, was man made after the image of God. Let us seek God in His own similitude; let us recognize the Creator in His own image. There within, if we can, let us find this that we speak of,—how the Father shows to the Son, and how the Son sees what the Father shows, before anything is made by the Father through the Son. But when I shall have spoken, and thou hast understood, thou must not think that spoken of to be something just such as our example, that thou mayest therein keep piety, which I wish to be kept by thee, and earnestly admonish thee to keep: that is, if thou art not able to comprehend what God is, do not think it a small matter for thee to know what He is not.
11. Behold, in thy mind, I see some two things, thy memory and thy thought, which is, as it were, the seeing faculty and the vision of thy soul. Thou seest something, and perceivest it by the eyes, and thou committest it to the care of the memory. There, within, is that which thou hast committed to thy memory, laid up in secret as in a storehouse, as in a treasury, as in a kind of secret chamber and inner cabinet. Thou thinkest of something else, thy attention is elsewhere; what thou didst see is in thy memory, but not seen by thee, because thy thought is bent on another thing. I prove this at once. I speak to you who know; I mention by name Carthage; all who know it have instantly seen Carthage within the mind. Are there as many Carthages as there are minds of you? You have all seen it by means of this name, by means of these syllables known to you, rushing forth from my mouth: your ears were touched; the sense of the soul was touched through the body, and the mind bent back from another object to this word, and saw Carthage. Was Carthage made there and then? It was there already, but latent in the memory. Why was latent there? Because thy mind was engaged on another matter; but when thy thought turned back to that which was in the memory, thence it was shaped, and became a kind of vision of the mind. Before, there was not a vision, but there was memory; the vision was made by the turning back of thought to memory. Thy memory, then, showed Carthage to thy thought; and that which was in it before thou didst direct thy mind to the memory, it exhibited to the attention of thy thought when turned upon it. Behold, a showing is effected by the memory, and a vision is produced in thought; and no words passed between, no sign was given from the body: thou didst neither nod, nor write, nor utter a sound; and yet thought saw what the memory showed. But both that which showed, and that to which it showed, are of the same substance.
But yet, that thy memory might have Carthage in it, the image was drawn in through the eyes, for thou didst see what thou didst store up in thy memory. So hast thou seen the tree which thou rememberest; so the mountain, the river; so the face of a friend, of an enemy, of father, mother, brother, sister, son, neighbor; so of letters written in a book, of the book itself; so of this church:
all these thou didst see, and didst commit to thy memory after they were seen; and didst, as it were, lay up there what thou mightst by thinking see at will, even when they should be absent from these eyes of the body. Thou sawest Carthage when thou wast at Carthage; thy soul received the image by the eyes; this image was laid up in thy memory; and thou, the person who wast present at Carthage, didst keep something within thee which thou mightst be able to see with thyself, even when thou shouldst not be there. All these things thou didst receive from without.