The Disputation of our Father Gregentios of holy memory, Archbishop of the City of Zaphar, with the Jew Herban
Sections
Dialogue A (1)
So there the Jews came also as they had been ordered, when the preparation time of those forty days had been spent. They came to the disputation, after the king had been informed and the preparation had been made in the Threlleton, which is a very large and important courtyard of the palace. Therefore the preparation had been made there, and all the hierarchy had assembled, and the holy senate was also present, and the king also came together with the most holy archbishop. And when they sat down, at once all the city assembled around them in a crowd. Then, when the Jews came to court, they presented Herban as the leader of the discussion about them. For he was highly educated in the law and the divine books of the prophets, the Pentateuch and the remaining ones. When the crowd of the scribes and the Pharisees and teachers of law stood around him (for their noblemen had gathered from all towns and all who were powerful chiefs, according to the order of the king), and when it had become silent, the archbishop spoke up and said to their congregation:
“As the night goes by and the Sun of righteousness rises, for which reason are you contentiously opposing His light and not believing in Him?”
Herban: “If the Sun has risen and we, who believe in the God of the law, as you say, oppose His light, how much more do you oppose, the so-called nations who are foreign to our God-given and divine law?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Whose creation and work are we who descend from the nations?”
Herban: “Clearly of God.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Now which honor do you then possess above us?”
Herban: “The one we had above the Egyptians.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You said well, 'the one we had above the Egyptians.' Now show me that honor.”
Herban: “Did you not read about the great miracles which God worked in Egypt and in the Red Sea and the desert through Moses at the exodus of Israel, drowning the Egyptians under the water and saving him?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “There is no difference between you and the Egyptians. Those He drowned in the sea, and you He let perish in the desert; and you that had crossed the Red Sea as through dry land suffered shipwreck in the harbor, dying hard in the desert: for out of the six hundred thousand people and more, only Caleb and Joshua the son of Navee were deemed worthy to inherit the Promised Land. Now look how God has preferred you over the Egyptians.”
Herban: “And to whom did the manna rain from heaven in the desert, to Israel or to the race of the Egyptians?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “What do you think to appear worthier, the food you ate in Egypt or the manna in the desert?”
Herban: “Clearly the manna.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And how did you turn back in the desert with your mind, longing for onions and garlic and the pork meat in the kettles and all the Egyptian food, hating the manna?”
Herban: “It was bad that our fathers consented to translate the books of Israel into the elaborated language of the Greeks, so that you employ them to shut us up.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “When God saw that you did not hold them in honor, He stored them up for us in various ways.”
Herban: “If we did not hold them in honor, where do the prophets come from?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The prophets were sent to you by the Lord as messengers, explaining clearly to you the will of the Almighty, because they did not belong to you.”
Herban: “So Moses and Aaron and Joshua and Samson and Samuel and David and those after them are no seed of Abraham?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Yes, as we know, these are truly from the loins of Abraham according to experience. For they themselves have pointed out the works of Abraham and are rightfully called his sons; but you are far away from the righteous dealings of Abraham. Thence God has put an end to your ways and has raised us to be the children of Abraham. For He said to him that ‘all the tribes of the earth will be blessed in you.’ Behold now what He said and what has happened. For from the ends of the earth people, tribes and languages believing in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are blessed by the Almighty for their good faith, together with the worthy and faithful servant of God Abraham.”
Herban: “From where did you accept the belief in a Father and Son and Spirit, and meanwhile have introduced three absurd gods?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “As we see with the eyes of our mind, so we believe in one God in three Persons and three subsistences; he that believes in three gods is accursed. For the mind of the Almighty, which is the cause of all, we call Father; the Word, which has come from the mind, we address as Son; and the Holy Spirit, which proceeds from the mind, but rests in the Word and is contained there and gives life to all, we call Holy Spirit.”
Herban: “Why did God not explain to Moses and the prophets to believe in Father and Son and Holy Spirit, but has said this only to you who have discovered that only recently, as you say?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “God showed Abraham in an archetype, that He has a Son and that He will become a man, and that He will be slaughtered and not be slaughtered, and that He will die and not die. For when Abraham received the order to slaughter Isaac for his love towards God, he slaughtered him by purpose, but did not slaughter him; he killed him but did not kill him. For he took him alive unexpectedly and returned. In the same way our Lord God slaughtered His Son for the salvation of the world; but since He rose on the third day, I say, although He was slaughtered, He was not slaughtered, and although He died, He did not die. For winning victory over the slaughter by slaughter and defeating death by death, He showed truly as true God and perfect man that He was the Son of God. And Moses says in the Book of the Creation indicating the Son of God: ‘And the Lord God said.’ The Lord is the Son, God is the Father, and what He has spoken is the Holy Spirit; for the Word without the Spirit is dry, as the custom is, and cannot go forth.”
Herban: “Now if the matter is so, for what reason did God speak to the people in the desert the so-called Decalogue with his own mouth, where the first saying of it is thus: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord is your God, the Lord is one, and there is no other God beside Him’?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I confess myself that the matter is so, for when he says ‘Lord,’ he indicates His Word, calling it also Son, and when He says ‘the Lord is one,’ he also calls Him Father by this word. As I have told you before, the Holy Spirit comes only out of the mind and Father together with the Word. Does it not seem to you that God has a mind, does it not seem to you that He also has a Word? So is God not also a Spirit? We accept these three Persons, believing that each Person possesses His own subsistence, as the three Persons belong to one and the same divinity. Now we confess a trinity of Persons, that is of subsistences within one and the same divinity, believing all to be one God. For also the ancestor of God David testifies to me speaking the truth with his word: ‘By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made,’ this Word is the Son of God. ‘And by the Spirit of His mouth all the host of them.’ This Spirit of which he says that it comes out of His mouth, this is the Holy Spirit.”
Herban: “And what is the need to inquire closely into the Divinity and triplicate that which is one?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “David triplicates it, and shall I not triplicate it? Look at my wisdom: by declaring the Divinity to be one, you Jews introduce poverty to Its multiplicity, holding cheap the discussion about divinity. The sons of the pagans worship the vain idols and multiply the divinity, being necessarily devoted to many gods who are opposed to each other, and become victims of the deceit of idolatry. But we Christians by triplicating the Divinity proclaim It as exceedingly great in wealth and power; confessing the triple nature of God we escape both your small number of Persons and their polytheism, equally rejecting it. Now look on the wisdom of the Christians.”
Herban: “You speak well, and we do not have any contradiction whatsoever concerning this. But hear what God says when He assured Israel that he is beloved by Him: ‘Israel is My firstborn son,’ and thereafter: ‘I have called My son from Egypt.’ Accordingly, if God calls him His firstborn and His son, how do you mislead nations that do not have a law to believe that Israel itself is refuse and something polluted and impure, although you should rather honor and not dishonor them?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I do not deny that Israel is the firstborn; he is truly firstborn, and there is no reason to be mistaken. And I know myself very well that you were called from Egypt to Palestine being released from slavery. But did the younger son supplant the older, yes or no? He took the birthright, and he also took his blessing away and escaped from the face of the lawful veneration into another land, I say, into the proclamation pleasing to God of the worthy Faith of the only-begotten Son of God.”
Herban: “Jacob rather supplanted Esau. And why should I myself appropriate a foreign supplanting?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “That supplanting was the prefiguration of our supplanting: there the younger son supplanted the older, here the younger people supplanted the older.”
Herban: “In which thing did you supplant us? Did you become Jews and we became pagans? Are we not Jews as we are, and are you nations not as you were before?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “God sent His only-begotten Son from heaven to you, and you did not receive Him. Now since you did not receive Him, He left you behind as faithless and unlawful, and came to us and we received Him. Now since we received Him, He took everything away from you and gave it to us, and He expelled and scattered you to the ends of the earth, and you were alienated from Him.”
Herban: “What did He take away from us and gave it to you?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “First He took away the kingdom, He took the law, the prophecies, the worship, the sacrifice; He took away your city, the sanctuary, Mount Sinai, the burning bush, and simply everything which was honorable to you, that He took away and gave it to the Christians. And as He had said in the Deuteronomy, ‘I will scatter them,’ He scattered you, and ‘I will make the remembrance of them cease from among men.’ You see at all events that He has put an end to it.”
Herban: “You say that the Nazarene is the only-begotten Son of God? That One was a man, for which also our fathers killed Him as an evildoer.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “He was not killed simply as you say, but He rather raised the dead, of which one is Lazarus who had been dead for four days.”
Herban: “The Man Who raised Lazarus, as you say, in which way was He crucified and died?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Before you have been instructed that He is the Son of God, and here you say that the Nazarene is the Son of God.”
Herban: “You said, 'we triplicate the one Divinity,' and I had no contradiction against this. But here you say that the condemned One is the Word of God, about Whom the ends of the earth know that He was crucified and died.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “As the law and the prophets have predicted, He became flesh, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose on the third day.”
Herban: “Then tell the proofs, where and how they have predicted this.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The prophet Moses says: ‘The Lord your God will raise up to you a Prophet from your brothers, like me. And every soul that will not hear that Prophet will be destroyed utterly from his people.’ Who is that Prophet now about Whom he spoke?”
Herban: “At all events he speaks about David, for perhaps after Moses nobody else has risen.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “So David is also like Moses? In no way, because the one of them was a prophet and lawgiver, though no king, but he led the people out of Egypt and received the tablets from heaven and distributed the manna to the children of Israel: the other one was brought up from poverty to kingship and died after having devoted his time to wars and having composed a Psalter. How can you now compare David to Moses? In no way, never.”
Herban: “Both were rulers of the people and prophets of one and the same people.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “David slipped into murder and adultery, but Moses never in such things.”
Herban: “But Moses committed a murder, though not adultery.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Since Moses killed a foreigner he was guiltless of murder.”
Herban: “Tell me about Christ and leave the prophets aside.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Moses says: ‘You will see your Life hanging in front of your eyes.’”
Herban: “What is Life and where was It hung up?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Jesus Christ is the Life, Whom you hung up on the wood of the Cross in front of your eyes.”
Herban: “Moses did not speak about this, when he said that ‘you will see Life hanging,’ but spoke about the continuous captivity and their deportation, which they were about to suffer with the time going by from the enemies for their transgressions. You have understood the word ‘you will see your life hanging,’ that is, you will have an unfortunate life being deported into captivity in front of your eyes, or those that have deported you will kill you or keep you there.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You give an incorrect meaning to the word. He called Life ‘hanging,’ because you will see. Whatever hangs is an object or a matter, which cannot hang without somebody keeping it by force and make it hang. Therefore there is no doubt that he spoke about the humanity of the only-begotten Son of God, that He will hang in His flesh on the wood of the cross.”
Herban: “In the same way you are not convinced by my words, similarly I am not convinced by yours.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Jacob said when he blessed his sons: ‘No ruler will be missing from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until He comes to Whom it belongs, and He is the expectation of the nations.’ Now what do you say about this, is it not all so?”
Herban: “We know that He will come, but has not yet arrived; but when He will come, we will believe in Him.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You are filled up with folly. You hear that he says, ‘He Who comes is the expectation of the nations,’ but then you say that He has not come yet. Now if the nations did not believe in Him, as Jacob said, you say with good reason that He has not come. But if according to the prophecy of the patriarch the nations hoped for Him, it is clear that He did come and is here, and you talk in vain frivolously and exercise useless arts.”
Herban: “I wonder that God has become flesh for the dishonor of His face, and that He came into the world for nothing else than to be conceived and raised, to be born and betrayed and arrested and beaten and judged and imprisoned and flogged and spat upon and beaten with a reed and crowned with thorns and crucified, to drink vinegar and gall, to be pricked into His side with a lance, to cry and to die. I wonder that He has come because of this, O archbishop, as you say. It is better that not even you Christians know what the things are which you declare.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Yes, He came for the dishonor of His face, so that those who believe in Him be honored through this dishonor and be redeemed from the dishonor of the transgression in Eden. But what does Ezekiel say prophesying His glorious arrival? ‘This is our God,’ he says, ‘and no other will be reckoned beside Him; He has found all the way of knowledge and given it to His child Jacob and to His beloved Israel.’”
Herban: “At all events he said this about the God of the law, and this word is fitting to help me; for God has found all the way of knowledge and gave it to us, the sons of Jacob, because we are His beloved ones and children and sons and heirs.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Israel the beloved one was my Lord, and Jacob is the Child Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And you He called the ‘strange’ sons through David, and through John ‘offspring of vipers.’ And if you do not believe, consider what the following part of the verse says: ‘After this He appeared on earth and lived among men.’ After what? After He had given the law, after He had offered prophets, after He had worked everything He wanted to be done in the law.”
Herban: “Do you suppose that this man is your Christ, about Whom the prophet said that ‘no other will be reckoned besides Him’?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You listen to what he says: ‘This is our God,’ and that the same man after this ‘appeared on earth and lived among men,’ and you say 'you suppose'? How did He appear to men, in His naked divinity? In no way, for who can see God naked in His essence, as He is? Nobody, I think, if He did not become a man at all events by His own will.”
Herban: “I have said before that if it is Christ, about Whom the prophets spoke, I wonder that he came into the world for His dishonor and shame.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Is this a shame that He came and cured your lepers, that He restored your paralytics to health, that He raised the dead as from sleep, healed the woman with an issue of blood, had mercy upon the woman from Canaan, that He banished from you weak ones ‘all sickness and all disease’ and drove away the multitude of demons, walked on the lake and fed the five thousand from five loaves? And because of all this you did not listen to Him, instead you rather afflicted Him and condemned and crucified Him. And you say that He was dishonored? He permitted Himself to be dishonored, so that by this also your badness might appear, which you carry about in your heart even without Him, and through which already before His arrival to you, you stoned Naboth, you expelled Eliah in your indignation, you sawed Isaiah, you threw Jeremiah into the filth, you slaughtered the multitude of infants, executed Zachariah and beheaded John. And what about this, that you have murdered the Master himself? I leave it aside to say the rest. Now how do you say that He came here for His dishonor?”
Herban: “If He was God, why did He not, if He was able, throw off the cross?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If He threw off the cross, how would the prophecies have been fulfilled?”
Herban: “Now announce to me the prophecies about the cross and which prophets have spoken about it.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “God prefigured the cross through the wood of the ark, when He saved the remnant of men in the time of Noah. For the ark was wood and the cross is wood. The ark miraculously saved those who believed that there would be total destruction by a flood, and they went into it. And the worthy cross redeems those who venerate it and believe in the One Who was nailed to it, from the tyranny of Satan and of eternal punishment. And also the plant of Sabek, to which the ram was bound in the time of Abraham and which brought salvation to Isaac, prefigured the worthy cross. For the ram prefigured the flesh of the Word of God which was nailed to the cross, and the tree of Sabek meant the cross.”
Herban: “You have learned a lot and argue by etymology for the things that are useful to you in a convenient way.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I do not argue by etymology, but I convince you from your Scriptures, holding up truth once for all. Now when the patriarch Jacob wanted to bless his sons, did he not rise from his bed on which he lay and blessed them leaning onto the top of his rod, which meant the cross, extending the left of his hands to the child that stood to the right and the right one to the one that appeared to the left? Did he not prefigure the worthy cross by crossing his hands? Did he not leave aside the first son, who was an image of your people, and extend his whole blessing to the second one, who was an image of the people of Christians? I tell you what was done to the sons of Joseph. Did not the rod of Moses, by which he worked portents and wonders, prefigure the cross? Did not the wood, which Moses threw in the Marah and the waters became sweet, prefigure the worthy cross? Did not Moses, when he turned Amalek to flight stretching his hands out crosswise, prefigure the cross?”
Herban: “Wherever you find some wood that is useful to you in the Old Testament, you take care to compare it to your cross.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Not only the woods prefigured the cross, but also the raisings of hands, outbreaks of wars and things similar to these.”
Herban: “I have said before that you have learnt a lot and argue straightforward by etymology with the things that are useful to you.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “When Joshua (Jesus) the son of Navee started that frightful war against the nations, did he not, when evening befell him, let the sun stand still over Gibeon and the moon in the valley, until he had won the victory against his enemies? This was a prefiguration of the suffering of my glorious Lord Jesus Christ, for one Jesus was there and one Jesus here. That man was the commander-in-chief of Israel, and this our God is king not only of Israel, but of the whole world. That man turned the nations to flight, and this One the armies of the demons. That man let the sun and moon stand still until he had defeated all the battle-array of the enemies. But on the suffering of my Lord the sun shuddered and was darkened and the moon did not send out its radiance, the day itself presently being turned by fear into night. That man destroyed the nations by lance and spear, this one by the power of His divinity shattered the locks of Hades and by His worthy cross turned the demons into ashes. That man achieved this with a great army, for he was a man and could not do more than that; this One did it alone, or rather twofold, being God and man at the same time. For the prophet says about Him: ‘I have trodden the winepress all alone, and no man from the nations was with me.’ For since he mentally called His suffering grapes and winepress and vintage, and that His suffering will be the salvation of the nations, and that none of the nations shared His fight with Him, he went on, ‘and no man from the nations was with me.’ It was not because He would have needed the help of the nations, O no, but because he meant that the nations would be saved by His sufferings.”
Herban: “Why did not even one prophet say explicitly, that the Word of God will come down from heaven and become flesh from the woman Mary and become a man and be crucified and die and rise again and so on?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “O you, a fool and dull in your heart, does the prophet Isaiah not cry out all about him explicitly? Does not David call out loudly in the Psalms, and the other prophets? Hear what the prophet Jeremiah says about your fathers, prefiguring in which way they would hold counsel against their Lord: ‘Let us throw,’ he says, ‘wood into His bread and let us wipe Him out from the land of the living.’ And before: ‘But I was like an innocent lamb that was brought to be sacrificed and did not know it.’ Therefore show me where Jeremiah was slaughtered or where they threw wood into his bread. Perhaps this is meant physically. But you will not be able to do so, for we find only that he was thrown into the mire. It is clear that he said this prophesying about Christ and His suffering.”
Herban: “Jeremiah said this speaking in riddles, but why should I care whether he said this about himself or about somebody else? Now tell me what I have asked of you: Who of my prophets spoke explicitly and not in a comparison about your Christ?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Since you are in truth of flesh, you also ask for fleshly thoughts. However, the prophets were not as uneducated or as obtuse as you, so that they would have put forth simple words when they were prophesying. Now hear what David says about His descent from heaven upon the Virgin for the sake of incarnation: ‘He will come down,’ he says, ‘like rain upon the grass and like rain dropping to earth.’”
Herban: “David said this about Solomon, and where do you transfer that to?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “What does the psalm say when it continues? ‘Righteousness will rise in His days.’ And who of you will question him about sin? Solomon died having done evil before the Lord.”
Herban: “In his times, he was the origin of thousands of dissensions for our fathers.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Alas, that He healed your weaknesses and bore your sicknesses and raised your dead, and you rage against Him like mad dogs. Now who is the origin of these troubles, you or He? But hear also the following: ‘He will have dominion from sea to sea and from the rivers unto the end of the world.’ So is it not thus? Does the Faith not shine in Him until the end of the world? ‘The Ethiopians will bow before Him.’ Did not all Ethiopia believe in Him and worships Him daily as the true God? ‘And His enemies will lick the dust.’ Who are His enemies if not you Jews that lick dust because of your great hunger, that is the earthly and dusty and fleshly and passionate thoughts, since you cannot eat from the Christian and spiritual thoughts?”
Herban: “You know how to express your opinion using an elevated language. What does this passage of the verse indicate: ‘And abundance of peace until the moon will be taken away’? What is the moon and what is the abundance of peace?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “By the abundance of peace he indicates the great love of the holy churches which they have between each other. He spoke about the moon indicating the universal and apostolic Church. Until he will come and the Church will pass away, until then the peace of God will prevail among the churches. But when the Church will pass away, then also peace will depart from among them, because the end of the world will already draw near. But in order to be adequately aided by this psalm, observe what the same psalm says before: ‘And he will humiliate the oppressor and will rest with the sun and before the moon from generation to generation.’ Now you say that this has been said about Solomon. Now show me which oppressor Solomon humiliated, and where he rests with the sun. For you see that he has died. And where was he before the moon? God created the moon and the stars on the forth day of creation, but David begot Solomon from the wife of Uriah. Where did [Solomon's] name rest before the sun? For he was not even the first man, Adam.”
Herban: “I will show you that, as you say, he humiliated an oppressor, for he did not humiliate only one, but terrified and submitted countless tyrants; he arrested all the wicked demons and secured them by binding them. When saying that he rested with the sun, he spoke obscurely about the brightness of his kingdom, because the sun is the commander of the day, comparing his might to the sun. He called the first day that of the moon by his birth. And henceforth, he says, ‘he will rest’ safely from generation to generation, and similarly ‘his name rests before the sun,’ that is, his name will have the reward and honor of all the world before the kingdom.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Solomon humiliated the demons? You know not what you are saying. He secured them in the vessels for a time, sealed and buried them. But consider what happened after that; for being materially subdued by these same demons and defeated, he endangered his own salvation, as the Scripture testifies. For he assembled a flock of women like a mad stallion, built a temple for the idols, burned incense for the abominations of deceit, and after having had shameful intercourse with a foreign woman he suddenly ended his life when he reached his palace, having done evil before the Lord without the chance to show a trace of repentance. ‘He will rest with the sun’ does not mean the brightness of his kingdom, but he insinuated at my Christ and Lord, that either his immaculate humanity will rest with the sun with the ineffable brightness of his divinity, in which he was twofold both God and man, or also that he will be assumed into heaven to his own Father and God, and sits to the right of his power. ‘Before the moon’ does not indicate the first day of the moon and second and third, but he calls the universal and apostolic Church moon. For before it was made, he says, it was together with the sun, God the Father, not only in the generations in the beginning, but also before all times. ‘His name rests before the sun’ you explained also in an unreasonable way, for first of all the sun does not indicate the kingdom, but he says clearly and simply that His wonderful name was there before this sun came into being.”
Herban: “You strive eagerly for yourself in all things and destroy my explanation, and I fight for myself and do not accept your explanation.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Truth will draw you even unwillingly to assent and confess with me. Now listen what he says below: ‘And all the tribes of the earth will be blessed in Him, all the nations will call Him blessed.’ And before: ‘His name will be blessed forever.’ Therefore you tell me now, when were all the tribes of the earth blessed in Solomon, or at which time did all nations call him blessed, or in which ages was his name blessed? Is there anybody who would also bless Solomon? Everybody believes him to be condemned, because he did evil before the Lord and transgressed, and does not even take him into consideration for a second anointing.”
Herban: “Did not Solomon explain the Ecclesiastes in writing and all the Proverbs? It is clear that he actually did so. Are his writings not read in all the world? It proves that this is the case. Now look that in those places, where the gift of his wisdom is celebrated, his ingenious contrivances are praised by those that hear them, glorified by those that read them and blessed by those that understand his ingenious devices. How do you say that there is nobody that blesses him?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Does he that sings in the spirit call his name blessed, and not only blessed, but also blessed forever? Will the name of Solomon now be blessed forever, of a man who ended his life in sin? Let it not be! Was he a God or a son of God in the same way as my Lord Jesus Christ? For the worthy name of no one else lasts in blessings forever, if not of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ alone. Solomon was corrupted in the end and perished, neglecting the love of God and being attached to the licentiousness of the demons. <And if our Lord Jesus Christ, when He was crucified, had not died and went down to Hades and given him His hand of salvation, he would have nothing.> For not only is his name not blessed continuously, as you say, but he will also be punished for endless ages together with the sinners as a transgressor and abject.”
Herban: “Now did your Christ, even when He died, have the power to save? Look how He redeemed Himself, and then He should be able to redeem Solomon?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Now what does the prophet David say and about what he speaks, saying ‘that Thou wilt not leave My soul in Hades, nor wilt Thou give Thy holy One to see corruption’?”
Herban: “He speaks surely about himself, humbly asking God as a suppliant.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You are badly mistaken, for is not the tomb of David still in Palestine, and is his body not in the tomb? How does he declare now ‘that Thou wilt not leave My soul in Hades’ and that ‘Thou wilt not give Thy holy One to see corruption,’ if he has risen in no way, but still lies in his grave and is corrupted? But truth shows that he foretold this in dark words about my Christ, knowing that He would rise after the third day not having suffered corruption by being mighty; he won over the ransom by speaking about himself, knowing that from his loins Christ would arise in the flesh.”
Herban: “Even if it would be so as you say for the time being, then ‘Thou wilt not leave My soul in Hades’ is no word of the Master, but of some servant or a needy person who brought this to a higher authority as an intercession. Therefore we should know that He is not a Son of God, but a servant of God.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “My Master was God and man, possessing two natures and two essences and two wills, but one and the same subsistence. Through the substance of humanity and its nature which appeared to be created and united with the nature and the substance of divinity, and because these were more submissive, He put this submissive word as an intercession through them. And this is no scandal, for the resurrection of His body and the fact that His flesh was not left to corruption in the tomb, this was effected to His humanity by the divine power of His divinity. Now, when His humanity humbles His divinity, I am not ashamed.”
Herban: “Now if this is so, the same One is both slave and master, and necessarily the same One has to contend with Himself as master, and also the Lord has to recompensate for His servant.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You say idle things in your answer. Not even I do reject that He is both slave and master. He is one and the same and also the Son of God, because He is of one subsistence both in His divinity and His humanity, for ‘the Logos’ of God ‘became flesh,’ as the Scripture says, ‘and dwelt among us.’”
Herban: “Perhaps He was a master, very well, but why a slave?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “As a master He was preexisting, and therefore willingly became a slave, that He might fight the adversary in the shape of a servant, defeat him and liberate man from slavery and accursedness, who had badly been enslaved in paradise by his sin and suffered death because of his transgression.”
Herban: “I am irritated and astonished that the Son of the carpenter Joseph and his wife Mary is the Son of God Who will come into the world.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “This is what I think. For about Him God said through the mouth of the prophet: ‘The Lord said to Me: Thou art My Son, today I have begotten Thee.’”
Herban: “What David said about himself, you appropriate for your Christ.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Your speak foolishly, because you do not understand the truth by your experience. Listen what he says after this: ‘Ask of Me, and I will give to Thee the nations as Thine inheritance and the ends of the earth as Thy possession.’”
Herban: “And did David in the days of his kingdom rule over few nations after having defeated and subjugated them?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And did his possessions extend to the ends of the world? At all events, he held only Palestine and reigned there, but in no way the ends of the earth. And although he subjugated the nations for a time, this did not last forever; for to inherit is one thing, and it is something else to take perhaps a whole nation by storm. Therefore you exercise useless arts in this, for this refers to my Lord Jesus Christ. For if you go away to the ends of the world, you will find Christ reigning spiritually in all nations. For about this David spoke obscurely. For listen, everywhere Christianity has overcome and in all nations churches have been erected to Him Who was crucified. And that the word is not about David but about my Lord and God, hear what the end of the psalm shows: ‘Thou shalt tend them with a rod of iron,’ the rod of iron being the cross. And whom will He tend? Those about whom he wrote, ‘now, ye kings, be wise, be educated, all you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice in Him with trembling.’ Therefore, which kings were subjected to David and rejoiced in him with trembling? Then he says: ‘Show obedience to him, lest the Lord become wroth and you should perish from the righteous way.’ Now whom does David indicate as a ‘Lord,’ himself? In no way, it is superfluous to say this. For nobody of those prudent would call himself lord, and that in writing. But now, what kind of prophet would this be if he appropriated the name of his Lord and God for himself, or instead spoke prophecies about himself? So listen finally to what he says: ‘When His anger will be kindled quickly, happy are those that trust in him.’ Now what is the anger of David when it is kindled? Will those not be blessed that trust in him for that reason, because he is God? He was a man like one of men, although he was a prophet. You see that it is nothing what you declare.”
Herban: “The prophet Moses, if you have read the Pentateuch, placed a very great curse on us, the sons of Israel, from God and the angels, and also bewitched all the elements under heaven placing them under a curse, if we should ever accept another God except the God of our fathers. So why do you still inquire? For also God Himself says through the prophet exhorting us: ‘There will be no new god in you, nor will you worship any foreign god. For I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.’ Now what do you think about this?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “This has been commanded to you about the carven images of Canaan that you should not worship a foreign god, but not about the only-begotten Son of God, which David hints when he says: ‘The Lord said unto my Lord: Sit at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.’ Now who is the Lord and to which ‘Lord’ do you assume that this was said? Teach me now.”
Herban: “The Lord was the God ‘of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth,’ and David in the time of his kingdom was also the lord of all the land over which he reigned. So God said to him: ‘Sit at My right,’ that is, do not turn away to the right or left from the rightful orders of My law, but keep the law, and I will submit your enemies to be your footstool. For it is said that ‘the weapons of war are righteousness and the keeping of the commandments.’”
When all this had been said between the most holy Archbishop Gregentios and Herban the teacher of the law, in the presence of the pious king and of the bishops and the worthy clergy and the holy senate and the crowd of Jews and all the town, there was no solution to the ambiguity. For since the evening was already approaching, the discussion was interrupted. And the Jews rejoiced over Herban that he had completely withstood the archbishop in the discussion, and they all embraced and kissed him. But Herban said to them: “Let us pray, brothers, that the God of the law may help us, for you see that the bishop is an inventive man, and it will be hard for us to convince him. For you see that he knows our matters better than we do.” But they encouraged him not to be afraid.
Dialogue B (2)
And in the morning the king again ordered that the meeting should be assembled, and when the preparation had been made and the king and the archbishop had sat down to preside, the Jews also came and presented Herban.
And the archbishop said to him: “You said yesterday that Moses the prophet placed a curse upon the Jews from God and the angels and the elements, and I have no doubt about that. And the prophet did well to you, knowing your slipperiness and your unstable mind. For since, although this had happened, you sacrificed your sons and daughters to the demons, what would you have displayed if he had not stored up this curse for you? Now we Christians do not believe in idols, for we do not introduce a foreign God into our midst, since we know for our salvation the Word of the great and only God Who loved Abraham and his offspring, Who became flesh from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and together with God Himself and His Holy Spirit we worship and venerate one true God, neither taking anything away nor adding something, save that we believe, recognizing the Divinity more distinctly and more clearly than you, and accepting Moses and the laws he made and fulfilled well, and which have now been annulled. For David said, ‘The Lord said unto my Lord.’ We stopped yesterday when we had reached this point, and should start again from there. Now if David was the lord of the earth, did he address himself as his own lord? This thought is full of folly, for I consent that he was the lord of the land he reigned, but a lord full of shadow and dream, as all we men are. It is implausible that he addressed himself as his own lord, for we have never yet found such a custom, neither in the old nor in the younger writers, that someone addressed himself as his own lord. The Lord said to His Word and Son, Who became man, suffered, died and was buried, Who rose on the third day, was accepted after forty days into heaven from the Mount of Olives before the eyes of His holy apostles, surpassed all the company of the upper powers, and sits at the right hand of His greatness. This is what the power of His divinity said to His immaculate humanity: ‘Sit on My right,’ until the end of the world will come, and I will send Thee to judge the living and the dead. And then ‘every knee of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth will bow’ before Thy power, and Thy enemies will be trampled under Thy foot to be ‘Thy footstool, and Thou wilt give to everyone according to his works.’ This is the true explanation, if only you wish to accept it.”
Herban: “You introduce a great blasphemy into the world if you say that the Crucified sits to the right of the divine Power in the highest.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Does His cross appear as a scandal to you, because He was crucified? In order to convince you that I have explained well the word ‘The Lord said to my Lord,’ listen to the following verse, where he speaks about the cross by which you now prefer to be offended: ‘The Lord,’ he says, ‘will send out the rod of Thy power from Sion, gain dominion in the midst of Thine enemies.’”
Herban: “Do you assume that the rod which he addresses in his speech is the cross? Now if it would be so, he should have said ‘cross’ and not ‘rod’ anymore. But since he tells us also that the rod was sent out from Sion, was that wood cut on Mount Sinai from which the cross was hewn? But you will not be able to show this.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The prophet anagogically called the rod a cross speaking obscurely: In the same way in which the rod cannot move by itself and beat in any way, if there is no hand of a man giving strength to it by holding it, it is also similar to the worthy cross. For it came from the earth and needed the power from Sion to be raised against the enemies of the king, or rather against the enemies of the creature of the king. Now if you hear 'from Sion' do not look to the ground thinking of Mount Sinai in your mind, for he said this anagogically as well. For Sion is the upper metropolis of the Lord, in which He dwells with all His angels. Therefore the divine power came down from the upper Sion, that is, the Word of God from heaven, took away the rod from the earth, the cross, and stretching out His right hand, the elevated arm, He beat all his enemies and defeated them, that is Hades, death, sin, the condemnation and this malignant serpent himself, I say, who betrayed Eve together with Adam in Eden, and immediately gained dominion in the middle of His enemies. For all nations leaving the service of the enemies of the king, that is, the disgusting veneration of idolatry, recognized the King as their true God and returning worshipped Him, for God the Father entrusted this King to judge His world, when the end will come and the resurrection will take place and all the saints will shine around Him like luminaries. Look how he goes on, saying: ‘The rule is with Thee in the day of Thy power in the brightnesses of Thy saints.’”
Herban: “Do you say that He Who was begotten from Joseph will come to judge the world? Bless me, what an aberration!”
Archbishop Gregentios: “A blind man cannot see the sun. Joseph did not beget my God and Master, let it not be, as you believe, being shortsighted and deceived. But now I will tell you from where my beloved Lord Jesus rose up. God says about Him: ‘I have begotten Thee from the womb before the morning star.’ And so you may not say that He spoke with plain speech, He went on: ‘The Lord has sworn and will not repent.’ Now, so you will not say later that He is not from the essence of God, He went on with this same saying: ‘The Lord has sworn and will not repent,’ and therefore He says: ‘I have begotten Thee from the womb before the morning star.’ He has sworn, he says: 'Thou art from My essence.' Then, so that you may not say that the priesthood of Aaron is transferred, He said obscurely: ‘Thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’ That His humanity went out into the world, Isaiah says: ‘Behold, the Virgin will conceive and bear a Son, and they will call His name Emmanuel, which means translated, God with us.’ Therefore David there says that He was begotten in His naked divinity from the Father before the morning star, and here Isaiah says about the birth of His humanity that He was born from the perpetual Virgin. If you transfer to David the things He says, was then David or anybody else begotten before the morning star?”
Herban: “I know that your Christ was begotten, but it is altogether clear that He was at all events from the seed of Joseph, as I have said before.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Do not commit an error; for He was begotten not from the seed of Joseph, as you believe, but from the Holy Spirit. For the prophet spoke also about this, indicating that the Virgin was not spoiled by Joseph, I say, for he prophesied: ‘The sealed book will be given to a man who knows to read, and the man will say: I cannot read, for the book is sealed.’ What else is the sealed book but the Virgin and Mother of God? Who else is the man but Joseph the master-builder? What does it mean that he knew to read, that is, that he had been married to another woman, of whom he already had children before? What does it mean that he was not able to read the divine book, that is, that he could not come together with her? For he had perceived from God that she was chosen for the Lord Jesus and kept incorrupt, so that God may be born from her from the Holy Spirit in the flesh and as a mortal man.”
Herban: “Since you have studied a lot to find that out: Mary has once born a man and not a god. Therefore, with what intention do you call God the Man Who was born from Mary?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “She gave birth to the same as God and Man.”
Herban: “And how did the womb of the woman have room for the frightful greatness of divinity?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “As the tent of Abraham had room for God, when He came down and ate with him.”
Herban: “And how did the fire of divinity not burn the womb of the woman?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “As the fire did not burn the bush in the desert, in addition to this the Virgin gave birth and remained an intact virgin even after giving birth.”
Herban: “Well then, He was born from her in fancy and imagination and not in truth, for this is impossible and entirely unbelievable.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “How did Habakkuk in those days go to Daniel into the den of the lions, the door of the den being firmly closed with latches and seals? Tell me how that man went in and out and not only did not open the door, but also did not break the seals?”
Herban: “You have found your gainsaying as readily as no one else, but still it offends my spirit that your Christ was executed.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You are reasonably offended, since you do not know the mystery of His worthy suffering and death. Hear what the prophet says first of all about the traitor Judas: ‘The one who ate my bread,’ he says, ‘has lifted his heel against Me.’ And thereafter he says about him praying: ‘He put on a curse as his garment, and it came like water into his bowels and like oil into his bones,’ for ‘he did not want a blessing, so it will be far from him.’ And about the scribes and archpriests and their counsel against the Lord he says: ‘All my enemies whispered against me, they devised bad things against me, they set an unlawful word against me, they did me evil for good and gave hatred for my love.’ And elsewhere Isaiah says in the place of you faithless ones: ‘Let us bind the righteous one, for he is inconvenient for us.’ And Jeremiah says about the price which you gave to the traitor Judas as reward of his murder: ‘And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of Him that was valued, Whom they of the sons of Israel did value, and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me.’ And about the treachery he says: ‘Why do the nations boast and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth presented themselves, and the rulers took counsel together against the Lord and His anointed.’”
Herban: “Which kind of nation are we? We are perhaps called a people. And for which reason are we called kings and in which way rulers?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Did not God say to Abraham, ‘I will make you a great and numerous nation?’ Now for this reason you too are addressed as a nation. And did not Moses say to God: ‘And I and Thy people will find grace among all nations?’ And thereafter he says, ‘and I will understand that this nation is Thy people.’ Behold, [he calls them] both people and nation. ‘The kings of the earth presented themselves, and the rulers took counsel together against the Lord and His anointed’ means that the royal priesthood was addressed by Moses as kings and, as being chosen first by God from among all nations, as rulers. You have taken counsel together against the Lord as God and Savior, and against their Anointed as the Son of Man and truly mortal man, because my Lord Jesus Christ was God and became man. So if you want to understand this more distinctly: Herod, Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas presented themselves together with the others against the Lord and their Anointed (Christ). And to demonstrate to you that they boasted to God, the prophet says thereafter, introducing their repayment which they received from God because of their boasting: ‘He that dwells in heaven will laugh at them and the Lord will mock them. Then He will speak to them in His anger and trouble them in His wrath.’ Do you see the wrath of God the Father against those that crucified Him? And also he says that they were false witnesses against Him, ‘that false witnesses have risen up against Me, and injustice lied to itself.’ Or that they flogged Him, beat Him and spat upon Him, Isaiah says: ‘I gave My back to the whips and My cheeks to blows, I did not turn My face away from the shame of spitting.’ And if you say that Isaiah suffered this, you will not find that written anywhere. Or that He was brought to the crucifixion without contradicting, Isaiah again said: ‘He was brought like a sheep to the slaughter and silent like a lamb before his shearer.’ That the soldiers mocked at Him and crucified Him, and the light became dark and sun and moon put on darkness, that you gave Him vinegar and gall to drink, and that His garments were divided, David foretold that ‘the mockers mocked Me and gnashed with their teeth against Me. Lord, when wilt Thou look upon Me?’ And Jeremiah says about the cross: ‘Let us throw wood into His bread and let us wipe Him out from the land of the living, and His name be remembered no more.’ And about those who reproached Him when He hung on the wood, David says: ‘All those that saw Me mocked Me; they spoke with their lips, they shook their head saying: “He trusted in God, let Him redeem Him, let him save Him, if He wants Him.”’ And he said about the nails, which they nailed into His feet and hands when they hung Him up and all the people of Israel stood around Him and looked: ‘Many dogs surrounded Me.’ And hear that they were also from your cursed congregation: ‘The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.’ And he says about the nails: ‘They pierced My hands and My feet, and numbered all My bones.’ And about the dividing of His garments, the same says that the soldiers divided and appropriated them: ‘They divided My garments among them, and cast lots about My vesture.’ And about the vinegar which He drank and the gall the same says: ‘They gave Me gall in My food, and for My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.’ And about the darkening of the day the prophet Amos says: ‘The sun will go down at noon, and the light will become dark on earth in the day,’ and so on. That He will die on the cross, Isaiah says: ‘As many will be astonished at Thee’ seeing that Thou madest portents before Thy passion, ‘so Thy shape will be held in contempt from men, and many nations will wonder at Thee; we saw Him and he had no form, neither beauty nor glory, but His form was dishonored. His face disappeared from the children of men, a smitten man.’ And of His side being pierced with a lance, he says: ‘A man, smitten and acquainted with disease, for His face was turned away, He was dishonored and not esteemed.’ And in order to show you that He had to suffer not for Himself (because he did not possess any sin), but for our sins, the prophet goes on: ‘He bears our sins and suffers pain for us, and we esteemed Him in pain, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was injured for our sins and had grief’ for our sins. You listen, O you Jew Herban, to what the prophet Isaiah says about the sufferings of Christ, for which reason he suffered, and you say: 'My spirit is offended, because He suffered and was crucified'? You see that He was given to death for the sins of the world. Listen to what follows: ‘The chastisement of our peace,’ he says, ‘was upon Him,’ because we men have sinned, He was chastised, that is, this Man, that He may reconcile us with His Father, killing the hatred of transgression in His own sufferings, so that we have peace with God henceforth. Hear the prophet, Herban, and be convinced: ‘And through his wounds,’ he says, ‘all we are healed.’ Now why does His cross and sufferings still offend you? You listen, ‘through his wounds we all are healed.’ For the Lord gave Himself to death for our sins. God the Son, he says, ‘came to death for the iniquities of my people.’ Hear and do not be offended that the Lord was crucified: ‘For the iniquities of my people,’ he says, ‘He came to death, and I will give the wicked for His burial and those full of sins for His death, for He did not commit any sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth.’ You listen to what God says about Him: ‘There was no deceit found,’ he says, ‘in His mouth.’ And David says: ‘He that did not beguile with His tongue and did not do evil to His neighbor.’ And they who saw His truth testified that, but you blind, silly and foolish, you malignant, stupid, unbelieving, abusive, stubborn and confused people said to Him: ‘Thou hast a demon,’ took stones, and hunted Him saying: ‘For a good work we do not stone Thee, but because Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God.’ Oh your wickedness! But still listen: ‘There was,’ he says, ‘no deceit found in His mouth’ for which He suffered, he says. God the Father says this through the prophet, [that He is] without sin, that is, about His Son. ‘I will give those full of sins’ for His salvation, that is the publicans and fornicators and sinners, and they believed in His name. And since My dear and beloved One accepted to be buried like the sons of man for the salvation of mankind, I will give Him all nations which are vain in the wickedness of idols, and they will believe in Him and will be deemed worthy of the kingdom of heaven. I will give, He says, all these to Him as a reward for those things which His son has suffered being innocent, and for which He defeated the old supplanter and his power. Now all this, O Herban, is so, and you know it very well yourself, that it is so; but you willingly deny truth and do not want it to come to your benefit.”
When Herban heard this he was was astonished and stood speechless for a long time, being unable to answer anything. And the crowd of the Jews which stood there and listened was struck with amazement, knowing that he had condemned them from the words of Isaiah. The Christians overwhelmed the archbishop with great applause and worthy praise, and the king and his grand men rejoiced when they heard things they had never heard so clearly before.
Herban: “I am irritated and bewildered and do not know what to do, for my mind is divided in these things. For when I hear Moses say, or rather God Himself, ‘Hear Israel, the Lord is your God, God is one, and there is none else beside Him,’ and then, ‘you will worship the Lord your God and venerate Him alone,’ and then again David and Isaiah when they speak in truth about this supposed Christ, I do not know what to do.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Therefore and for this reason Isaiah spoke again knowing your unsteadiness and unbelief. ‘Lord,’ he says, ‘who has believed our report, and to whom was the arm of the Lord revealed?’ To no one else, I think, than to all nations. Isaiah knew your unbelief, therefore he also says elsewhere, I think, to your shamelessness: ‘Hear with your ears and understand not, and looking there see and see not; for the heart of this people has become fat, and they hardly heard with their ears and closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and perceive and hear with their ears and understand and return to Me, and I heal them.’ Now is it not so? For if your fathers saw Him raising their dead and restoring their paralytics to health, giving sight to the blind, feeding the five thousand with five loaves of bread, walking with unmoistened feet upon the waves of the lake and doing other ineffable things as well: If they did not believe when they saw Him working these, how will you offspring of vipers believe in Him only from hearsay, having seen nothing of this kind yourself? In no way, never.”
Herban: “Hear, archbishop, your words are true, for you speak in a simple way and in the literal sense, and there is no deceit in your mouth. For you do not convince us by lecturing from your own thoughts, but from the divine Scriptures of the law. Therefore you deserve to be loved and listened to. But because our law was given first and thereafter yours, I think accordingly that the one given first is more valid. Therefore it is necessary that we keep our law, and you then yours.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “When Moses said, ‘God will raise up unto you a Prophet from among your brethren like me,’ that is, a law-giver, ‘now every soul, that will not hear that Prophet, will be destroyed utterly from among his people,’ now when he said this, it is clear that until the coming of the Prophet the law was well received. But when the Man Who was asked for came and introduced a new law, henceforth the older law had to be silent and to cease. So the Lord does not find pleasure in your law, even if you should be working on it all day long.”
Herban: “God finds high pleasure in it, for He says through the prophet about it: ‘The law of the Lord is pure, converting souls.’ Now as it brings souls back to understand God, how should the Lord find no pleasure in it?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “First understand about which law the prophet spoke, then confirm its validity and thereafter do not twist anymore the things that have been written about you. For also the prophets did not prophesy about the things that had happened before them, but about those in the future. Saying this the prophet spoke about the law which had been issued for the nations: ‘The law of the Lord is pure,’ he said, ‘converting souls.’ But converting which souls, I think, and where from and leading them where?”
Herban: “The souls that went astray from the law, the same law will bring them back quickly when you ponder it, and through it lead them to God.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You are deceived in a disorderly way, for all you go astray from the law being decoyed by adultery, lust after men, and the other deceits, and then reading your law every Sabbath, but without reason and in vain; for in reality not even one soul is brought back from you to the Lord. Is there anybody among you that observes the law? I think nobody. Therefore God has turned Himself away from you, has expelled you and scattered you to the ends of the earth. For what reason, tell me, were you scattered into the four winds of heaven and are like a curse among all nations?”
Herban: “This is clearly because of our sins.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And since you were scattered and expelled from the Promised Land because of your sins, how did you say that 'our law brings back our souls to the approval of the Master'? Now does God cast off and scatter those with whom He is pleased? You see that the things you say contain an immense slander.”
Herban: “So say yourself what the section means.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The law of God is my Christ Who, coming down from heaven and becoming a man, returned a large number of the sons of Israel to the goodness of the Father by teaching them to be Christians, out of whom the first were Peter and the others. And not only that, but He also returned ten thousands and thousands of all nations by his Holy Spirit through his disciples to the knowledge of the Holy Trinity. He was so pure that Isaiah cried out about Him saying: ‘And He did not do any sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth.’”
Herban: “The prophet said that reckoning the virtues, for he added to these, ‘The testimony of the Lord’ when he testifies ‘is sure making the infants wise; the statutes of the Lord are upright, pleasing the heart, and the order of the Lord and the fear’ and so on. You draw all to yourself by tricks and knaveries and some sharp-sighted art, with a straight tongue gathering every thought for your help in a comparison.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You do not hear what Abraham says about the thing you said, that the prophet spoke reckoning the virtues. For it was the virtues of my Christ and God which he reckoned, about which also Habakkuk said: ‘His virtue covered the heavens, and the earth is full of His wisdom.’”
Herban: “At all events he spoke about the God of the law. For who is equal to Him in virtues?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Has somebody led you astray, that the Word of God which came down from heaven and was incarnated was not the God of the law? Nothing for you concerning this, you bastard. For my Lord is both the Lord of your law and the God and king of the new grace. For Habakkuk says: ‘God will come from Thaiman, and the holy One from a shady and rough mountain.’”
Herban: “What does Thaiman mean, and what does the shady and rough mountain signify?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Thaiman means that He comes from above, namely from heaven, that is, from the east. Truth shows that he tells him to come out of the body of the Virgin at His incarnation, as He came in fact out of our holy Lady, the Mother of God and perpetual Virgin Mary. The shady mountain is the Virgin herself, out of which He came. He calls her mountain because God came down to her in a similar way as on Mount Sinai and dwelt with her, or also because of the impenetrability of her virginity, since according to experience the mountain wood is impassable or even completely impenetrable. And he declares her to be shady, because the mystery of her virginity is shaded by the multitude of her virtues so that it cannot be understood in which way she gave birth. For she brought forth as a virgin and continued to be an intact virgin even after giving birth.”
Herban: “He does not say this about Christ and also not about the Virgin you were speaking of, but about the God of the law who appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai. For if it were like that, he would have said: ‘Christ’ will come from Thaiman, and not ‘God.’ Thaiman we call the place where the southern wind blows from.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “We address the place where we worship to as Thaiman. For we were taught to pray to the east, because we find that God created man there and made the paradise. It is clear that He that fills all things is also dwelling there. And you address this as Thaiman, where you worship to? For you worship to the west, and there is no doubt about that. You introduce words of folly because you do not understand the prophecy. ‘God,’ he says, ‘will come from Thaiman and the holy One from the mountain.’ Who is God and Who happens to be the holy One? Tell me.”
Herban: “God and the holy One are the same, two names being applied to one thing.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Which one is greater, God or the holy One?”
Herban: “God is greater than the holy One.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Look how you fall into the trap and do not understand. For you have said before that God and the holy One means the same, and now you said that God is more powerful than the holy One. Now is there a small and a great designation for God?”
Herban: “Then tell yourself what the section means.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Since he says that God will come, it is also clear that He will come, but in His body. For divinity does not move from place to place as the bodies do. ‘And the holy One from the mountain,’ that is humanity, will come with the substance of divinity out of the unpolluted womb of the perpetual maiden, the Mother of God Mary. He says ‘God’ on the one hand about the substance of His divinity, and ‘the holy one’ on the other hand about the substance of his humanity, for as I have said before, my Lord Jesus was twofold, both God and man. For the same prophet says before about Him: ‘You will be known between two animals,’ that is, one and the same essential Word of God should be known between the two essences and both natures. And that He will come and not stay, ‘when the years come near Thou wilt be known, when the time has come Thou wilt be shown.’”
Herban: “You answer wisely. But we Jews are very much distressed to leave the faith of our fathers and go over to the new one. For old wine is better than the new one.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Your law is old wine, but it became sour and undrinkable. But I know that always a veil lies on your hearts and does not let you turn to the needful truth and hear the word of life and believe. Nevertheless, the prophet rightfully said refusing your faith: ‘O Lord, from Thy few, separate them from the earth in their life. Appoint a lawgiver over the nations, Lord, that they too may know that they are but men.’”
Herban: “The prophet spoke about some other subject, because the same says about you: ‘Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his afflictions.’ And then, ‘Praise the Lord, Jerusalem, praise your God, Sion, for He has strengthened the bars of your gates, He has blessed your children in you.’ And Isaiah says, ‘Israel is saved by the Lord.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “‘Separate them from the earth in their life,’ that means, I say, your scattering from the Promised Land into all nations, which happened within a short time. ‘Appoint a lawgiver over the nations, Lord, that they too may know that they are but men,’ this the prophet said about our Savior Jesus Christ. For since you were disobedient and did not lead a good life, the Father appointed Him as the lawgiver of the nations. That the prophet said, ‘Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his afflictions,’ is no miracle, for he prayed for his own people. And we Christians who fear the Lord as we should, pray every day for you, that you may know what is for your benefit. ‘Praise the Lord, Jerusalem, praise your God, Sion, for He has blessed your children in you,’ that is also right, since before Christianity came into being, the word was fitting, and even I do not contradict you. For if I would have lived before my Lord Jesus Christ came from heaven into the world, I too would have become a Jew. For in those times, I say, salvation was only in the law of Israel. When you said 'The old wine is better than the new one': that old wine is spent and nothing is left in your jars ‘except the lees,’ as the prophet says. For the same prophet says about this section: ‘There is a cup in the hand of the Lord, full of a mixture with undiluted wine, and He turns from one side to the other.’ God has poured the honey-flowing sayings of the prophets and their thoughts from the old law into the new one by fulfilling it, I say. And nothing remained in the old one, when it was emptied into the new one, and for you nothing but dregs remained, that is, the fulfilled Scriptures, which are henceforth idle.”
Herban: “You drive Israel away completely from the Lord, and through the crucified one associate yourself with the Almighty, not knowing the word of the Lord which says, ‘that God will not cast away His people, nor will He forsake His inheritance.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And why do you not read the following passage of the verse? For I know well that the Lord will not cast away His people and will not forsake His inheritance. Say also until when, for the verse following this word defines a fixed time saying ‘until when’: Clearly ‘until the justice’ Christ ‘will return’ His subjects ‘to’ the spiritual ‘judgment,’ I say unto Christianity, for these ‘do possess this’ new ‘grace, the upright in heart’ that were formerly Jews and from the nations and believed in him. But about you unbelieving Jews the prophet says: ‘Who will rise up for me against the wicked, or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?’ It is clear at all events that finally Vespasian rose up from Rome according to this prophecy and made you disappear, and then you said with pains as Isaiah prophesied: ‘Now the Lord has taken away my judgment and has separated from me, and foreigners devour us with their teeth.’”
Herban: “We Israelites will rise again, and our city will be rebuilt and you that proclaim Christ will be ashamed. For it has been written for us from the Lord: ‘When God will rebuild Jerusalem, he will gather the outcasts of Israel, he that heals the broken in heart and binds up their afflictions.’ This word will be fulfilled, be it at once or in the end. And then, what will that mean to you and me, archbishop?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If [Jerusalem] was rebuilt once, if you were gathered once, what will that mean to you more than to me? Did Nebuchadnezzar not take Jerusalem captive, lead the people away and destroy her? Did the Lord not feel pity thereafter, rebuild her again and gather you who were scattered? Was the city not given to the enemies in the times of the prophets Jeremiah and Baruch and razed to the ground, and again deemed worthy of God's love to mankind and rebuilt? Was she finally not taken by the Romans, not to speak about her numerous other dangers, and did perish forever? Why do you now sit here and wait for a prophecy which has been fulfilled twice and thrice, and after all, which has nothing certain in it? Hear the sentence which God generally gave about you, so that you know that God has cast you off from his heart. For when He saw that you still did not do what you should give Him, He said briefly: Henceforth ‘I will not gather their congregation from their blood, nor will I make mention’ of their names ‘with My lips.’ And about the inheritance coming to Him His only-begotten Son said to God Himself: ‘It is Thou Who wilt restore My inheritance to Me.’ You see, Herban, how God has hated you out of His own heart and made that known to all your congregations? For ‘I will not gather their covenant from their blood,’ He says, ‘nor will I make mention of their names with My lips.’ Now since God does not want to make mention of you, not even with His lips, of what are you then still worthy, being obscure, blind, confused, and unremembered?”
Herban: “Behold, does the prophet not say, ‘Blessed is he that has the God of Jacob for his helper, whose hope is in the Lord his God’? And about you nations he went on, ‘Perish, you nations, out of His land.’ Behold, does Moses not also say, ‘Perish, you that do not hold up the law for their help,’ and elsewhere ‘that they are a nation void of counsel, and there is no knowledge in them.’ Behold, does also Isaiah not say: ‘Do not rejoice, all you foreigners, for the yoke of him that smote you is shattered’? Now since you have been condemned by the prophets, you boast in vain expecting empty things.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “First understand what these said things mean, and then condemn us. For ‘blessed is he that has the God of Jacob’ was spoken about the patriarch Jacob; he does not say that about you, his descendants, or maybe about us. Why do you boast? For he has called God blessed and not Jacob. And if you will say that our hope is in the Lord, just at he points out, then I say that this was formerly the case, but not now any more. For hope has finally perished out of you, since you have denied the good and divine hope, which God sent you from heaven. And that he says, ‘perish, you nations, out of his land,’ this he does not say that simply about us, but rather about you the Jews. For since you have badly used the law which had been given to you and intermingled with the nations and learnt their work, he also called you nations, you man without understanding. And announce to me, who perished out of his land, we, or you transgressors and deniers of God, as you say? Behold, are we not present in the land of your fathers from the beginning until now, whereas the Lord God has expelled you, the unlawful, from the land of the nations which the Lord had told you to destroy and to settle in their own land, and you did not destroy them, but intermingled with them and similarly learnt their works? For you were so miserable that you did not ever possess your own land. Now behold, according to that which has been said by the Lord, ‘I said, I will scatter them,’ He scattered you in all nations, and you are their reproach and destruction. And what Isaiah said, ‘Do not rejoice, all you foreigners,’ this he has said darkly about the destruction of the Assyrians. For below He declares: ‘For as I have decided, so it will stay, that I will let perish the Assyrians out of My land and of My boundaries, and I will trample them under foot.’ Now what do you think about this?”
Herban: “Who can say adequate words to a gossiping man? For whatever we say to you, you calumniate all. Now what does the prophet Zechariah say in God's place: ‘Behold, I save My people from the land in the east and from land in the west, and will lead them in their land, and they will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem and will be My people, and I will be their God in truth and righteousness.’ And after some other words he says: ‘And it will happen, that just as you were a curse among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so will I save you and you will be a blessing. Have courage and let your hands be strong, for the Lord says: As I had thought to punish you when your fathers made me angry and did not repent, so I have decided and thought in these days to do well unto Jerusalem and the house of Judah. Have courage, these are the words of the Lord.’ Now what will you say about this, bishop?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Truly the prophet said this, and you were recalled twice and thrice from the nations, received Jerusalem back, and after you had remained in His blessings for some time, thereafter you were given to plundering and foraging because of your sins, and to be a curse among the nations. Did I not enumerate above to you how many times Israel was taken captive and how many times you were recalled? And now the last point is this: You were expelled and scattered and will not be recalled forever, except when Satan will come into the world, the so-called Antichrist. For you have been rejected and were found completely useless. Of God calling the nations instead of you, hear what Isaiah says: ‘Thus says the Lord the Almighty: Many people will come, the inhabitants of many cities, and will come together in one city saying: Let us go to pray before the face of the Lord and to seek the face of the Lord the Almighty. I too will go, and many people and nations will come and seek the face of the Lord the Almighty in Jerusalem and implore the face of the Lord the Almighty.’ You see how Isaiah, or rather God himself, foretold the onrush of the nations to God: ‘Many people and many nations will come to seek the face of the Lord the Almighty’. What do you think about this?”
Herban: “The prophet Micah says: ‘In those days,’ says the Lord, ‘I will gather her that is shattered, and will receive her that is cast off. And I will call back whom I drove out and will make her that shattered a remnant and her that was cast off to be a strong nation, and the Lord will reign over them in mount Sion henceforth and forever.’ Now do you not think that the Lord will at some later time recall Israel whom He drove out, and show her to be a strong nation and a very fear-inspiring kingdom?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You are wrong, Herban, if you appropriate this prophecy as speaking about your own nation. For calling her ‘shattered’ he compared her to the dwelling-place of the nations, and calling her ‘cast off’ he spoke obscurely about the nature of these same nations which was cast off because of the wickedness of idolatry. And now, is not the kingdom of the Romans a strong nation? Is not Jerusalem full of churches and divine temples of the Crucified? Did not Jesus Christ the Son of God come from Bethlehem, Whom you deny? Does He not reign the ends of nearly all the world from mount Sion, that is from the heavenly heights? For listen what Micah says after this: ‘And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephratah, you are not few among the thousands of Judah, for out of you He will come to be a ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth have been from the beginning, from everlasting.’ For although He was born recently as a man, he says, His goings forth are from everlasting, because He was also God before all times. ‘Therefore He will give them until the time of her that gives birth,’ that is, He will give it to you Jews to be strong in the law until the time of her that gives birth to the divine Ruler Who will come out of Bethlehem, that is, the Mother of God Mary. The Virgin ‘will give birth’ to the Ruler of the new Israel, ‘and His remaining brothers will return to the sons of Israel.’ For it is written ‘that not even His brothers,’ who were supposedly from Joseph, ‘believed in Him.’ And He Himself ‘will stand and see,’ he says, which will be His flock, and He will see that the nations will have been handed over to Him, ‘and the Lord will tend His flock in His strength, and’ the nations ‘will be in the glory of the name of the Lord his God, for now’ the good shepherd ‘will be great unto the ends of the earth,’ that is, until the end of the world. And if you want to contradict that Jesus Christ, the Son of God Who tends the nations, has not become great, look around with your eyes unto the ends of the world and see how my Lord Jesus Christ is great from now and forever until the end of the world. For this is what ‘He will be great unto the ends of the earth’ means.”
Herban: “And if this is so, for what reason did the prophet not say ‘out of you he will come to be a ruler’ among the nations, but went on ‘in Israel’?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Israel is translated as 'mind seeing God'. Now since you Jews that were formerly a mind seeing God, when His only-begotten Son came to you, willingly closed your eyes so as not to see Him, you were blinded at once and lost the quality of being a mind seeing God, which is translated as Israel. Instead, the nations which had formerly been blind, when they turned to God and believed in the only-begotten Son of God the Father, recovered their sight on the spot when receiving the Holy Baptism, and at once also the name Israel was applied to them, which had been taken away from you by the hand of God. Now at least those that see God in truth are addressed as Israel, whereas those that have been blinded by their unbelief have lost to be and to be called Israel. Now since the name Israel was taken away from you and was used for the nations, it is clear what the prophet said about the nations of the new Israel that ‘out of you He will come to be a ruler in’ the new ‘Israel.’”
Herban: “You say many things to drive the race of the Jews into despair, so that they have no hope to be recalled. But I will not be content with your words, for I hear the prophet Isaiah saying: ‘On that day God will shine in His counsel with glory on the earth to exalt and glorify the remnant of Israel in Sion and the remnant in Jerusalem. All those that are written into life in Jerusalem will be called holy.’ And thereafter he goes on saying ‘that the Lord will wash out the sordidness of the sons and daughters of Sion, and He will clear the blood of Jerusalem out of their midst with the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning.’ So, as you hear the prophecy, we must be recalled and come again into our old honor, rather into a higher one. Therefore do not resist me anymore being loquacious, but believe me that it will be so, either now or later.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Because you do not understand the true explanation of the holy Scripture, you delight yourself being caught by base words and useless thoughts. For that ‘God will shine in His counsel with glory on the earth to exalt and glorify the remnant of Israel,’ that has already happened and is already accomplished. For shining out of the Holy Virgin the only-begotten Son of God has glorified and exalted the remnant of Israel in Jerusalem. He glorified this spiritually and not corporeally, as you fleshly Jews imagine. Now listen what is the remnant of Israel and from where it was left behind and why it was written and into which life, so that you may learn what is good for you and, if only you want, useful for your salvation. The remnant of Israel is the host of the Jews, who believed when Christ appeared; for it was left behind by the Lord, that is, the human race was chosen to be preserved mentally from the abominable demons which were oppressing them by the anticipation of sufferings in order to believe in the Son of God and be saved, so that the unbelieving race of the Jews might not be lost completely. For the prophet says about this section: ‘And if the Lord would not have left us behind a seed, we would have become like Sodom and similar to Gomorrah,’ meaning those of you that believed and were saved. ‘Written into life’ means, written by the only-begotten Son of God into the heavenly life. That he ‘washed out the sordidness of the sons and daughters of Sion,’ I say of those that believed, ‘and cleared the blood of Jerusalem out of their midst’ by the worthy and holy Baptism, no one will rise up against that. For Isaiah said about this: ‘Wash you, make you clean,’ and so on. That he says ‘with the spirit of judgment,’ that is because He decided so in His love for mankind through the Holy Spirit, finding such a great good; ‘in the spirit of burning,’ because by the fire of His own Spirit he burnt the guilt of those that came to the baptismal font through their belief. For the Holy Spirit is capable of burning stains. ‘To exalt and glorify the remnant’ of the people, away from the unbelief ‘of Israel’ which was the work of Satan (as God rebuked him because he seduced all the race of the Jews by his unbelief), that is, when they believed in Christ they were exalted and glorified so much, that all nations which believe in my Lord and God Jesus Christ henceforth and until now honor and glorify [these people] and built chapels for them and call them holy and righteous men, and celebrate their holy memories every year, as is also written that they ‘all’ will be called ‘holy,’ that is from the nations, that were removed from the law and were ‘written into life,’ which is Christ, through their belief and the holy Baptism. Accordingly, you have the twelve apostles, you have the seventy, you have the two thousand, you have the three thousand, you have the five thousand who ate the loaves of bread, you have the four hundred whom you all killed, making them martyrs of my Lord Jesus Christ. And there are also many other souls, not only men, but also women, who turned away from Judaism and came to Holy Baptism. About all of these the prophet wrote that ‘the remnant of Israel will be saved.’”
Herban: “You have straightaway reinterpreted the words of the prophecy for your own support. But even if it were so, when did the crucified One, walking around in Jerusalem, as the prophet goes on after this, ‘overshadow the surroundings of Sion with a cloud by day and as with smoke and the light of a burning fire by night’? When did He appear covering with all His glory and rising in the shade of the day to His subjects, ‘from the heat and for a shelter and a hiding-place from the hardness of the rain?’ For the prophet goes on with these words from the passage ‘He will clear the blood of Jerusalem out of their midst with the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “So were you present in the days when He appeared and saw, whether a cloud was shading there, or He shone with the light of a burning fire or did something else, that you babble about Him like this? For you hurry to judge everything with corporeal thoughts, because you do not know the real spirit of the holy Scripture. Listen what the said things mean, for you, O Jew, harvest thorns while believing to gather figs. For the prophet says that the Lord will come, and we Christians know that He has already come. ‘And there will be,’ he says, ‘all places on mount Sion and all its surroundings.’ That Sion is a mountain, and indeed a high mountain. Understand the words Sion and mountain as the metropolis of Sion in heaven, and the church of the nations coming out from there. That all places of mount Sion and its surroundings are under the domination of Sion itself, truth does testify. For when Christ became flesh, all places renounced Satan and yielded in submission under the upper Sion, believing in my Lord Jesus Christ. However, tell me yourself, is there a place under heaven where there are no churches of the Crucified? For things have to be understood spiritually and not corporeally. That he said ‘He will shade with a cloud by day,’ this is written because when He was transfigured on mount Tabor before His disciples, a shining cloud overshadowed them. And again, when He was received from earth to heaven, it is written that ‘a cloud took Him away from their eyes,’ that is, of the disciples. That the prophet called out ‘and as with smoke and the light of a burning fire by night,’ and that ‘He will be covered with all His glory,’ this means: ‘As with smoke’ he says about the mental gloom, that is, the body, which He bore to hide His divinity before you unbelieving Jews, and did portents in order to remain unknown, so that what Isaiah said might be fulfilled: ‘He has made their heart hard’ and so on. And David: ‘And He made darkness,’ that is the body, ‘their hiding-place,’ that is His divinity from the unbelieving. For smoke and darkness can have no other effect than to obscure the eyes and make them blind, so that the man standing in the smoke, that is, the one thrown into darkness, cannot see well the things before him. For God always blinds the minds of the unbelieving and vulgar people. He Himself was light like the light of a burning fire by night, for He said also: ‘I came as a light into the world.’ He burned, that is, He shone on the inaccessible divinity through the signs and wonders to the Jews of that time which were in the night of life, who saw, that is, out of whom many were enlightened and believed. ‘He will be covered with all His glory:’ When He was crucified He was glorified so highly by the Father and honored so much on earth by the men being with truth, that all kingdoms under heaven honor Him, confessing Him to be the true God and Lord, master, king and Savior, that they adore, worship and venerate Him. When he says that ‘He will be in the shade of the day from the heat,’ he calls the spiritual work day, and the inflamed arrows of the evil heat. Now on all days of this age my Lord Himself shades and guards and watches all those who love Him, not only from the heat of evil, that is of the mind, which incites the souls of men to work the iniquities of the devil, but also ‘from the mishap of the demon of noonday’ and the remaining tyranny of Satan, which is hardness and bad rain; for this is distortion, irrational and impure thoughts. This, O Herban, is explained and interpreted in that way. Listen what the prophet says about the congregation of you Jews going on in the same prophecy: ‘Thus says the Lord: I have planted a Sorech vinestock,’ Sorech is translated as 'right vine-twig,' clearly speaking about Abraham. ‘And I fenced and fortified it and built a watch-tower in the midst of it, I made a wine-press in it and waited that it should make grapes, but it made thorns. And now, man of Judah and you inhabitants of Jerusalem, judge between Me and My vineyard. What more should I do to My vineyard that I have not done to it, for I waited that it should make grapes, but it made thorns?’ And He goes on to tell of your destruction and what should happen to you saying: ‘Now I will tell you what I will do to My vineyard.’ Here listen precisely, Herban, to the dissolution of your congregation. ‘For I will take away,’ He says, ‘the fence and leave it to plundering.’ And what is the fence? At all events is is the law which surrounds the vineyard which was shifted from Egypt to the Promised Land, fencing it with a circle of ordinances. Who are the plunderers? Of the senses, the Assyrians, Persians, Romans; of the mind, the wicked demons of the heresies; for you have violated the law of Moses by various heresies. ‘And I will demolish its enclosure,’ He says, ‘and it will be trampled under foot.’ What is the enclosure? The right hand of the Highest which is the outwork and safeguard of those that love Him. Who are those that trample under foot? The enemies that take you captive and rule your congregation either mentally or physically, (being nations,) of which I see finally Pilate and those before him. ‘And I will give up My vineyard,’ that is, I will leave it desolate, ‘and it will not be pruned nor dug,’ that is, I will not take care of it. ‘And thorns will come up there as in a dry land,’ that is, great sin will be found in it, He says, as in a unlawful and untended nation which lives in great folly and ignorance. ‘And I will command the clouds not to rain on it.’ What are the clouds? The prophecies and the books of the law, and rain is the words and showers the thoughts. These I command, says God, that they do not offer the thoughts easily to you Jews. For you have been completely blinded and cannot understand the real sense of your holy Scripture. And so you do not say that the prophet said this obscurely about another section and not about your congregation, he went on making the prophecy plain, or rather more pure: ‘For the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth,’ he says, ‘is the house of Israel, and the man of Judah a beloved new plant,’ that is David's royal genealogy from Judah. Now is this not so concerning you, you unbelieving Jew? And you sit here and still await to be recalled. ‘Salvation is far from the sinners.’ For if God will rebuilt later what He has dissolved, or rather brought to completion, it is bold to say that He makes Himself a transgressor. God can never become a transgressor, for He does not forget as you do.”
Herban: “You have learnt to be very loquacious and to drive out the hope of Israel. But you will not terrify me at all, for Isaiah says, making clear the truth about the recalling of Israel: ‘And on that day it will come to pass that God will again stretch out His hand desiring to recover the remaining remnant of the people and to seek for it, that will be left from the Assyrians and from Egypt, from Babylon and Ethiopia, from the Elamites and from the rising sun, from Arabia and the islands in the sea. And He will set up a sign for the nations and will gather the lost people of Israel, and He will gather the scattered people of Judah from the four wings of the earth. And the envy of Ephraim will be taken away and the enemies of Judah will perish. And it will be to Israel as on the day when he went out of Egypt. And you will say,’ he says, ‘on that day: I praise Thee, O Lord, because Thou wast angry with me,’ and later: ‘Thou hast turned Thine anger away from me and had pity on me.’ Now show me whether this is not so. For not only will Israel be recalled, he says, but also the enemies of Judah, who are you Christians, will perish. This is the content of the unerring prophecy, if the prophet does not lie.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You have said the things useful to you, and passed over in silence the things useful for me. What does the prophet say in the section quoted by you?”
Herban: “And what does he say? Answer yourself.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “‘Thus says the Lord,’ he says: ‘It will happen on that day there will be the root of Jesse and the One that stands up to rule the nations; in Him the nations will trust.’ And that you do not say that the One that stands up to rule the nations is an enemy of God, he went on that He is from the root of Jesse, and that, he says, ‘His rest will be glorious.’ Listen that he, the prophet, called the divine honor His rest. Now be assured that the one that stood up to rule the nations came from God, for His rest was also called honor. And if he goes on after this that ‘He will set up a sign for the nations and will gather the outcasts of Israel, and He will bring together the scattered people of Judah,’ I have said before that He did not gather you once or twice, but often. But since you have remained in the same disobedience afterwards, you were scattered again in good time and have remained in the same scattering until now. And this has been given to you from me as an excuse according to your word. But if you want to learn the truth, what this prophecy reveals and what it means clearly in truth, listen: ‘Thus says the Lord,’ he says: ‘It will happen on that day there will be the root of Jesse and the One that stands up to rule the nations.’ What else is the root of Jesse but my Lady and Theotokos Mary who was from the tribe of Jesse? Who is the One Who stands up to rule the nations? Jesus Christ Who became flesh from her. You observe at all events that He rules the nations, and see that the nations trust in Him. And there is no satiety in it that ‘His rest will be glorious.’ He calls His passing away ‘rest,’ that is, His death, which He gave hanging on the cross. And the prophet goes on immediately and says: ‘It will happen on that day.’ On which day? Clearly the one on which He rises and stands up to rule the nations. If you will say that it was not on this day, show me about which day he speaks. For if you say that this day is the end of the world, the prophet should also have called it the end of the world. But you will not be able to assert this. Therefore ‘on that day God will again stretch out His hand.’ To whom will God add the returning nations when he receives them? He will also add from Israel the true Israelites that kept the law well and readily went over to Christianity, because they believed in Him, that is, He chose them and brought them over to Christianity not only from Jerusalem, but also from all ends of the world. For when His disciples were dispersed into the twelve winds, which are under heaven, also a large number of the Jews that were scattered in all the world believed in Him with their whole house and were gathered with the believing nations in the Church. Now he says that ‘He will set up a sign for the nations.’ What else is the sign but the worthy cross? For through it ‘He will gather the outcasts of Israel’ unto salvation, ‘and He will bring together the outcasts of Judah’ into the kingdom of heaven. But if you will say: 'And where was the cross called a sign in the Old Testament?,' then David says to God prophesying about the cross: ‘Show me a sign for good’ and so on. This is certainly so according to the divine judgment of the Spirit.”
Herban: “The prophet has said ‘to search for the remaining remnant of the people’ in a general sense. And you say that he spoke securely only about those that were dragged away from the law and believed in Christ?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “What is written about the law? ‘Accursed be everyone,’ he says, ‘who does not continue in the book of the law to do it.’ Now those who do not keep the law are not worthy to be reckoned with the people that keep it. In the same way, though all the Christians are called Christians, only those that keep the commandments of the Christians are worthy to be called Christians, and those who do not keep them should rather be called unchristians. And so in those days in truth only the people who kept the law of Moses precisely, listened immediately to Christ when He came and were awed by the God of the law and believed in his only-begotten and beloved Son. So the God of the law saw that those who did not keep the law of God before Christ but served the devil by their evil works, would also in the same way, as they did not fulfill their duty according to the law of Moses, similarly not fulfill their duty when believing in Christ, but would perform the unlawful things they had done being under the law also after having become Christians. He blinded their heart and made it hard, and they did not believe and perished. For this reason, the prophet and also I myself have called with good reason and still do call only the perfect ones Israel and God's people and Judah. But you, what will you say about this?”
Herban: “If this is so, for what reason did the prophet say, that ‘the envy of Ephraim will be taken away and the enemies of Judah will perish?’ Who is Ephraim and who are the enemies of Judah? Tell me.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The Hebrews from the tribe of Ephraim in the days of the prophet Isaiah reigned separately, having split off from the tribe of Judah together with the other tribes, and those of the tribe of Judah, having conquered all of Palestine, reigned there. Therefore the kingdom of Ephraim was so strongly envious against Judah, that is the kingdom of David, that internecine wars broke out between them. Now when Isaiah, being a prophet, saw that Christ will arise in truth from the tribe of Judah, Whose kingdom remains forever through Christianity, and the kingdom of Ephraim will be dissolved on the spot when he will arise, he carried on with the following word, that when the Lord Jesus will arise, he says, out of the tribe of Judah, ‘the envy of Ephraim will be taken away’ henceforth, that is, the hatred, his kingdom being dissolved, and they ‘will perish’ being ‘the enemies of Judah,’ that is, of the Lord and king that arises from the tribe of Judah. For where did Isaiah speak obscurely this word about the passing away of the kingdom of Ephraim? When ‘in the days of Ahaz the son of Joatham, the son of Ozias king of Judah, Rezin the king of Aram and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel,’ that is from the tribe of Ephraim, ‘went up’ to besiege Jerusalem, ‘thus said the Lord of Sabaoth: This counsel will not endure.’ And a little later, ‘and after sixty-five years the kingdom of Ephraim will disappear from the people.’ For this reason he said, that ‘the envy of Ephraim will be taken away’ and so on.”
Herban: “And for what reason does the same prophet go on and say: ‘And it will be to Israel as on the day when he went out of Egypt’? For he has displayed this exodus in a way similar to the old exodus from Egypt.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Corporeally Israel went out of Egypt and, being liberated from corporeal slavery, inherited the Promised Land. But now, by mentally leaving sin, he was redeemed from the curse of the law; then he also put off the old garment of sin and put on the new one, which was renewed by water and spirit; and leaving all sin completely behind like the land of Egypt, he settled in the new Jerusalem, in the Church, as in another Promised Land. And this was such a gladness and delight for him, inheriting this extraordinary joy spiritually, which is even better than the exodus from Egypt. Therefore the prophet said: ‘And it will be to Israel as on the day when he went out of Egypt.’”
Herban: “I have said before that discussing with an allegorist we will not master the matter in question, however many testimonies from the law and the prophets we may introduce. But now, since I yet have something to say, I will not stop my speech. What does the prophet Ezekiel declare? ‘Thus says the Lord,’ he says: ‘I will take you from the nations and will gather you from all tribes and will lead you into your own land, and I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be cleared from all your impurities and from all your idols, and I will clean you. And I will give you a new heart, and a clean spirit I will give you, and I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh, and I will give My spirit to you, and I will cause you to walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them. And you will settle in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you will be My people, and I will be your God.’ Now if the prophet does not say so, explain it. For behold, this is a clear testimony which contains no contradiction whatsoever.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I will not begin to say many words about this prophecy in order to convince you. For Ezekiel did not speak of the Jews, but about the vocation of the nations, for he said that ‘I will clean you from your idols.’ And now tell me, did God really clear Israel from their idols, or the nations which venerated idols? Did the nations which went astray possess a heart of stone, or those that worshipped the holy God through the law of Moses? Did the Israelites first walk in the lawful statutes, or the nations which had no law? Was Israel not God's people before, or only later called God's people, as the prophet says, not having been so previously? Had Israel not yet received the Spirit of God, but had a claim to get it later? You expect in vain, Herban, for this prophet spoke about things expected and not about things that have happened long ago.”
Herban: “‘I will take you from the nations,’ He says, ‘and will lead you into your own land,’ and you declare absurdities. ‘And you will settle,’ He says, ‘in the land which I gave to your fathers,’ and you explain strange things. Now tell me yourself, should God gather nations from nations, as you say, if he will settle the nations in the land of their fathers? What do the nations and the Hebrews have in common? Do you speak right, archbishop? It is not so, it is not.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You said that God chooses nations from nations. Yes, He has chosen nations from nations. In which way? He selected the believing nations out of the unbelieving. And concerning what you said, 'will He settle the nations in the city of Jerusalem in the land of their fathers?,' I should be concerned whether you have no eyes. For look around and see, how all Jerusalem is full of Christians and in no way of Jews. For this word has been said to Abraham from the Lord, ‘All nations will be blessed in you,’ and God has fulfilled it by His judgment. And concerning what you said, 'What do the nations and the Jews have in common?,' listen to what Isaiah said: ‘Thus says the Lord,’ he says: ‘Behold, I come to gather all nations and languages, and they will come and see My glory, and I will leave a sign among them and will send out those of them that have been saved to the nations.’ And who are those of the nations that have been saved, whom the Lord will send out? The heralds of Christ, the hierarchs that have been appointed by the twelve apostles to tend the churches of Christ everywhere. ‘I will send out,’ he says, ‘those that have been saved to the nations, to Tarshish, Phud and Lud, to Mosoch and Thobel, to Greece and the distant islands, which did not hear My name nor see my glory; and they will tell my glory among the nations and will bring your brothers from all nations as an offering to God, with horses and chariots.’ Listen, Herban, Isaiah said this speaking to those Jews that were beloved by God before the arrival of Christ: ‘They will bring your brothers from all nations as an offering to God,’ so that the faithful Jews before the arrival of Christ and those living later, that believed in Him when He came, and all those out of the nations that believed in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, became most beloved brothers and related by blood, loving truth and being beloved, as Isaiah also testifies. So with what intention did you say, 'What do the nations and the Hebrews have in common?' If you want to learn the truth, there is nothing in common between the Christians and those Hebrews that do not believe in Christ. But Hebrews that believe in Christ are regarded as worthier than those that believed from the nations, the reason being that the salvation for us, the nations, came from the Jews. Now examine whether I did not speak according to experience.”
Herban: “I praise your words, as God lives, when you explain them wisely and according to truth. But again Isaiah says: ‘God said: I will lead the seed of Jacob and of Judah out, and he will inherit my holy mountain.’ Now since God gave us Jerusalem as our inheritance, who will be there to resist or also to contradict? We were expelled for a short and small time, but now we will receive our property back and will inherit it as in the beginning.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Again the same Isaiah says: ‘The Lord said,’ Those of the sons of Israel that come from the nations ‘will bring Me their offerings, with psalms into the house of the Lord, and from them I will take priests and Levites for Me.’ Look how the Lord, Who has fulfilled the law, has also foretold the change of priesthood through his prophets. ‘And from them,’ he says, ‘I will take priests, said the Lord.’ Now since the Lord has spoken, why do you still give orders yourself? ‘As the heaven,’ he says, ‘will be new and the earth will be new, which I make to endure before Me, says the Lord, so will your seed and your name be firm,’ that is through the belief in Christ, those of you that have become believers in Christ. ‘And it will happen that from one moon to the other,’ indicating the various feasts of the Christians, ‘and from Sabbath to Sabbath,’ the days of the resurrection, ‘all flesh will come,’ he says, ‘to worship before Me in Jerusalem, said the Lord.’ Listen, he says ‘all flesh will come.’ The One Who said to you Jews, 'Do not have dealings in anything with a foreigner, do not do any business with him, do not eat or drink' and so on, the same One says: ‘All flesh will come to worship before Me in Jerusalem, said the Lord, and they will go out and will see remains of men,’ that is of the unlawful Jews that had lived in this place before, he says, and they will see the remains of those that died, that is their bones. And that you may understand that Israel was cast off because of his sins and was made abominable and hated because of his uselessness and given to complete destruction not only in this age, but also in the future one, the prophet went on, saying that those that will come out of every flesh to worship God through the belief in Jesus Christ will see ‘the commandments of the law concerning the transgressors,’ their naked bones lying there for their greater shame. And in the future age ‘their worm will not die and their fire will not be extinguished, for they will be seen by all flesh.’ Now when you hear the Lord saying through the prophet: ‘Behold, I will come to gather all nations and languages,’ and that ‘all flesh will come to worship before Me in Jerusalem,’ do not say anything to me anymore, but see now that seventy-two languages believing in Jesus Christ, the God of the law and the Father of Christ, continually go up to Jerusalem and worship, calling the unbelieving Jews miserable. Seeing this be silent, yield to truth and do not fight against God. And concerning what you have said, that ‘God said: I will lead the seed of Jacob and that of Judah out, and he will inherit my holy mountain,’ listen, for this is not explained as you assumed, but as I will show. The seed of Jacob consisted of twelve tribes; so he did not mention even one of the remaining seeds, but only that of Judah. Judah is the seed of Jacob, and my Lord Jesus Christ is from the seed of Judah. Every Christian is a mental seed of Christ, that is, a spiritual one. Now the prophet said about this seed, which was grafted by Jesus Christ into the seed of Judah and Jacob: I will lead it out after its spiritual work when it passes away, and it will inherit the kingdom of heaven. Truly that holy mountain is Jerusalem, the upper metropolis of Sion. For mount Sion, which exists on earth and is earthly, will not be called holy, I think, being dust of the earth and ashes; and also no one of those that dwelt on it once ago inherited it, for those that dwelt there have passed away, those of today die and those of old times have died.”
Herban: “The Christians found you to be a big workshop full of heavy words and have put you on the throne as their champion, for you are a frightful distorter of words. Perhaps you would distort even heaven and earth with your words, if it comes into your mind, and the things under the earth; but now you will not encounter us simply by the way as people being unable to answer you. And that you may understand more clearly, that the Lord loves Israel exceedingly, hear what Isaiah says: ‘God said: I am God, in the beginning and also in the coming time; I saw the nations and they were afeared. The ends of the earth were astonished; they came near and came together, and everyone decided to help his neighbor and his brother.’ So you too, archbishop, following this consideration are from the nations which were afeared, and came to help your neighbor and your brother, that is, the nations of the same race as you; for he pretends to bring salvation to them. And he casts off the royal priesthood, the holy nation of Israel, ordering that it should be set at naught and in despair day by day. What does Isaiah the helper now say to ‘his neighbor and his brother?’ He will speak about those, I think, that renewed the idols. ‘A carpenter and a beating copper-smith, who also strikes his hammer, were strong, and once he will say, this is a good joint. They have fastened them with nails,’ that is the idols, and ‘having made them they will put them,’ he says, ‘on the earth and they will not be moved.’ Because of this the nations around you boast. But now listen what he orders concerning Israel: ‘So far,’ he says, ‘to the nations. But you, Israel, My son Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham whom I have loved, whom I have helped from the end of the earth and called from her watch-towers and said to you: You are My child, I have chosen you and did not leave you alone. Do not be afeared, for I am with you, do not go astray, for I am your God that strengthens you, and I have helped you and supported you with My lawful right hand.’ Listen, my great lord, and wonder what a great love the holy God has towards Israel. Hear words full of love and immense ardor: ‘I have supported you,’ He says, ‘with My lawful right hand. And behold, all your opponents will be ashamed and afeared. For they will be as if they would not exist, and all your adversaries will perish. You will seek them and will not find men that will maltreat you. For those that fight against you will be as if they would not exist, for I am your God that holds your right hand, saying to you: Do not be afeared, I have helped you, do not be afeared, Jacob, you few of Israel. I have helped you, says God Who has redeemed you, the holy One of Israel.’ Now is it not so? Does not God say this through the prophet about the Hebrews? So stop henceforth and do not cause me troubles anymore.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You have stated the prophecy, but you do not know about whom he speaks.”
Herban: “At all events the prophet speaks about Israel and talks about Jacob and explicates about the seed of Abraham. And I should not know what he says? He declares that he was invited ‘from the end of the earth,’ that is, from Egypt, to the Promised Land, and you say this and that?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “When you hear the words ‘You, Israel, My son Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham whom I have loved,’ O Herban, do not roam about, for he does not say that about the Jewish people, but about my Christ who was God from God and in the last days for the salvation of men became a man from the seed of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob (for Ishmael was also born from Abraham). Now in order that you might not say that he was perhaps born from the tribe of Ishmael, because this is also the seed of Abraham, therefore He said: ‘Seed of Abraham and My son Jacob whom I have loved.’ If you will say that it is not as I say, show me yourself in which time God did not forsake you. Are you not scattered unto the ends of the world, are you not a reproach, are you not forsaken both by God and by me? The prophet says: ‘For I am with you, and I am your God that strengthens you, and I have helped you and supported you with My lawful right hand.’ So where now is God with you Hebrews, that even the impure nations that do not believe in Christ beat you and have you as an object of malignant joy? In which way do you now receive power from the Lord today, being so powerless, that you do not even have the force of a gnat to bite your enemies? So where is God now as your helper and in which matter, since you are withered and idle according to experience? Where have you been supported with his lawful right, in which freedom from emotion, in which solitary place, in which glory or honor or power? Are you not like dust, or also troubled in your face like fog? Behold, the Jews are behind you, behold, you yourself too. Those that want may look unto your faces. Are they not dust, have they not become ashes, and from where? Because there is no grace of God in you, because you do not have the Holy Spirit in your souls. Have not you been cut asunder from yourselves unto the ends of the world because of your evildoing and unbelief, like a torn vest and a decayed garment? When were all those ashamed and afeared that were opposed to you? Where are all your adversaries as if they would not exist? When did you seek them, and those that maltreated you could not be found? Where is God holding your right hand and leading you to some good luck? Where are you, being humiliated like a worm in your spirit, you proud and heavy-hearted Jewish people? How does it happen that you are so few that have achieved redemption from the Lord, sitting in all the earth like a grasshopper, being spat upon and not receiving any redemption from the Lord? You are mistaken, O Herban, for the prophet has told of all this about my Christ and God. Truly, did not God choose and call him, did He not sanctify and love him, did He not leave him, did He not strengthen and help and support him with His great right hand? Answer, who else has now been glorified, who rules, who is strong and almighty but Jesus Christ my Lord and God? Are you Hebrews not in the greatest shame and dishonor, having transgressed, and moreover opposing Him? Did you not appear as if you existed not? For where can you be seen? You, the enemies of the Crucified, are searched for and not found, because you have maltreated Him, crucifying the holy and sinless One. Now you should know that the prophet said about you: ‘Behold, all your opponents will be ashamed and afeared.’ For nobody is so much hostile to the Lord Jesus as you accursed unbelievers. For those that resist Him from the other heresies are particularly opposed to Him, just as to you. Now do not lead me around biding time, O Jew. For my God has given me eyes of my mind, and I see thoroughly the truth which lies in the depth of the Scripture. But you, blind man, cannot decoy me.”
Herban: “And if this is so, with what intention do you address your Christ as God, if my God has chosen and loved and helped and called him, did not forsake him, and strengthened and supported him with his right hand? Surely then he is no God, as you say, since the prophet says about Him: ‘For I am your God that strengthens you.’ How do you now call him your God and Savior, Who cannot do anything without my God, as the prophecy testifies?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Although you have received so much evidence about Him, you have not understood yet, as I see, in which natures my Master existed. Did I not say on the preceding day that my Lord Jesus Christ was God and man? And which God? The One that says, that ‘I am God, the first.’ And when He says, ‘and also in the coming time,’ about which coming thing does He speak but about the mystery of His coming in the flesh? Now since God was also man, at all events His divinity helped His humanity. Therefore His divinity says to His humanity: ‘I have chosen Thee,’ that is, to be within Me in my subsistence, and ‘I have helped Thee,’ that is through Thee [I have helped] all mankind, He says, which has been baptized in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
Herban: “And where did one of the prophets say obscurely that Christ is God and man in the way you said?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I have told you that Divinity created a humanity for Itself, which is Jesus Christ Who came from the pure blood of the Virgin, which was from the seed of David without intercourse with a man, and that He proceeded being one consisting of two even after His incarnation. And His humanity possessed everything I possess as well except sin, His divinity possessed everything His Father possessed except unbegottenness. For God is unbegotten, and His Word is begotten; His divinity and His humanity are united together in one subsistence, for His flesh was not begotten, but the Word of God instead of seed comes into flesh within the womb of the Virgin, without being turned away or estranged from His divinity. For the divinity is unturnable and unchangeable. Since we have now said, that the Divinity created a humanity for Itself (for He did not want to live among man in His naked essence), Isaiah says about this: ‘Thus says the Lord God, the holy One of Israel’ that created him, ‘Who makes the coming things,’ that is the mysteries of the new grace: ‘I have raised Him with righteousness to be a king, and all His ways are rightful,’ that is of Christ. ‘He will rebuild My city,’ I mean the universal Church, ‘and He will bring back My people from captivity,’ clearly from the deceit and the captivity of the devil. ‘Not for ransom nor offerings, says the Lord God,’ but by the strength of His divinity. And hear also the submission of the nations: ‘Thus,’ says He, ‘says the Lord of Sabaoth: Egypt labored,’ that is serving the deceit, ‘and merchandise of the Ethiopians and Sabeans, men of high stature, will come to you,’ that is when they believe, ‘and will be your slaves, and will follow behind you bound with fetters,’ that is by the security of their submission. ‘And they will come after you and venerate you’ with their belief, ‘and will pray to you, for God is in you,’ that is in His humanity. ‘Thou art God,’ listen, ‘and there is no God beside Thee’; because this is the true Word of God, the prophet says unerringly: ‘For Thou art God and we did not realize it,’ because we were preoccupied with the deceit of idols, ‘the God of Israel,’ even though they did not receive Thee when Thou becamest flesh, but Thou art ‘the savior.’ And going on he says about those that did not believe in Him: ‘All your opponents will be ashamed and afeared,’ be they from us nations or also from you Hebrews. ‘And those will walk in their shame’ for being alienated from truth and unbelieving. Do you listen, Herban, to what the prophet says? Now what will you say about this? Does the man lie who spoke from the mouth of God?”
Herban: “Let it not be, the prophet speaks just in the way you have said. But still I think that He has not come yet, but will come at all events when His time has arrived.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You resemble a snake which is being hunted and beaten by someone, and which, by winding its whole body around the beating man, tries not to surrender its wicked head to death, that is your disbelief and your denial of God's only-begotten Son. For I know well that the proofs from the prophets convince you, but you do not want to come to the truth. For being confirmed by time, a bad habit has become hard to heal in you or even entirely unhealable; and how much will you finally repent when the eyes of your soul will be opened, when you will depart from this life and see, how those that do not believe in Christ will miserably be caught and condemned!”
Herban: “The prophet Moses gave us a command in the Pentateuch saying: I know that in the last age you will be scattered among all nations. ‘Now I call heaven,’ as it is today, ‘and earth for you as witnesses,’ do not be persuaded to bow to another God than to the Lord our God. So it is hard for me to leave the God of the law, Whom you too testify to be the true God, and to worship a new God Who has been introduced from I do not know where. For who is it that assures me that He is in truth Christ, about Whom also the prophets speak rightfully, or rather someone else, and He has not come yet?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If you do not believe your prophets who testify the truth, how will you believe anyone else? For the one that is opposed to his own eyes which instruct him by their sight, how will he easily accept what someone else tells about the same thing? In no way, never! You said about my Christ and God that 'I am unable to believe in a new God,' and when you said so you were filled completely with darkness, I think. For you call the Word of God the Father a new God, which was begotten from the Father before all times, through which heaven and earth and everything in it were created. I will show you that without this ‘new Being’ God the Father does not work anything. And here listen to me: If a man is king, but is speechless, being unable to say a single word, in which way will he make his commandments to the public and to the senate, so that they may please him?”
Herban: “Actually there is no way, except perhaps that he knows to write and with silent mouth scratches his words in short on a board, presents them, and they are done.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “What does happen if he does not know to write?”
Herban: “If he does not know, he will remain inefficient.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Now does it appear that God performs all through his Word, or silently and by a certain order?”
Herban: “Through his word and deeds.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Now it is also written that ‘by the Word of God the heavens were made’ and so on. Now we have found that this Word has become a man in the last days from the seed of David for our salvation, and we know that He is one God together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and we believe in Him. Now how could you say that He is a new God, without Whom God the Father does not work anything? Therefore be silent and do not slander, even if you do not believe.”
Herban: “And which prophet gives me the order to believe in Him?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The God of the law Himself gives you this order, saying through Isaiah: ‘Behold, I will throw a precious stone into the foundations of Sion, and he that believes in Him will not be ashamed.’ Therefore, since God gives you the order to believe in Him, why do you cast Him off, close your eyes and stop your ears and hesitate to come to Him? So if you neglect your God and make Him angry that ordered you to worship His Son, will he ever listen to me or anybody else concerning this? I do not think so, not even if he would bide his time on earth for the lifetime of Methusela.”
Herban: “As I see, also the prophets are found contradicting each other in many things. In some passages they are found to help us Jews, in others you nations.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “They are never found to support or to help the Jews, as you say, but rather condemn them thoroughly; because from the beginning ‘you have become stiff-necked in your heart and uncircumcised in your ears,’ being disobedient towards the Lord ‘and resisting the Holy Spirit’ you have greatly grieved His all-holy name.”
Herban: “Who will be able to gather elegant words ‘above the sand of the seashore’ to meet you in your distortions and speeches? Did not God say to Moses at the burning bush: ‘Behold, I have seen the affliction of My people in Egypt and have come down to redeem them?’ And did not Moses say to God, ‘If I have found grace before Thee,’ and ‘That this nation is Thy people, so show me Thy glory,’ and God, loving His people, which we are, showed him His glory? And when Balaam was summoned to the King Balak to curse our forefathers who had invaded his land, he rather blessed them and did not curse them, seeing that they were God's people. And when Joshua the son of Navee began a mighty war for the salvation of the people, did he not say to the great celestial bodies which shone on the firmament of heaven: ‘The sun shall stand still’ in the south and the moon ‘upon Gibeon,’ until I will have wiped out the enemies of the Lord, and they obeyed showing mercy to the people of the Lord? And God also spoke to Samuel for the salvation of Israel, clearly because He loved his people. And did not King David say feeling pain for Israel: ‘Lord, remember Thy congregation which Thou hast possessed from the beginning; Thou hast redeemed the rod of Thine inheritance?’ And did not the prophet Eliah say to Ahab: Spare your people, for ‘you are the one that troubles Israel,’ [you] ‘and the house of your father’? And Elishai said to himself defending the people: ‘Lord, spare Thy people,’ and ‘the Lord,’ he said, ‘judged in Israel, and did not reveal me, and I am suffering pain all day long.’ And did not Jeremiah say lamenting over the people: ‘Woe is me, Lord, Thou didst let the remnant of Israel perish’? And Isaiah: ‘Where is the magnitude of Thy mercy and compassion, that Thou keepest away from us, Lord? For Thou art our Father, since Abraham did not know us and Israel did not care for us; but Thou, Lord our Father, redeem us. From the beginning Thy name is upon us. Why didst Thou lead us astray, Lord, from Thy way? Thou didst harden our heart so that we did not fear Thee’ and so on. If all these suffered for the people of Israel and defended them, how did you say that the prophets condemn us and do not help us?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I did not say with such an emphasis that He condemned you, than that He helped the prophets. For I omitted the things before; look on those in the end.”
Herban: “And which are those in the end, tell me.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If Isaiah would explain clearly one word of his prophecy outside of his narration, you would become deeply irritated.”
Herban: “Tell it without hesitation.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Isaiah spoke about you because he saw the extraordinary weight of your trespasses, looking from far away with the eyes of prophecy, and that you would not be able to stand on your former feet by your Jewish rites, if you would come to the new law of Christ, and said: ‘Hear, heaven, and listen, earth, for the Lord has spoken: I begot sons and brought them up, but they have despised Me.’ Listen so that you may understand and be irritated. ‘The ox knows his owner,’ he says, that has bought him, ‘and the ass considers the crib of his master,’ where he is fed daily. ‘But Israel,’ he says, ‘did not know Me and the people did not consider Me.’ Do you see how he demonstrates that you are more insensible than the animals? And he goes on: ‘Woe, sinful nation.’ He does not say: Woe, sinful Israel, you have dropped out of your familiarity to God. But what does he say: ‘Woe, sinful nation, people full of sins,’ not in parts, but full, seed no more of Abraham, but ‘a wicked seed,’ sons no more of God, as he said in the beginning, I have begotten sons, but ‘unlawful sons,’ he says. And he adds the denial saying: ‘You have forsaken the Lord and made the holy One of Israel angry.’ See a prophecy with certainty: You have not only forsaken, he says, and denied the One that came in your midst as a Man, that is, our Lord Jesus Christ, but also have ‘made the holy One of Israel angry’ by crucifying Him. Why were you stricken in your heart by the devil, adding other sins? Was the former weight of trespassings not enough, he says, but you still multiply the sins on your heads, slandering the only-begotten Son of God and afflicting punishments on Him? ‘Every head feels pain,’ that you may not say, that some of you were faithful and some unfaithful, and that they did not simply do sins in a smaller degree, but painfully, he says, and wickedly, and ‘every heart is in sorrow.’ Everybody was grieved against his neighbor through envy and wrath and badness, for iniquities became great and love among you became completely cold. He says ‘from the feet unto the head,’ so that you do not say that simply the common people have sinned, but also the king himself and his senate. For this is the meaning of the word ‘From the feet unto’ their ‘head there is no soundness in you, nor a wound’ in a part ‘nor a welt nor a inflamed stroke’ at an end of the body, but from the top until below, deep sickness and overmastering pain and unhealable disease. There is no art or experience which helps in treatment, ‘there is no ointment nor oil to put on’ because of the persistence of sin, ‘there is no bandage’ that could be applied because of your lack of repentance. ‘Your land is desolate,’ that is, the earthly dwellings, being estranged from the Holy Spirit because they are sinful; for if a man is faithful, he is a temple of God. ‘Your cities are burned with fire,’ that is your unlawful congregations, being inflamed with the fire of sin, for there is no counsel of divine action, but plague and the fire of wickedness which is ignited in copulations. ‘Foreigners eat up your land in your presence,’ that is, the inner man and the mind, namely the wicked demons will eat you up like foreigners through dirty and vain reasonings; ‘and it is desolate, destroyed by foreign people,’ that is evil deeds. Listen, Herban, to what Isaiah says, namely the complete desolation of God and His separation from you.”
Herban: “Go through the prophecy below, and you will find it.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “What should we find? Nothing else than precisely at all events your dissolution.”
Herban: “Speak, and we will see which is our dissolution.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If you want, listen. ‘The daughter of Sion will be left,’ he says, ‘like a tent in a vineyard and like a hut in a garden of cucumbers and like a besieged city.’ Now what do you have to say about this? Just as those that dwell in the huts, he says, guard their vineyards and gardens of cucumbers for nothing else than, at all events, because of their fruits, and when the fruit has been harvested from there, these farm-workers return home leaving them, I mean the huts, desolate and uninhabited henceforth and do not watch a grape-vine empty of fruit or a garden of cucumbers, so also did God do with your congregation. For as long as you brought forth lawful fruit in any way whatever before the arrival of Christ. He that fulfills all guarded your tribes as a good watcher and most worthy farm-worker of the temple, dwelling in it just as if another tent had been detached for Him. But when you remained entirely fruitless and brought forth great sin, God saw how unhealable and irremediable you are with regard to the law, and contriving another way to salvation for you, He sent out to you His only-begotten Son as your Savior and Redeemer, if you only would receive Him. But since you had not done what is required by law, you were not distinguished in grace either, and God departed from you and went to the nations, and they received him and He called them the new Israel and bequeathed all your things to them, and the kingdom of heaven. So you ‘were left like a tent in a vineyard and like a hut in a garden of cucumbers and like a city which is besieged’ terribly by everyone. And therefore you are like shameless dogs, talking nonsense and fighting against God, for you do not have any word whatsoever for your excuse.”
Herban: “State the prophecy, as you say, and you will carry it up.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And what does he say after that? At all events that which follows: ‘And if God had not left us behind a seed, we would have become like Sodom and would have been made similar to Gomorrah.’”
Herban: “For this is adequate for us, that the Lord did not destroy us completely, but left us a seed behind. For the seed, about which he says that it was left behind by the Lord, is at all events that we are those that were recently scattered in all the world, but kept safe, so that from the small seed the Promised Land will be sown again in the last days, and the fields of the most beautiful tribe of Israel, that is, of the twelve-leaved wine-twig of the people in the cities of Judah, will be filled.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Having been disappointed so often in your hope to achieve this goal, did you still not give up your shamelessness? But why after all should we inflict reproaches on you? For you take the place of a dog: It is a custom of the dogs to be beaten and thrown out of the house, and then, being shameless, to forget the blows they suffered before and to enter the house again, and thereafter to be beaten and thrust out. Therefore, even after that I will beat your shamelessness and show to you that you talk idly and in vain. I will show you that if you will not be baptized in the Trinity, you will not have a life in yourselves. ‘If the Lord would not have left us behind a seed’: I have announced to you before what exactly the meaning of this is; I say that it has been said about those of Israel that believed in Christ Jesus and were saved. About the unbelieving part it is said later by Isaiah: ‘Hear the word of the Lord, rulers of Sodom, and listen to the law of God, people of Gomorrah.’ Do you see whom he compares you to? You know at all events what the work of Sodom is. And he adds: ‘What is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me, says the Lord,’ so that you may not be proud that God simply needs your sacrifices, and that he will therefore raise your congregations again. ‘I am full of the burnt offerings of rams,’ He says, ‘and of the fat of sheep, and I do not want the blood of bulls and he-goats, not even if you come to appear before Me.’ Bless me, what a hatred, how much evil cold sin does! It has made you who were beloved by God His abominable ones. ‘I do not rejoice,’ He says, ‘not even if you come to appear before Me. For who is it that has required this,’ that is, the sacrifices, ‘from your hand? You will not continue to walk in My courtyard.’ Here listen: For you say that ‘when the Lord will rebuild Jerusalem, He will gather again the outcasts of Israel,’ but here that very same God says to you: ‘You will not continue to walk in My courtyard.’ Now to whom should we listen, to David or to the Lord our God? Rather to both of them; for these sections were suitably said at their respective place and in a convenient way by the Holy Spirit. But you, dull of heart, do not know anything, and convert the words carelessly into absurd thoughts. Now when you hear that God says: ‘You will not continue to walk in My courtyard,’ why are you so shameless? For ‘if you bring Me flour, it is in vain, and incense,’ He says, ‘is an abomination for Me. I am not content with your new moons and Sabbaths and feast days.’ If you hear this, for which reason do you make a dog's face, and offer Him your sacrifices and celebrate your feasts for Him shamelessly, behaving impudently and yielding to your bad mind? Your days, I think, have become a war with God. For God says: ‘My soul hates your fasting and holidays and feasts, you have become disgusting to Me.’ Accordingly, God says that 'whatever you do and practice in your Jewish rites, all this My soul hates'. Now why are you so shameless and offer Him your sacrifices? Let it be, for you have only the trouble with it and set yourself against God and will not be rewarded forever. For He says also: ‘You have become disgusting to Me, and I will not bear your sins any more.’ Do you see God's wrath and severity? Just as someone suffers infinitely many bad things by somebody and cannot bear them any longer, and says, harboring much hatred: 'I do not bear you any longer because of the multitude of your sins, but I will take revenge upon you,' in the same way God says: ‘You have become disgusting to Me,’ that is, disgusting, full of gall and anger, therefore ‘I will not bear,’ that is, carry ‘your sins any more,’ but will take vengeance, or rather thrust you off from My face. For He adds the following part of the prophecy, saying: ‘If you stretch out your hands to Me, I will turn away My eyes from you.’ Lord, spare those that believe in Thee! This is an awful saying, and God's hatred towards the Jews is ineffable, because of their sins and their abominable transgressions, their self-confidence, their inclination to grumble, and their lack of submission. Now hear, Herban, and be irritated. For it is not me that has invented or composed or written an account about this, that you may not say: 'You have introduced this in our midst opposing my faith.' But God Himself punishes you saying: 'Do not stretch out your hands in your Jewish rites towards Me from that day onwards, on which I will send My only-begotten Son to you. For if not, I will turn away My eyes from you, I will not hear you all the years of your life,' He says, 'from the day onwards on which you heard that the Son of God came and you did not believe; if you stand there like a Jew and multiply your prayer to Me, I will not hear you.' For which reason? ‘For your hands,’ He says, ‘are full of blood, that is, from the murder of My Son, since you killed His humanity, pouring out His worthy blood; and not only His, but also of the apostles of My Son and His remaining saints.’ For because they believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God, you killed them and removed them from the earth. Therefore He says, ‘if you multiply your prayer, I will not hear you.’ Now why do you still worship in the law of your God, if He does not accept your intercessions which are in vain? And what is the reason? ‘For your hands are full of blood.’ Which blood? ‘I call heaven,’ as it is today, ‘and earth as witnesses,’ and the sea and God Who is incessantly glorified as one in His Trinity, that He says most of this or accuses you because of that worthy blood of our Lord Jesus, which you poured out lawlessly, for no other reason than that if you will not be baptized in the Trinity, you will not be cleansed of this sin forever. Therefore also the prophet, or rather God goes on after this saying: ‘Wash you, make you clean; take away the wickednesses of your souls before My eyes,’ that is, be baptized in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, separate from the law, confessing also ‘the wickednesses of your souls before My eyes,’ that is before My divinity, and so on. If all this convinces your insensible heart, grace and peace; if it does not convince you, ‘the sword will devour you. For the mouth of God has said this.’”
Herban: “The prophet did not speak about your Baptism, that you washed yourselves for Him, but there were at all times holy vessels before the outer door of the temple of Solomon. And there was a law that one who had committed a sin, if he wanted to repent, should say this to the priests and was forbidden to enter the temple for his fault. And when the time had been completed, he washed himself and was healed in his soul, and henceforth, entering the temple without scruple, he accomplished his veneration again. So the prophet spoke obscurely about this bath, and not about your Baptism, as you say.”
When these things had been said on the second day between Herban and the most holy archbishop, the king rose and they went away without saying farewell; and the Jews rejoiced about Herban, for he had shown himself adequate in the discussion with the bishop, and the Christians were astonished about the blessed Gregentios, for the grace of the Holy Spirit was with him.
Dialogue Γ (3)
On the third day, when the most pious king and the archbishop presided again and all had assembled, Herban also came with his guard. And when he was present, Saint Gregentios said: “You said yesterday that ‘Wash you, make you clean’ has been said about the lawful bathing-tubs and not about the Baptism of the Christians. So that God who has spoken to you, who also said that ‘the daughter of Sion will be left like a tent in a vineyard and like a hut in a garden of cucumbers,’ that is, [left void] of His support, and that ‘I do not want, not even if you come to appear before Me,’ and that ‘you will not continue to walk in My courtyard, and if,’ He says, ‘you bring me flour, it is in vain, and incense is an abomination unto Me,’ and that ‘I am not content with your new moons and Sabbaths and feast days,’ that is, I have no need of it from now on, and that ‘my soul hates your fasting and holidays and feasts,’ and that ‘you have become,’ He says, ‘disgusting to Me,’ and ‘if you stretch out your hands to Me, I will turn away My eyes from you,’ and ‘if you multiply your prayer, I will not hear you:’ Now if He cast all this off and hated it and ordered not to offer sacrifices according to the law, and has sworn to refuse the prayers of your souls and the intercessions and raisings of hands, did He really care only about the bathing-tubs of your temple? It is superfluous to say this. God has spoken obscurely and secretly about the Baptism of Christians without any controversy, and you have no power to oppose this.”
Herban: “What shall we do with you, archbishop, since there exists not a single word which you do not distort, and there is no prophecy which you do not transfer? Now how does the prophet go on after these words? That this is so because of our sins and because we have made the holy God angry, there is no contradiction among the prudent ones. Save that you expel us from our hope completely and assure us that there will not be any use of the law from now on, the prophet adds and says, contradicting you: ‘I will turn My hand upon you and purely purge you; I will let the unbelievers perish’ away from you ‘and will take away all unlawful from you, and I will assemble your judges as before and your counselors as at the beginning. And afterward you will be called town of righteousness, faithful city of Sion.’ You listen to what the prophet says and understand how he then bears witness beforehand about our recalling. For after having said these terrible things, which will happen to us, He went on: ‘I will assemble your judges as before and your counselors as at the beginning.’ Now if He had the intention of raising another law or of establishing a new religion, He would not have said, ‘I will assemble your judges as before and your counselors as at the beginning.’ For 'before' and 'at the beginning' have the notion of uniting in relation to the exemplary character of the law. ‘And you will be called town of righteousness,’ He says, ‘faithful city of Sion.’ Now what do you think about this?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “This was done when Jerusalem was taken captive. For the people returned from captivity, and since the unlawful had been killed in it, those that were saved were conscientious and feared the Lord, and judged justly as at the beginning and held counsel in a sound way as before, walking in the law of God; and not even I do contradict here. For the prophet himself reveals this when going on: ‘Her captivity will be saved with judgment,’ that is, of Jerusalem, ‘and with mercy,’ seeing that she will return.”
Herban: “If we come in, you thrust us out, and if we then go out, you make us enter again. It is better to be silent and to leave.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And do you order me to descend to your level and to become a Jew? You will be unable to do so. Hear what your prophet says thereafter about you, so that you may understand this: ‘The word that went out to Isaiah the son of Amos concerning Judah and Jerusalem.’ Where from? Clearly from God. Concerning what? ‘Concerning Judah,’ he says, ‘and Jerusalem.’ In which way? ‘That in the last days the mountain of the Lord and the house of God will be manifest on the top of the mountains and will be exalted above the mountains.’ Now what, was that mountain invisible and unseen until the last days? Or was the house, which Solomon erected, built somewhere in the lowest part of the earth, and both were lacking, so it could be seen and appeared, and then it was exalted and brought up? In no way, never, but it will be, he says, more famous and admired and wished to be seen not by you Jews, who have profaned it, but by the nations that came to believe in Christ. ‘And the house of God will be raised to the top of the mountains.’ Which house? The temple of Solomon? Let it not be! Go and you will see that it is razed to the ground. But which house? The one where the Nazarene was buried and dwelt three days and three nights, and rose from there, and immediately the temple was built over the grave and is addressed as the Holy Resurrection [Church]. And when he declares that ‘it will be raised to the top of the mountains,’ it will be raised in glory and honor, he says. Of which mountains? Clearly those of the world, on which mountains the nations formerly went up when they were going astray and sacrificing to the idols most hatefully. ‘And it will be exalted,’ he says, ‘above the hills.’ Which hills? Those of the creation, on which hills the temples of the carven images were founded. The nations, he says, will leave the mountains and hills and all their deceit, where they were venerating the demons. And they will come to the most famous mount Sion and to the new temple of the Holy Resurrection, that is, [the one] in Jerusalem. ‘And many people will come and say: Come on, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and the house of Jacob, and He will tell us His way and we will walk in it.’ You see a clearly composed prophecy, in which there is not even one comparison, but truthful speech.”
Herban: “He declares that the nations will come to the house of the God of Jacob. Now how do you transfer this word unto that temple which was erected by the empress Helen?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Well, who told you that the only-begotten Son and Word of God is not the God of Jacob? If you will not become angry: He is the God and Lord of Abraham and Isaac and Joseph and Moses as well. For who did deceive you, saying that we Christians were cut off from the faithful Jews that lived before the arrival of Christ? Let it not be! For we adore those greatly and faithfully, since they piously kept the law of God; but of you, who after the arrival of Christ have appeared to be unbelieving and ungrateful, we are not only disgusted, but also feel a greater loathing.”
Herban: “For which reason is this?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Because when He came, of Whom the law and the prophets testify that He would arrive, you denied and did not receive Him.”
Herban: “One can get a headache when speaking with you. Perhaps the one whom the prophets testified has not come yet. But when He will come, it is impossible that He should not search for His people, whom He redeemed from the slavery of Egypt with fear-inspiring signs and wonders.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “At all events you are speaking about the Antichrist, for it is he whom you expect to come. And woe to you when you will be dying in your sins, having received a wicked animal and a wild wolf instead of a shepherd.”
Herban: “Isaiah said about the final salvations of us Israelites, that in the last day ‘the light of Israel will be like fire, and God will sanctify him in a burning flame, and it will burn and devour the wood like an open field. In that day the mountains and the hill and the thickets will vanish, and will be devoured from soul to flesh. And there will be one that escapes as from a burning flame, and those that remain from them will be few, and a small child will write them. And it will happen in that day, that the remnant of Israel will not attach himself, and the remaining from the house of Jacob will not trust anymore in those that did them wrong, but will trust in the holy God of Israel.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Explain this prophecy to me, for I know that you do not know its meaning.”
Herban: “If I would not know it, I would not have introduced it to you.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Tell me now, if you know it.”
Herban: “At the completion of this life, fire will come down from God possessing a twofold force; and it will be to Israel like a light that can be seen and enlightens his dwelling-place, and will devour all the remaining nations as if turned into a lightning wandering through the whole world, as foreigners and strangers to the law of God. And it will not only devour these, but also those whom it will find as having interrelations in anything with the nations, or also as transgressing the excellent teachings of the law. Only those will then be found in the whole world that will be left behind after that frightful threat of the completion, that is, the burning by fire. And henceforth they will not be in want nor superfluous, but they will be in the world like angels of God that do not trust in anybody else, neither in Christ nor in the Son nor in Jesus nor anybody else, but ‘they will trust in the holy God of Israel.’ This is the solution of the prophecy, as I have said.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “This is a very bad explanation, Herban, and what you have said is full of folly.”
Herban: “I know that you also have in mind to distort this prophecy like those before, in order to support yourself. But now tell us yourself, whatever you want.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “It is written somewhat like this at the beginning of this prophecy. ‘It will happen,’ he says, ‘when the Lord will have performed His whole work on Mount Sinai and in Jerusalem.’ Which whole work? Clearly what the same prophet has prophesied before, that the kingdom of the Jews will disappear, that the Hebrews will be deported into terrible captivity, that the rulers of Israel will perish, whom he compared to Sodom, that the people will be destroyed utterly, whom he equates to Gomorrah, that the law will end, that Jerusalem will be given to the Chaldaeans and plundered by the Romans, that Christ will come, the Son of the living God, that He will work signs and wonders, that He will be arrested, since He was not received by the Jews, that He will suffer a lot, will be crucified and die and be buried and rise from the dead and be accepted into heaven, and will send out His disciples unto the ends of the world and will convince all nations to recognize Him. ‘It will happen,’ he says, ‘when the Lord’ who sits in the highest ‘will have performed His whole work on Mount Sinai and will visit’ dwelling ‘in’ the upper ‘Jerusalem’ of His kingdom, as one might say in good time, ‘his great mind, the ruler of the Assyrians, and the height of the glory of his eyes. For he said: With the strength’ of my hand ‘I will work, and with the wisdom of my understanding I will take away the boundaries of the nations and will plunder their strength, and will shake inhabited towns and leave behind all the inhabited world in my hand like a nest of young birds, and will take them away like abandoned eggs, and there will be nobody who will escape or contradict me opening his mouth and twittering.’ Now what does the prophet say and about whom, that ‘God will look upon his great mind’ which boasts with all that we have said? Who is this mind that is swollen with exceedingly great pride? The prophet himself will explain this, when he says ‘the ruler of the Assyrians,’ that is the kingdom of the Assyrians, which is that of the Persians. For God let this kingdom [attack] and displayed these horrible things in Jerusalem when the chief cook Nebuzardan set the house of God to flames and also deported the people into captivity. Therefore, when that king had done this with the permission of God, he did not meekly understand this in the contrition of his heart, nor did he understand that the things of the world are governed by God's judgments, but it seemed to him that his good luck had befallen him through his own wisdom. And immediately his heart was exalted and his mind was raised, and he boasted with the things written before, saying that all the world would be submitted to him without God's knowledge. So God, refuting their folly through the prophet and wanting to destroy them, went on after the aforementioned words: Hear, he said, you that consider everything not according to God's judgments, but by yourself: ‘The ax will not be glorified without someone who cuts with it,’ so that you cut by it, ‘nor will the saw be exalted without someone who pulls it’ to saw something, ‘nor will the rod be raised by itself’ and beat whatsoever it wants. Introducing a parable for that arrogant kingdom the prophet says: Being guided by these symbols you should perceive and understand, that this world belongs neither to a pursuing nor to a persecuting, but to the conceding and forgiving God, in wars and victories, defeats and various other advantages. Because, he says, you did not want to consider God's whole work in such a way, but arose boasting and exalted yourself excessively in your heart, and imagined great things in your spirit by yourself and not through Me. ‘As true as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘it will not be as you have decided, but I will send,’ He says, ‘dishonor into your honor and fire into your glory,’ I mean that ‘burning’ one of temptations, which also ‘will burn’ greatly. ‘And the light of Israel will be like fire, and he will sanctify him in a burning flame, and it will burn and devour the wood like an open field.’ Here, Herban, is what you look for. For you have explained this word somewhat foolishly. I was forced before to tell you the beginning of the prophecy, so that you may be confirmed with certainty, hearing it word for word, understanding it and knowing the truth. For when the prophet said that ‘the light of Israel will be like fire, and he will sanctify him in a burning flame, and it will burn and devour the wood like an open field,’ speaking about the oppression in captivity and the forced sojourn in a foreign land, the reproach of the nations, the pain and affliction and fear of death, which came from the king of the Assyrians, and the hunger and thirst, the sleeping on hard earth, the lack of baths and the living in exile, which they suffered being chastised as captives and staying in a foreign land, in a comparison he foretold darkly about the light of chastisement which by force will devour the intestines like fire. For since they were darkened, living in peace in their own land and sinned without scruple, therefore God raised the king of the Assyrians who marched up and took Jerusalem after the death of the prophet, when Manasseh was king, and deported the people to the land of the Chaldaeans and settled them there, so that the sorrow and distress and the sojourn in a foreign land might enlighten the mind of those, whom the relaxation, drunkenness and wantonness had darkened and enticed them to depart from the orders of God and to neglect them, devouring them like burning fire and reminding them: 'Because we have sinned without scruple living in peace in our own land, therefore we were given to the nations for deportation, although we now keep the law of the Lord living in a foreign land.' Seeing your volatility, He will perhaps turn you back into your land by the divine ways of His power. And look how the deportation into captivity enlightened Manasseh; for when he was saved and returned from there to Jerusalem, he who had been such a great sinner repented and found mercy from God. Therefore, O Herban, the prophet obscurely said this word about this subject, that ‘the light of Israel will be like fire, and He will sanctify him in a burning flame’ who had sinned, which actually has happened, and so on. Concerning the king who took him captive, inasmuch as he was raised and did not consider all before God, but was exalted in his heart threatening to take the whole world by his power, God says through the prophet speaking about him: ‘In that day the mountains and the hills and the thickets will vanish, and will be devoured from soul to flesh. And there will be one who escapes as from a burning flame, and those who remain from them will be few, and a small child will write them.’ Now what are the mountains of which he says they will vanish, and what are the hills and the thickets which will be devoured from soul to flesh? Listen, Herban, indicating mountains he speaks about the great satraps of the Assyrians, and introducing hills, about the minor rulers. When he tells of thickets, he means the wildness of their horde, and how they were estranged from the spiritual fruit; for the acorn is the food of pigs, and the deeds of sinners are the food of the demons. For speaking obscurely he called the whole nation of the Assyrians mountains, hills and thickets as being unsuitable for any good fruit, but only for sin which they only harvest like acorns, as it is said, [the sin] on which the demons feed like pigs. ‘The mountains and the hills and the thickets will be devoured from soul to flesh.’ He does not only say that the great and worthy men will be abandoned, but also that their whole tribe will be corrupted. There will hardly remain some few of them, and so few that ‘a small child,’ he says, ‘will write them,’ that is, they will be confined to some mean place in a plain. The remaining ones will proceed ‘from soul to flesh,’ that is from one to many into their perdition, that is, they will die a spiritual and corporeal death at the same time. And those mean people who will escape, will be fleeing, he says, as from a burning flame. And the Scripture is not without testimony that all this later happened to the Assyrians, because they rejoiced over the fall of the Jews and were exalted. For when they were attacked by continuous warfare from the kingdom of the Macedonians, all their magnificence perished one by one, and their great honor was reduced to frightful dishonor according to the word of the prophet. The remnant of Israel from that awful threat of the Almighty, which he put on their kingdom in those days, which was in the land of the Assyrians, will not again be under their hand, as their number was once lessened so much. And those from the house of Jacob who were saved from the land of the Assyrians and returned to Judaea, being redeemed from this terrible captivity and the sojourn in a foreign land, ‘will not trust,’ he says, ‘in those that did them wrong’ and deporting them as captives to their own land, ‘but will trust in the holy God of Israel’ who recalled them from captivity and escorted them to their own native country. This, Herban, is the true explanation of the prophecy, for what you have told before in your explanation are old men's tales.”
Herban: “As I see, there is one knowledge among us and another one among you; so it is necessary for everybody to convince by his knowledge and to be calm.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And if your knowledge is unsafe, what is the difference for you, as you sit here in your vanity and attend with deceptive baits?”
Herban: “And who assures me that my knowledge is vanity?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I have presented the solutions to you according to the question and still do present them, and you say: Who assures me and convinces me?”
Herban: “I shall not bear it to be convinced simply by your words as it happens; for you are my enemy and promote and defend your opinion, but disregard and neglect mine.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If I do not care about the truth before you and before me, I will be estranged from the veneration of and community with the only-begotten Son of my God.”
Herban: “Behold, you say that God has no need of the law anymore, which He had once ago stored up through Moses for us Israelites. With which ears or which heart should I listen to you, if you introduce such things?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Do I not repel you from my Scriptures? Your lips speak against you. Go, be reproached by your fathers. Go there and be condemned by the predictions of your prophets. For I assure you through their words, that God has no need of your law henceforth.”
Herban: “Isaiah said: ‘Sion said: The Lord God has forsaken and the holy God has forgotten me.’ And God answered and said: ‘Will a woman forget her child, that she should not have mercy with the offspring of her womb? And even if a woman should forget these, I will not forget you, says the Lord.’ Now God says, that ‘I will not forget you,’ and you say, that God has no need of us anymore, nor of our law.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You make me angry if you say, that 'you say the things useful for yourself and hide those that are suitable for me.' And as I suspect, it is actually you who play this part. Now what does the prophet say before the things quoted by you? ‘Thus says the Lord,’ he says, ‘I have heard you in an acceptable time and helped you in a day of salvation, and have created and given you, and put you into the covenant of the nations, to set the earth in order and to inherit the legacy of the desert, saying to those in bonds, go out, and to those in the darkness, show yourselves.’ About whom does he say this, teach me.”
Herban: “So even if this should then have been said about us, who are in the bonds of sin and bound in the darkness of deceit, still the God of the law appears who has made and created, that is clearly your Christ, from not being to being, as the prophet says there. Now how do you dare to call Him equal to the God that has created Him?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Did I not tell you above, you fool, that God created His humanity? Did I not say before that He is somehow twofold, true God and perfect man without sin? Now when you hear about creation and position and donation, understand that this is said about His humanity, together with the other things. For the time being, listen here to the things which remained after those said before, how the prophet testifies about the restoration of the nation. For after having spoken, saying ‘to those in bonds, go out, and to those in the darkness, show yourselves,’ he went on: ‘They will be fed in all their ways.’ You see, they will meditate upon all spiritual ways, and rather they will walk working the things which please God, and similar things. ‘His pasture will be in all paths.’ Listen to the testimony: There will not remain one single path for those whom the Lord has found, in which they will not walk working the things which please the Lord. ‘They will not hunger,’ clearly hear the word of the Lord, ‘nor will they thirst’ missing spiritual thoughts, ‘nor will the heat smite them’ nor the youth of sins, ‘nor the sun’ of righteousness Christ, for they will not transgress the law, ‘but His that has mercy upon them’ through the baptismal font of rebirth ‘will deprecate them’ through the Intercessor, the Holy Spirit, ‘and will lead them by the springs of waters,’ clearly their mind, by knowing the sense of the Scripture, of the prophecies and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. ‘And I will make,’ He says, ‘all My mountain a way,’ that is, I will make the impassable ways of the mountains easy for them, ‘and every path their pasture,’ that is, they will first meditate upon My commandments and then fulfill them. ‘Behold, they will come from far away,’ neither from Egypt, where the Hebrews came from, nor from the tribe of Jacob, where the Jews came from, so that you may not say that he speaks about the Jews, ‘but they will come,’ He says, ‘from the north and the sea, and others from the land of the Persians.’ For it is in these regions where those dwell that are believed to be the nations. ‘Rejoice, heaven,’ that is the angels, ‘and the earth be joyful,’ clearly the people who gain salvation, ‘the mountains shall break out in gladness,’ the fruitless nations which proceeded into fruitfulness by their faith, ‘and the hills,’ he says, ‘bring forth righteousness,’ the kings and rulers of the nations that acknowledged Christ, choose truth as righteousness, ‘for God had mercy upon His people.’ That you may not say, Herban, that He called only those from Jacob His people, he says, ‘and He has called the humble of His people,’ that is, those that have been subdued greatly by sin, and will help them. ‘But Sion said,’ he says, that is clearly being jealous, ‘The Lord has forsaken me,’ because He drew the nations to Himself, ‘and God has forgotten me,’ since He has spread His good tidings until the ends of the earth. And the Lord said: ‘Will a woman forget her child,’ this word is said as a comparison; ‘that she should not have mercy on the offspring of her womb’ has been said about the universal judgments of the Almighty, which are passed on the world by His mercy. ‘And even if a woman should forget these,’ He says, ‘I will not forget you,’ if you believe in My only-begotten Son and Lord Jesus Christ, ‘says the Lord.’ And look upon me: Did God forget Sion, is she not full of the children of God and of holy churches? Behold that God has spoken to her in such a way, that ‘I will not forsake you, and so on.’”
Herban: “The whole of Christianity does not have another robber like this; for boldly robbing the help which is stored up for us from the holy Scripture, you make it the champion of your own support. But now listen to what the prophet Joel declares prophesying about you nations, that in the last days this will be your misfortune, and then hear what he assures again about Israel and Jerusalem and Sion, and also which will be her redemption from God the almighty. Thus says the Lord, he says: ‘Let all nations be raised and come up to the valley of Jehosaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the nations from all around.’ Here look at me, archbishop, what will happen to all nations: There he says, ‘I will sit to judge all the nations from all around. Send out the sickles, for the harvest has come; go out and tread, for the winepress is full, the vessels which are below it overflow, for their badness has become great.’ See here into which judgments and requital those, whom you defend, will fall in the end of the world. ‘Sounds,’ he says, ‘sounded forth in the valley of the trial: The sun and the moon will become dark and the stars will withdraw their shining, the Lord will roar out of Sion and will utter his voice from Jerusalem. And heaven and earth will shake, and the Lord will spare His people.’ See how the Lord spares His people and not the nations, ‘and He will strengthen,’ he says, ‘the sons of Israel’ and not the nations. ‘And you will know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Sion on My holy mountain, and Jerusalem will be holy, and strangers,’ he says, ‘will not pass through her anymore.’ See how he declares that no stranger will pass through her anymore. ‘And it will happen in this day, that the mountains will trickle sweetness and the hills will flow with milk, and all the channels of Judah will flow with water. And a spring will come forth of the house of the Lord and will water the Torrent of the Reeds, Egypt will disappear, and Edom will become a desolated plain for the injustices of the sons of Judah, because they have poured out the blood of the righteous in their land. Judaea will be inhabited forever and Jerusalem from generation to generation. And I will demand their blood and will not hold it guiltless, and the Lord will dwell in Sion.’ Is this so, O archbishop, or different? Please do not distort what I have said, but tell and teach as the truth is.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You think to master this statement, though you know neither the impulse of the prophecy nor its distinctive marks. For what you have said has not simply been said only about us Christians but also about almost all the earth under heaven and wherever anybody came into the world out of the womb of a woman. And you see, you fool, how many tribes of the nations did not yet receive a call from our Lord Jesus, but resisting by their own deceit and ignorance, they were brought and are still brought down the slippery way to the gaping mouth of Hades. For although Christianity invites all nations to the kingdom of heaven, it does not save them simply by inviting them, nor will those, who have once been baptized be settled in the kingdom of heaven, but only those will become the heirs of heaven that after their Baptism have kept the commandments of the great God and Savior of our souls Jesus Christ. Many of those who had sinned terribly after their Baptism were perhaps able to make good their previous sins by very sincere repentance with labor and zeal, and to attain the kingdom of God. Accordingly, since this prophecy which you have introduced says that all nations will be raised, and orders to send out sickles, it means the universal completion and the resurrection of every man, and the judgment and repayment according to the works of every single man. For it introduces the waning of sun, moon and stars, the voice of the judge out of the heavenly Sion and His speech out of the upper Jerusalem, which is the famous trumpet, the trumpet by which ‘heaven will shake, and the earth’ will give back all its deceased living, righteous ones and sinners. ‘And the Lord will spare His people,’ namely those of the Jews that pleased Him well in the law of the Lord before the arrival of Christ and also believed in Him in a way worthy of God after the arrival of Christ, and also of all nations whom He has chosen and that pleased Him by various virtues. ‘And the Lord will strengthen’ the old and also the new ‘sons of Israel,’ and they will be taken away in the clouds of the air, and He will restore them at His right side. ‘And they will know’ in perfect perception, ‘that He is the Lord their God dwelling in Sion on His holy mountain,’ that is, in heaven. ‘And Jerusalem will be holy,’ not that on earth, where once the temple of Solomon had been built, but the holy one, he says, where nothing is earthly, but everything heavenly. ‘And strangers will not pass through her anymore,’ that is, those that happen to stand at the left side of the judge, for he calls those in sins strangers; but they will go on, he says, to eternal punishment, and the righteous to eternal life. ‘And it will happen in this day, that the mountains’ of the kingdom of heaven ‘will trickle sweetness’ of hymns and melodies to enjoy the saints, which are the multitude of God's angels, ‘and the hills will flow with milk,’ the beginning of the divine feasting, which are the heads of the angels, the commanders-in-chief of God. ‘And all the channels of Judah will flow with water.’ The mental veins he calls channels which send forth the living water, and the springs which gush forth the life-giving liquid the outflow of the kingdom of heaven. For as on earth waters gush forth from the veins and the world drinks, in the same way do also the spiritual waters in heaven and the angels and all the saints of God drink. He declares the Lord Jesus to be Judah, because he has risen in His body from the tribe of Judah. ‘And a spring,’ he says, ‘will come forth of the house of the Lord and will water the Torrent of the Reeds.’ He declares that ineffable and inexpressible gladness and joy and pleasure and the sweet smell of the Holy Spirit to be a spring which goes out of the Almighty Himself inexplicably and without end, and gives the flocks of the saints to drink, filling their heart with that awe-inspiring and incomparable sweetness. ‘Egypt will disappear,’ that is all deceit and the slave-work of making bricks, that is of sin. ‘And Edom,’ he says, ‘will become a desolated plain,’ the whole land, I say, of the foreigners that were no descendants of the worthy font through Holy Baptism. Therefore he says, ‘because they have poured out the blood of the righteous,’ of prophets and apostles and martyrs ‘in their land,’ for these are sons and friends and brothers of my Savior Christ, Who has risen miraculously from the tribe of Judah, who suffered greatly and were killed by them. ‘Judaea will be inhabited forever,’ the upper Judaea, which is the land of the Logos Christ, Who has become flesh from Judah, and of the firstborn, ‘and Jerusalem,’ he says, ‘from generation to generation,’ not that below, but the heavenly one, which is, to say it distinctly, forever. ‘And I will demand their blood,’ that is of those in the law and those after the law in the new grace, who poured out their own blood giving their most noble testimony for God and for the all-pure incarnation of His Logos. ‘And I will not,’ he says, ‘hold it guiltless,’ that is, I will not forgive and justify them, but will consume them with endless fire, ‘and the Lord will dwell in’ the upper ‘Sion’ of the kingdom of heaven. This is the true explanation, Herban. If I have distorted something, as you have said before, refute me.”
Herban: “What at all did you omit that you did not distort, transferring it for your support, although just now you have been bound by oath from me?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Being full of fleshly thoughts you cannot believe those of the spirit, because, according to the blessed apostle, a veil is on your heart and obstructs you from understanding the divine things to the best of your ability.”
Herban: “If a veil lies on the descendants of Abraham, as you say, it lies much more on you who come from a barbaric people. For badly you have claimed that the word ‘He will strengthen the sons of Israel’ had been said about your own children, and you also have transferred the channels of Judah to your Christ, dragging Egypt here from elsewhere and putting Jerusalem and Sion up into heaven. And if something comes into your mind, you simply introduce it in a loquacious way which you have discovered I do not know where. And what can I say about this? Answer me exactly to what I ask you here. About whom does the prophet say: ‘When Israel went out of Egypt and the house of Jacob from a barbaric people, Judah became his sanctuary and Israel his dominion?’ What ‘did the sea see, and Jordan fled and was driven back,’ the nations or the Israelites? ‘The mountains skipped like rams and the hill like lambs. The earth was shaken at the presence of the Lord, the God of Jacob’ and not of the nations, ‘Who turned the rock into a lake of water and the sharp stone into a spring of waters. Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory,’ that is, only to Thy name ‘for Thy mercy and Thy truth, so that the nations will not say: Where is their God?’ Hear, archbishop, where are the so-called nations enumerated and where the seed of Abraham, ‘so that the nations will not say: Where is their God? Our God is in heaven’ and so on means here, that the God of Israel is not the God of the nations. For if He were this, the prophet would not have said: ‘That the nations will not say: Where is their God? The God’ of us Israelites ‘is in heaven, and He did whatever He wanted on earth.’ See here, my great lord, how he goes on: ‘The idols of the nations,’ he says, ‘are silver and gold, work of men's hands; they have a mouth and will not speak, they have eyes and will not see, they have ears and will not hear, they have noses and will not smell, they have hands and will not handle, they have feet and will not walk; they will not speak through their throat.’ Listen, my great lord, what the great prophet brings forward about you nations cursing them: ‘those that make them will become similar to them, and all those that trust in them.’ Listen, what he testifies to you about your having an intimate relation with the Lord: ‘The house of Israel hoped in the Lord,’ that you may not say that a house of the nations is described here, therefore he says, ‘the house of Israel hoped in the Lord. He is their helper and protector, the house of Aaron hoped in the Lord’ and not the house of the pagans, ‘they that fear the Lord hoped in the Lord’ and not those that adore the idols. ‘The Lord remembered us and blessed us’; which 'us'? Neither the nations nor the pagans, nor the house of the worshipers of idols, but whom did He remember and bless? ‘He blessed,’ he says, ‘the house of Israel, He blessed the house of Aaron, He blessed those that fear the Lord, both small and great. May the Lord increase us, us and our sons. We are blessed by the Lord,’ the Israelites and not the nations. ‘The dead will not praise Thee, O Lord,’ those that defend the dead carvings, but ‘we living ones,’ who venerate the living God Who spoke to Moses: ‘Let us praise the Lord from now on and forever.’ Now if a contradiction appears to you, withstand me now, and if you are powerful in your words, distort what I have said.”
When Herban said this, joy arose and the congregation of the Jews clapped their hands. The king became angry because of their exultation and wanted them to go out, but the blessed Gregentios calmed him and brought him to silence.
Now the blessed one said to Herban: “You said to me, that 'if you are powerful in your words, distort.' And as God lives, I distorted in no way, nor did I withstand you with the power which God has bestowed on me. I just hastened to assure you from the extant truth of the holy Scriptures, that you boast in vain and to no purpose in your Judaism. If you give me the order to distort and withstand you, you will repent greatly, for I will demand fire in the name of the Lord, and coming down from heaven like unto the prophet Eliah it will consume you and your followers. About the psalm, which you have introduced reciting it to withstand me, and said: 'Withstand me if you can,' listen: this psalm means the exodus of Israel out of Egypt, and that he inherited the Promised Land Judaea as a sanctuary, that is Jerusalem, because the temple of Solomon was built there after the prototype of the tabernacle of the congregation; and that the name of Israel was applied to the authority of his kingdom; and that the sea was stricken by the rod of Moses, and being stricken fled, thus making the dry land a passage to the people; and that, when the priests who held up the ark stood in the middle of Jordan, the upper waters were held back and the lower waters went down to the sea of Kariathiarim, until all the people had crossed through the dry land; and when the Lord came down to mount Sinai to visit His people and to announce the Decalogue to them, and because the mountains shuddered and the hills trembled like rams and skipped like sheep with their lambs, he spoke obscurely and declared, that the rock once gushed forth water for the people at a beck of God, streaming like a river. And when Israel was abandoned by God because of his injustice to fall under the dominion of the nations, I mean the Gergesites and Jebusites and Amalekites and the others, the prophet asks, praying in a general way to receive mercy, and to ‘give glory to His name’ because of the redemption, ‘so that the nations will not say: Where is their God?’ Which nations? The aforementioned ones, from which you also descend, being born from the one man Noah. The God of us Israelites, you said, and not of the nations ‘did whatever He willed’ in heaven and on earth. Now if He is only the God of the Israelites and not of the nations, it is clear according to your folly, that God did not make the nations, but someone else. Now how does it fit to God that ‘He did whatever he willed,’ if He has failed, not having created the nations? So are you not more insensible than the stones themselves? Is not all the race of man from Adam? Now how did you say that the God of Israel is not the God of the nations? And that ‘the idols of the nations are silver and gold, work of men's hands,’ this has been said in truth. For does that pertain to me, since I believe in God and through him in the Father and Almighty, and have gone far away from the deceit of the idols, even if you supposedly offer me consanguinity for my shame, as the nations are related to you as well from Adam and Noah? So be ashamed yourself, for I am not contradicting that ‘the house of Israel and the house of Aaron’ and those among you that fear the Lord ‘hoped in the Lord, and He is their helper and protector.’ For it happened, but in that time when the prophets and patriarchs lived and not recently. That it has been said that ‘the Lord may increase us, us and our sons,’ and that ‘we are blessed by the Lord that made heaven and earth,’ and that ‘the dead,’ that is, we nations, ‘will not praise Thee, O Lord, but you living ones,’ that is those from Israel, ‘let us praise the Lord,’ it has been said in truth, but it has not been said to you by God; for you have said to yourselves, and this has been told by the prophet. Who is that man who does not honor his own relatives? For when we now chant this psalm, we understand it in our sense, that we Christians are blessed by the Lord. Therefore make an end and do not talk nonsense, discussing about decayed things and shadows which have passed away. So far to that. Listen what David says concerning those nations of which you are disgusted and vexed while hesitating: ‘Praise the Lord all you nations, praise Him, all the people.’ For what reason should all the nations praise, since they are impure, for what reason? ‘For His mercy has become mighty over us,’ he says, ‘and the truth of the Lord endures forever.’ That you may not say now, that the said things are lies, he went on, ‘and the truth of the Lord endures forever.’ That you may not say after this, that this has simply been said so, he goes on elsewhere again: I ‘will sing to Thee among the nations,’ he says.”
Herban: “I did not say that the God of Israel is not the God of the nations regarding creation, but regarding the alienation of faith. This it what I declared, since there is nothing in heaven and on earth which God has not created.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Leave this aside, for if you meant so, you probably did not understand it. Listen what Isaiah says thereafter, when he predicted your complete dissolution: ‘Behold,’ he says, ‘the master Lord of Sabaoth will take away from Judaea and from Jerusalem the strong’ man ‘and the strong’ kingdom, ‘the strength of bread,’ that is, the word of truth, ‘and the strength of water,’ that is, the knowledge of the fear of God, ‘the giant,’ which is the temple of Solomon as compared to the temples of the pagans, ‘and the strong’ law of Moses as existing, and another ‘warrior,’ a clever mind of the nobles, ‘and the judge’ who examines immediately what is necessary and compares, ‘and a prophet’ who receives the sayings from God, ‘and the diviner’ who tells the things far away and near, ‘and the ancient man’ who is old in the thoughts of his reasoning, ‘the commander of fifty’ who has a more valid thought than the others, ‘and the wonderful counselor,’ the mind which soundly examines the right and useful things, ‘and the wise architect,’ which is the reasoning that, using a comparison, cuts down with an ax the tyrannic thoughts of hostile attacks, ‘and the intelligent disciple’ who composes the words wisely according to experience. I will take away all that which forms the state of Israel, that is, the governing officials and prudent counselors, the reasonings about the things useful for them. ‘And I will appoint young men as their rulers,’ who will be driven by folly and not by prudence, ‘and mockers,’ not curators, ‘will rule them. And the people will fall’ from the best order into disorder. ‘A man’ will attack ‘another man’ like a brute animal, and not one he has not seen before, but will strike against ‘his neighbor,’ whom the law prescribes to love like himself. ‘The child will behave proudly towards the ancient man’ and will not keep the commandment of the law which orders the young people, ‘stand up before a gray-haired man,’ he says, and also ‘the base’ will behave proudly ‘against the worthy ones.’ For the orders will be foreign to any fear and love, and will be under the dominion of much poverty. Therefore every ‘man will’ happen to ‘take hold of his brother,’ thinking he might be corporeally stronger in his need, ‘or of the servant of his father,’ that is a friend or acquaintance, saying: ‘You have a garment’ with broad borders, and I think, even if you are silly, ‘be you our ruler’ by putting it on. ‘And’ since I will submit to you, ‘my food shall be’ under your dominion. And of those to whom this will be said, everyone ‘will answer’ to the one who admonishes him ‘in those days: I will not be your ruler,’ he will say, for I fear the Romans to which we belong and have submitted, but now ‘there is no bread and garment in my house,’ even if I would own these things, I would not want to be ‘the ruler of this people.’ And they will say: For what reason? And they will answer: ‘Because Jerusalem is ruined,’ that is desolated, ‘and Judaea has fallen’ because of the multitude of her iniquities, ‘and the tongues’ of men ‘are disobedient to the Lord with lawlessness,’ and the Lord is not satisfied with us because of our iniquities. For what reason, O prophet? ‘Because their glory was humiliated, and the shame of their face,’ which is composed from many faults, ‘fought against them, and they declared their sin like Sodom.’ What did they declare? Did they do so above in heaven, he says, before the Lord? The angels that ‘attend’ the temple indicated this to the Highest; and even now, O Herban, you will have nothing to say. So that you will not say that I accuse your nation: God Himself has presented the woe to you and your soul. And hear what has been said: ‘Woe,’ He says, ‘to your soul, for they have decided a wicked plan against themselves saying: Let us bind the righteous one, for he is inconvenient to us.’ And who is the righteous One but Jesus Christ Whom you bound and gave Him to the governor Pontius Pilate for slaughter? ‘Woe,’ He says, ‘to their soul.’ And since you have crucified Christ, did not that inevitable woe happen to you by which also the appearance of your face can be seen as being alienated from all human restoration. Therefore the prophet goes on after that woe saying: ‘Now what, will they eat the fruits of their works,’ for he declares your works to be wicked; the fruits of the works of sins are nothing else than misfortunes, pain, sorrow and sighs. And it will be the sword which you will enjoy now, for again the prophet goes on: ‘Woe unto the unlawful, for evil will happen to him according to the works of his hands.’ For since you did not keep the law, he says, woe unto you unlawful. And, that you may not say that this has not been said about you, he goes on thereafter: ‘My people,’ he says, ‘your officials oppress you,’ that is, as your feet are shattered, they believe to stand and cannot, ‘and those that demand’ tribute do not demand it freely, but since they have complete dominion. ‘My people, those that call you blessed,’ who come out of yourselves, ‘lead you astray’ saying: Thereafter our congregation will rise again, and we will surely regain Jerusalem, the temple and the kingdom, the priesthood, the sacrifice and the venerations. ‘Those’ that explain this to you ‘lead you astray and disturb the path of your feet,’ by such stories they tell you that thereafter the law of the Hebrews will rise again. They disturb the path of your feet, because they do not let you come to Christianity and be saved. ‘Those that call you blessed,’ he says, ‘lead you astray.’ You see, Herban, how you are led astray, and how you lead your humble people astray and do not let them go to Christ and be saved. Now because of this deceit, that you teachers of the law hinder the people so that they do not believe, the prophet declares that ‘the Lord will enter into judgment and put his people to judgment.’ This is a terrible thing to be said, for which reason He will put His people to judgment, [namely] because they, being deceived, have listened to you. But now hear also about you rulers of the people: ‘The Lord Himself’ he says, ‘will come to judgment with the ancients of the people and with the rulers of His people,’ just as if one would say, that the king himself, being an adversary of somebody in a case, has to hold a trial with him. Therefore woe unto you, for this does not mean anything other than that he, whom you have crucified and, as it seemed, killed like a criminal, wants to come himself and hold judgment over you. ‘For He will come,’ he says, ‘to judgment,’ He Himself, and will not send anybody else. Therefore, if you will not look ahead and convert over to Him through His worthy Baptism, the Son and Lord Himself will come to judgment together with your whole nation and with you, who believe to be the rulers of this nation, and then He will condemn you to eternal and endless punishments.”
Herban: “By every word you defend yourself and in no way me according to the aim of truth. Save that we do not hope that the son of Joseph and Mary will come to judge, but only God Himself, Whom you declare to be the Father of your Christ. If He will come, as you say, woe unto us, for He will repay evil unto us, because we slander Him immensely and condemn Him heavily. But if the God of the law gives Him the order, He will not commit this act of tyranny by giving His dignity to someone else. For He Himself says: ‘I will not give My glory to somebody else nor My virtues to the carven images.’ And through David He says: ‘I am a righteous judge, strong and patient.’ And through Joel He says: ‘Let all nations be raised and come up to the valley of Jehosaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the nations from all around.’ So we now have good hopes for the time being that nobody else will judge except our God, Who is in the law, and that we will never see the Son of Mary as a judge.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “God spoke well about you through Isaiah, that you did not understand God at all, nor will you understand Him; you were taken captive completely by a foreigner, and he himself blinded your hearts and hardened your mind, so that you may not see the light forever, but will die in your iniquities, and condemned because of your unbelief you will go away into the eternal fire and outer darkness.”
Herban: “And where did Isaiah say this, that we will not see God until then or behold Him?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Hear where this has been said. Isaiah says: ‘They drink their wine with cithara and psaltery, drums and pipes, but they do not regard the works of God and do not consider the’ sinful ‘works of their hands. Accordingly,’ he says, ‘my people have become captives because they do not know the Lord, and a large number of them have died of famine and thirst of water.’ You see how you were taken captive and became pitiable and miserable, being neither in front nor behind. Why does he say captive? Because they do not know the Lord. Do you see how you, while believing to know God, are alienated from His love, because you do not know Him? Now if you would not become angry thereafter, I would tell you again, that He reproaches you through Christ in a comparison, for being God He came into your midst as a Man and you did not know Him; therefore also ‘a large number of them,’ he says, ‘have died.’ You see how He also calls you dead, since you will not die in your body, but in your soul and spirit. For everyone who does not do the works of God and is also unbelieving, does the works of the devil. The one who does them is dead from the heavenly life and a foreigner to God, because of his famine regarding the commandments of God and his thirst regarding the water of the true knowledge of the divine Scriptures. For, as you did not know how to fulfill God's commandments, in the same way you do not know the meaning of the Scriptures of your prophets as you should.”
Herban: “There simply happened to be a wicked generation in the days of the prophet, and this has been said about it. Condemning Israel altogether, you make him a defendant by this sentence. You say the most shameful things to us concerning them, about fulfilling the commandments and knowing the Scriptures, and we again say such things similarly about you.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Again Isaiah says about you: ‘Hades has enlarged her soul and opened her mouth without measure,’ that is to devour you until the consummation, ‘and the glorious and the great and the rich,’ he says, ‘will go down into her, and her plagues and he that rejoices in her,’ that is, in Jerusalem. ‘And the man’ in the law ‘will be humiliated, and the man’ in Israel ‘will be dishonored, and the eyes which are raised’ by lifting them up ‘will be humiliated, and the Lord of Sabaoth will be exalted in His judgment and the holy God will be glorified in His righteousness.’ And is it not so? Were you not humiliated for once, were you not dishonored beyond telling, and do your raised eyes not happen to look to the ground once and for all? For you dropped out of God's love, and He Whom you believed to crucify and to wipe out, was He not exalted by the nations that believed in Him after having taken the decision to go over to Him, was He not glorified as the holy God in righteousness by the work of holy men, by signs and wonders in all ends of the world? You did not know the divine Scriptures and failed to obey God's orders in such a degree that David said about you, or rather Christ through him: ‘Strange sons have lied to me,’ he says, ‘foreign sons have faded away and became lame out of their paths. The Lord lives,’ he says, ‘and the God’ of my salvation ‘be praised, the God that gave me revenge and subdued another people to me.’ Listen, Herban: ‘My redeemer,’ he says, ‘Thou wilt exalt me from my furious enemies,’ so you are the furious enemies of Christ, ‘and from’ the Hebrews ‘that rise up against me; redeem me from the unjust man,’ I say, from the traitor Judas. ‘Therefore,’ he says, ‘I will confess Thee among the nations, O Lord, and I will’ not ‘sing unto Thy name’ among the Hebrews anymore, Thou Highest. So tell me, Herban, is this not like that or somehow different?”
Herban: “You, who come from the nations, are the foreign sons that are deceived and believe to worship God, but do no good whatsoever, being opposed to the God-given law. We are the sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom the Lord God spoke, saying: ‘I will multiply your seed in multiplying as the stars in heaven and as the sand on the sea shore.’ So we are blessed by God, Who has made heaven and earth according to the prophet, and we are intimate friends of God according to what has been said by Jeremiah: ‘We are blessed,’ he says, ‘O Israel, for the things pleasing to God are known to us’ and not, as it appears clearly, to the nations. Now why do you hold long speeches cursing us whom God has blessed through the prophet?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I know that you appeared to be sons of Abraham, but those whom neither a relationship of virtue nor a way of honesty unites, not even a tribute of blood will do. For where are the good works of Abraham and where are yours? I confess that you were blessed at the beginning, and do not contradict that you were intimate friends and blessed; except that you have dropped out of all this, since you did not approach my master, the Lord Jesus Christ, but denied and killed Him. Concerning what you said, 'You from the nations are foreign sons, who are hostile to the law of Moses,' listen that Christ is ‘the book of God's orders and the law which will be forever.’ And we from the nations are His intimate friends and heirs, we are good since we believe and are blessed since we love Him. The law of Moses was valid in its time, but now it has become old and has passed away. It was a garment and has decayed, and having been rolled up like a cloak it has been exchanged by the only-begotten Son of God. For after having fulfilled it, the Lord hid it as being old and produced the divine one, the invaluable one, the new one that made those that hold it ‘tread upon serpents, scorpions and all the power of the enemy.’ So did the prophet Jeremiah not announce to you, teaching and saying about the present time: ‘This is our God,’ he says, ‘and no other will be reckoned beside Him; He has found all ways of knowledge and gave it to His child Jacob, and to His beloved Israel.’ So I confess, that this was done among you and that He loved you much and that He cut many ways for you to salvation. But see now how He goes on in the following passage: ‘After this,’ he says, ‘He appeared on earth and lived among men.’ Who is that Man if not at all events Jesus Christ, the One that has lived among men? He is ‘the book of God's orders and the law which will be forever.’ So since Christ is the book of God's orders according to the prophet, why do you inquire so closely and commit errors concerning the law idly and in vain? For listen to what your prophet exhorts you as well: ‘All those,’ he says, ‘that hold it will live.’ Hold what? That is, the book of God's orders, which is Christ. ‘Those that leave it will die:’ so you are those that leave it and die the death of unbelief. And do not say that this is not so, but hear how your prophet exhorts you, being grieved about you who did not listen to that holy book, which is the Word of God Who lives forever, but turned away from it, and goes on saying: ‘Return, Jacob, and take hold of it,’ that is the divine book, which is the Lord Jesus. For the book does not contain anything but divine orders of the immortal Word of God the Father. ‘Return,’ he says, ‘Jacob, and take hold of it,’ that is, believe in the immaculate teachings of that divine book, ‘go to the shining opposite, to the light’ of the divine book. God the Father speaks through the book: Come to its light, Israel, believe and become light. Listen how the prophet gives you commands and exhorts you: ‘Do not give your glory,’ he says, ‘to anyone else, nor the things useful for you to a foreign nation.’ Do you not hear, do you not understand what he says? ‘Do not give your glory,’ he says, ‘to anyone else.’ So we are the foreign nations, and when you behaved arrogantly towards the Lord Jesus, we took away the things useful for you, since we believed. Now if it is not like this, answer. Your lips speak against you; your prophet teaches you according to experience; understand the truth.”
Herban: “As I see, it is just as you say. Save that I am a Jew, and it is a shame for me to be under Christ, to become a Christian, to be a disciple of Christians. For I also do not consider without good reasoning. I consider this as well, that since I believe in the God of heaven and earth, although I do perhaps not believe in the One Whom He has sent into the world, no evil will happen to me, since I honor His Father and want to be guided by the Father Himself, not by His Son.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You beg a false pretext in your sins. You hear the prophet say, ‘This is the book of God's orders and the law which’ is valid and ‘will be forever,’ and that ‘all that hold it will live, but those that leave it will die,’ and you say: 'Although I do not believe in His Son, no evil will happen to me'? Bless me, Herban, you think to love the vinestock, but assure that you hate its grapes. The laughter of the prudent ones to your face will be unbearable, that you love the apple tree and feel no need to love its apples. Herefrom can one understand that you have become alienated from God, strangers to His holy testament and foreigners to the kingdom of heaven.”
Herban: “Why do you reproach me who am a man free in his decisions? A man, once he is honored, has the license to do what he wants. So I also fear the God of the law, and I have no need to become subject to another, according to the saying of the prophet Zephaniah, that in that day ‘the remnant of Israel will fear the name of the Lord and will not do injustice, and they will not speak vain things, and a deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouth, for they will feed and be put to rest, and none will make them afraid.’ Therefore I also fear that Lord and will never attach myself to another.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “So you do not do an injustice now, nor do you speak vain things, nor is there any deceit found in your mouth? Where did you feed, if you have been put to rest at all? O your convoluted language, you vain and disagreeing man. For you misdirect when you say that the Word of God the Father does not have any deceit in its mouth, nor does it speak vain things or commit injustice. To whom do you say this: as to a uneducated man or one of those that do not possess wisdom? You do not know at all the explanation of the divine Scripture in such a way that you took the explanation of the prophet Zephaniah into consideration for your help. If you want to understand the clear explanation of this, you fool, I will present it to you immediately. Thus ‘says the Lord,’ he says, ‘wait for My testimony until the day of My resurrection, for then I will turn My tongue unto the people, to their tribes, that they all invoke the name of the Lord, to serve Him under one yoke.’ Here, Herban, you will not have anything to answer, for ‘wait for My testimony’ about Jerusalem ‘until the day of My resurrection’ was said by the Lord about the resurrection of Christ. They are vexed at you and talk to God about you and your evildoing. For Jerusalem said to God, that is, the great archangel to whom she was entrusted: 'Lord,' he says, 'the people of Israel are full of all iniquity and there is no excellence in them; we have remained without repentance, and no one has been found returning from his wicked way. And we have still added more and have waited yet and yet, and Israel has gone for the worse. So Lord, do according to Thy holy counsel whatever seems to be in Thy might.' And the Lord said to him: 'Do not be grieved, do not blush, but wait for Me to become a man and to be crucified, to die, to be buried and to rise from the dead as a testimony for them and for the nations, ‘for then I will turn the tongue’ of the Gospel as a teacher to ‘the people’ of the nations, ‘to their tribes, that all’ the former idolaters who in their deceit had invoked another different God in some other way, now ‘invoke the name of the Lord, to serve Him under one yoke’ of truth, who before had served the many yokes of polytheism by their deceit.' And so you will not say He does not say that about the nations, He went on: ‘I will receive’ My supplicants ‘from the ends of the rivers of Ethiopia’ so that you may know ‘that God does not respect a person, but that the one who fears Him and does His will is accepted by Him in every nation; they will bring me sacrifices,’ He says, ‘with the scattered.’ Do not say here that He speaks about the Hebrews, for you as well are dispersed into the four winds under heaven. Now if you consider this, show me where they themselves or your nation together with those from the nations offer sacrifices commonly to God the Almighty. But you will not be able to show this. ‘They will bring Me sacrifices,’ He says, ‘with the scattered.’ Now who are the scattered? No one else, I think, than the apostles that were scattered unto the ends of the world for the sake of the Gospel of peace. 'And they will bring accepted sacrifices to God the Almighty together with the returning nations through the life-giving divine worship in that day,' He says, 'in which the new sacrifice will begin to be celebrated by the initiated of Christ. And you, Jerusalem, do not be ashamed of all these Christian practices that have recently been imported to you and of whom you will gain experience. For I will be gracious to you concerning the sins which you did to Me before by your law. For I will lead out the disobedient and ungrateful people in you, ‘and I will leave to you a gentle and humble people’ out of My immense goodness. ‘And’ then ‘the remnant of Israel will fear the name of the Lord,’ for they will see the people believing and signs and wonders happening, and they will believe themselves as well in Christ. ‘And they will not commit’ the ‘iniquity’ anymore to rise against Christ, ‘and they will not speak vain things,’ for they will not be offended by the worthy cross. ‘And’ deceit ‘will not be found in their mouth’ and there will not be ‘a deceitful tongue’ that resists against the mysteries of Christ foolishly and over a long time. For what reason? ‘For they will feed,’ that is, they will be tended by Christ, ‘and be put to rest’ by the apostles, that is, they will be accommodated, or rather to say it better, they will be put to rest in the spiritual foundation trench of the Church as precious stones, in order to become the shepherds of the churches of Christ, so that the apostolic and universal Church of God may increase being built upon them as well.' This is the unerring explanation of the prophecy, in which there is no waning or deceit. If you have something to say, contradict. For we will again tell you what belongs to it.”
Herban: “In the same way in which you distorted the things by your explanation before, similarly you put your hands in such a way on this prophecy.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Since you cannot oppose truth, you pretend that there are distortions and games. But I will not cease to proclaim truth.”
Herban: “For which reason did Isaiah say: ‘Shine, shine, O Jerusalem, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and gloom will be on the nations; but the Lord will appear upon you, and His glory will be seen upon you, and kings will come to your light and nations to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes around and see your assembled children. All your sons came from far away, and your daughters will be raised upon the shoulders. Then you will see and be glad and fear the Lord and be astonished in your heart, because the wealth of the sea and of nations and people will be brought to you. And the flocks of camels will come to you, and the camels of Midian and Gephar will cover you. They will come all from Sheba bringing you gold, and they will bring you incense and precious stones. And they will bring the good tidings of God's salvation, and all sheep of Kedar will be gathered with you, and the rams of Nebaioth will come to you, they will be brought with acceptance to my altar, and the house of my prayer will be glorified. Who are those that fly like clouds and like doves with their nestlings? Sion is for me, the islands waited for me and first of all the ships of Tarshish to bring your children from far away. And their silver and gold will be with them because of God's holy name, and because the holy one of Israel is glorious. And sons of strangers will build your walls, and their kings will present themselves before you. For I have stricken you in My anger, and in My mercy I have loved you. And your gates will be opened forever, day and night, and they will not be closed to lead the power of the nations to you, and their kings who are being lead. For the nations and the kings that will not serve you will be abandoned in a desert.’ Listen, my great lord, what he says here: ‘And the nations,’ He says, ‘will be abandoned in a desert, and the glory of Lebanon will come to you with cypress, pine and cedar-tree together, to glorify My holy place, and I will glorify the place of My feet. And the sons of those that humiliated and irritated you will come to you with fear. And all those that afflicted you will bow themselves down at your footprints, and you will be called the city of the Lord of Sion, of the holy Israel, for you were abandoned and hated, and there was no one to help you.’ See what He says here, so that you will get stuck now at least, being instructed that God will recall Jerusalem thereafter, ‘for you were abandoned and hated,’ He says, ‘and there was no one to help you. And I will make you an eternal exultation, a gladness from generation to generation, and you will suck the milk of the nations and will eat the wealth of kings, and you will understand that I am the Lord that has saved you and redeemed you, the holy one of Israel.’ Now this prophecy I have kept aside for a long time to put an end to your immense loquacity. For you will get stuck in it, and will not be able to resist or to contradict me about this and to distort my words. For the prophet has spoken here in a simple way. So if you have an idea about this, make it clear to us.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Having studied this prophecy and having learned it by heart you introduced it in plain speech before my face. But the knowledge of it and its power are far from your mind, for what it says and about whom, and rather about which things, you do not know in no way at all. For you look only to the body of the letter, but in no way to the spirit of it. So explain to me just one word out of those you have said: ‘With cypress, pine and cedar-tree together, to glorify My holy place, and I will glorify the place of my feet.’ Give me the solution of this word, and I will understand from it that you also know the following ones.”
Herban: “There is the land of Lebanon which used to be under the dominion of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Now in it there was a large number of pines, cypresses and cedar-trees, and cutting the most useful and beautiful timbers from these, the inhabitants of that place exported them to the kings that happened to be at that time in Jerusalem, for the constructions of the royal halls, the palace, the holy temple and to provide all other kinds of necessary things. Therefore the prophet speaks about this, that thereafter, when we will receive our city and our kingdom back, this revenue will be restored to us as well, to glorify that holy place, taking which you have reduced it to obscurity because of our iniquities.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Did I not say to you that you arrive only at the letter, but are unable to proceed further to the spirit? For you are blind because the divine grace of the spirit does not shine on you. So I will have to introduce the prophecy and its solution in our midst. But this speech is superfluous, for we bide our time scooping into a jar full of holes.”
Herban: “You will not be able to distort anything here, for this prophecy is said in a simple way.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Listen whether I cannot; I will not hesitate to tell this because of the surrounding crowd. Only put your mind here and listen. ‘Shine,’ he says, ‘shine, O Jerusalem,’ clearly through the worthy Baptism; ‘for your light’ Christ ‘has come, and the glory of the Lord,’ the Word of God. In the beginning He rose Who says to the Father in the Gospel: ‘I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work,’ for ‘behold, darkness will cover the earth,’ he says, clearly when the Lord Jesus was crucified, which also happened, ‘and gloom will be on the nations,’ but on the mental ones, that is, on the aerial spirit of wickedness; ‘the Lord will appear upon you,’ having become flesh from the Virgin Mary, ‘and the glory’ of His wonders and signs, which He will work dwelling among you, ‘will be seen upon you. And kings will come,’ that is, those of the Romans, Indians, Homerites, Ethiopians and of the other nations through their belief in Christ Jesus ‘to Thy light,’ that is to Thy Baptism. ‘And the nations’ that here believed ‘to the brightness’ of the baptismal font, that is ‘of Thy rising,’ for the holy baptismal font of the Church is the mental East of those baptized. For immersing themselves into it, being dark and with a multitude of gloomy sins, they rise from there being bright, shining and full of light, having drowned the burden of sins there. ‘Lift up your eyes’ of the mind ‘around’ all the world ‘and see,’ O new Jerusalem, ‘your children’ who have been ‘assembled’ from all tribes and languages because of the belief in Jesus Christ into the one universal and apostolic Church by the worthy Baptism for their salvation. ‘All your sons came from far away,’ that is from the land which is far away from the glory of God, that is, being dragged away from the deceit of the devil. Also ‘your daughters’ will come to you through their belief, that is the remaining cities below heaven, ‘they will be raised upon the shoulders,’ that is, believing in the cross of Christ they will be brought up to the famous height of the glory of the kingdom of heaven, obviously as if on some mental shoulder. ‘Then you will see’ in your spirit the new salvation of the whole world. And struck by this fear-inspiring wonder, you will ‘fear the Lord.’ And you will understand the ineffable and inscrutable and incomprehensible judgments of the Almighty, ‘and be astonished in your heart, because the wealth of the sea’ of the confusion of life, which is in every soul, ‘will be brought to you,’ that is, which has entrusted the spiritual fruit-bearing of the common race as wealth. Or rather, he will admit the races of those tribes and languages to dwell in your courtyards, expelling from you the former people of the law as being disobedient and ungrateful. ‘And the flocks,’ he says, ‘of camels will come to you,’ the large number of people from the tribe of Ishmael that will believe in Christ in the future. ‘And’ those same ‘camels’ from Ishmael by their virtues ‘will cover Midian and Gephar,’ which is their country. For ‘they will come all from Sheba,’ that is from their native country to you, Jerusalem, where the grave of Jesus, the cross and the divine temples are, to worship, ‘bringing you’ love as ‘gold,’ faith as ‘incense and’ the hope in Christ as ‘precious stones. And’ understanding this, ‘they will bring’ with thanks ‘the good tidings of God's salvation,’ which He has renewed becoming a man, to every soul which wants to believe. ‘And all sheep of Kedar will be gathered with you’: Clearly the people of Kedar will believe and come from there to worship. ‘And the rams of Nebaioth,’ that is, the rulers of the land, ‘will come to you’ through the belief in Christ, ‘and’ the sheep of Kedar and the rams of Nebaioth ‘will be brought’ spiritually, together with their sacrifices, ‘with acceptance to’ the new and holy ‘altar,’ which has been prepared in you. ‘And the house of My prayer will be glorified,’ which I have recently restored. And if it is not so as I say, go to Jerusalem and see how all nations who believe in Christ come there from the ends [of the earth] flying like doves, bringing all kinds of mental or also of perceptible fruit-bearing offerings, just as the prophet goes on thereafter: ‘Who are those,’ he says, ‘who fly’ lightly ‘like clouds’ in order to be carried off by His Holy Spirit to the adorable places; just as he also speaks here about the saints as clouds moved by the wind, who reached Jerusalem by their fervent faith and renounce this vain world in holy monasteries. ‘And like doves,’ he says, ‘with their nestlings,’ so that you may know that not only the great and powerful men do this in order to leave the world and to be tonsured, but that also those who still have a delicate and tender body receive this; for these are the nestlings, and not only men but also women. And also it is said about the things that have recently been taught to the holy monks: ‘Sion is for me,’ Christ has said this through the prophet; for formerly, He says, Sion was bequeathed to the Jews from My Father, but from Me Sion has been stored up for the Christians, ‘the islands waited for Me,’ the churches of the nations that suffered affliction and oppression from persecutors and tyrants. I have brought in many martyrs for Me, says the Lord, ‘and the ships of Tarshish, first of all’ the apostles and their teachings, ‘to bring your children from far away,’ from the deceit of the devil which is far away from the knowledge of God. For the divine exhortations brought every soul from far away, like a kind of ships with courage, to the Lord Who has proclaimed the Gospel for the first time in you, Jerusalem. ‘And their silver and gold will be with them,’ he says, obscurely calling the spiritual virtue gold and their corporeal prudence silver. This he said ‘because of God's holy name,’ which is that of the Father, ‘and because the holy One of Israel is glorious,’ that is the only-begotten Son of God Who has become a man from the Virgin Mary. ‘And sons of strangers,’ he says, ‘will build your walls,’ not those from the seed of Abraham who formerly dwelt in you, having transgressed and been expelled, but those whom God raised up from the corner stone that had been rejected and turned them into the upper part of the corner as seed of Abraham, as David said very long ago, and John who once baptized Israel to repent; they will build the mental walls, setting themselves instead of stones into the foundation of the apostles and prophets and martyrs, until the construction of the divine walls and battlements will be raised into the height of the kingdom of heaven. ‘And their kings,’ he says, ‘will present themselves before you,’ clearly those of another race who are called to adoption. He calls those kings who have mastered sin spiritually by their freedom from emotion, or he also spoke obscurely of those presiding over the universal church. For these, who direct the spiritual buildings wisely, are reasonably called kings in a spiritual sense. ‘For I have stricken you,’ he says, ‘in My anger’ because of the sins of the disobedient Jews and Pharisees among you, ‘and in My mercy I have loved you’ by giving you to the Christians to be inhabited, and in such a way that I have also given you My only-begotten Son Who has become a man, ‘so that whoever believes in Him should not perish,’ ‘and your gates,’ Jerusalem, ‘will be opened forever,’ those gates of the faith which God opened to all nations ‘day and night, and they will not be closed’ for what reason? ‘To lead the power of the nations to you,’ that is, their armies, to be marked by the holy Baptism in the thrice-holy name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. ‘And their kings who are being led’ clearly by divine desire to you, to worship the adorable place in you, whom the immaculate feet of the only-begotten Son of God have sanctified through His incarnation by walking on them. And you behold how the kings of the Romans, of Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia and the other Christians went up to Jerusalem enlightened by divine desire for to worship, fulfilling the words of the prophecy: ‘For the nations,’ he says, ‘and the kings,’ when your youth has been renewed like an eagle, ‘that will not serve you’ through the belief in Christ, will perish, not being deemed worthy to go into the kingdom of heaven. ‘And’ thereafter ‘the’ mental ‘nations,’ that is the demons together with so-called gods of the pagans, will not be of use on earth once Christ has become a man, but being altered by the power of the crucified they ‘will be deserted in a desert. And the glory of Lebanon will come to you,’ that is, the height of the glory of the cross; for it has been stored up there ‘with cypress, pine and cedar-tree together,’ he says, ‘to glorify My holy place, and I will glorify the place of My feet.’ Here, Herban, you have given an explanation before, but not accurately. Listen to the true solution of this word: People say that the cross of Christ was composed of cypress, pine and cedar. For its upright part was made from cypress, the level part of pine, and its footstool, I think, was from a cedar. Therefore the prophets, understanding this from far away through the Holy Spirit, prophesied about this, and in particular Isaiah. For the place of Christ's feet was the footstool of cedar, because it was glorified, if you want to understand the implicit meaning of the saying ‘that I will glorify the place of my feet, and the sons of the’ Persians ‘that humiliated and’ the Assyrians that ‘irritated you will come to you with fear,’ some magician kings from the East, who searched with offerings for the King Who had been born in the region of Bethlehem, fearing him with reverence. Understand, Herban: ‘And they will bow themselves down at Thy footstool,’ that is, on the floor of the [house] where they found the baby Christ in His swaddling clothes and with the Virgin holding Him, similarly as they do also at the altars of our churches at the life-giving tomb of Christ, at the place of the Skull, and the other temples, at the grave of Lazarus and on the Jordan, for those of their race who believed thereafter in the Lord Jesus changed their behavior towards you through the worthy Baptism, he says, as the nations do that formerly were oppressed by idol-madness and foolishly made war against you, Jerusalem, and afflicted you. ‘And you will be called the’ Christian ‘city of the holy Israel,’ of Christ in the upper Sion, you that were called before the Jewish Jerusalem, the prophet-killing city of Sion on earth, ‘for you were abandoned,’ because your former sinful people were repeatedly given to the nations for deportation, he says, ‘and hated’ by Me because of the sin of Israel, ‘and there was no one to help you.’ That I turned away My face from you because of the sins of the people living in you, and that ‘I will make you an eternal exultation’ for those who believe in My Son ‘and a’ spiritual ‘gladness from generation to generation’ of the Christians who have been assembled in you from the ends of the world because of the countless multitude of wonders which the only-begotten Son and Word of God accomplished when He stayed in you. ‘And you will suck the milk of the nations,’ the beginning of the perceptible and corporeal goods, which they will bring to you as offerings, ‘and eat the wealth of kings,’ the predictions of the prophets and the written legislations and exhortations of the apostles, the God-inspired words of the teachers, the useful narratives of the martyrs and the lives of His holy men and their miracles which they performed. For these are spiritual kings, and this is their wealth, and the holy and worthy Gospel of Christ Himself, the great king who is above all kings and rulers. ‘And you will understand that I am the Lord’ Jesus Christ ‘Who has saved you and redeemed you, the holy One of Israel.’ For formerly, He says, when you were under the law, you acknowledged My Father as the only God, but now, since I, His Word, have become a man for your salvation and paid for all your previous sins in your midst, you will know Me as well, that I am one Lord at the same time with My Father and together with the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ Who saves you, Who purifies you of the sins of the Jews and Pharisees, the holy One of the new Israel which is from the nations. This is the spiritual solution of the prophecy, Herban, in which no distortion will be found. So you have said, 'You will not be able to give an answer here'; now rather you answer to what we have said.”
Herban stood astonished and speechless for a long time being unable to answer, and the crowd which was with him, I say, that of the Jews, was greatly ashamed. Now the archbishop said to Herban: “For which reason do you hesitate to answer? Your speech says who is inside you, for here we have need of words and not of silence anymore.”
As the time had passed, the king stood up. He ordered that the meeting should be assembled again on the next day, for the king loved to sit and hear the discussions between the one and the other, for one of them argued about the law, the other one about the new grace. Now, when all had retired, Herban looked for a place to escape, and the other Jews did not allow him to do so, saying: “If you leave us alone, we shall perish. Stay here at any event, and maybe God will find a way for us; for even if we should be defeated by the words, we still have other ways, and they will not overcome us.”
Dialogue Δ (4)
Now Herban yielded to their intercessions, and so on the following day, when the king presided together with the blessed Gregentios and all were assembled, the archbishop said to Herban: “Speak about the prophecy which has been solved for you yesterday and do not be silent. Has it been solved well, or is this not pleasing to your eyes?”
Herban: “What can I still say, if you are successful in all things? But nevertheless I have something to tell you, even though you will distort my words with some clever barking: The Lord ‘made known His ways to Moses and His will to the sons of Israel.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And what is the problem with this? That He made known His ways to Moses everyone knows who lives in accordance with God, and that He made His will known to the sons of Israel and you did not keep it, even those in the underworld know that.”
Herban: “‘Let Israel rejoice in the One Who made him, and let the sons of Sion be joyful in their king.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The prophet gave you the order to rejoice by works pleasing to God in the God Who has made you, Who is the Word of God, and the sons of Sion to be joyful in their King, Who is Jesus Christ, the human shape of God's Word (Logos). But you have disgraced yourself from both sides by your sins. For seeing your God and beholding your King, Who came to you in the flesh, you said: ‘This is the heir, come let us kill Him,’ and also ‘let us break His bonds and throw His yoke away from us.’ But now when you did this, the One Who dwells in heaven laughed at you, and the Lord Jesus Christ mocked you, destroyed Sion and Jerusalem and scattered you from there into all nations. And He rose on the third day making His holy Ascension in the presence of witnesses, and was assumed from there into heaven before witnesses, and although you do not wish this, He is glorified because of all this in all the ends of the world; and after this He will come ‘as a judge of the living and the dead,’ to repay everyone according to his works. Woe to you, you wretched and miserable, for then ‘they will come from east and west and north’ and south ‘and from the sea, and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.’ But since you who believe yourselves to be the sons of the kingdom did not believe in the Word of God, but denied Him and still do deny Him, ‘you will be expelled into the outer darkness and into the eternal fire; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”
Herban: “Who will undertake the experience and announcement of unclear words and judgments? Who will assure my heart that your words are faithful and true? ‘Who knows the mind of the Lord,’ according to Sirach, ‘or who has become His counselor,’ or who knows the secrets of His wisdom? In no way, never. For that you poured forth rich words out of your heart, I cannot be mistaken; but still it is hard for me, or rather a heavy burden, to be convinced by you and to become like you.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Now even if it is hard and a heavy burden for you not to cede to the word of truth immediately, as you say, I assure you that on the day when the angels of fire will bind your hands and feet and will put you through those endless punishments, it will then appear to you much more terrible and hard than my present words, of which I remind you without success.”
Herban: “Leave this aside and tell me here about the things I ask you, whether we are foreign to the God of Israel. For what reason did the prophet David introduce this word, saying that ‘The Lord will not cast off His people and will not forsake His inheritance?’ And elsewhere, ‘Thou wilt arise and have mercy upon Sion, for the time to have mercy, yea, the set time has come, for Thy servants found pleasure in her stones and have mercy upon her dust, and the nations will fear the name of the Lord,’ clearly because they see our unexpected renewal, of Sion, I say, and of Jerusalem. ‘And all the kings of the earth,’ he says, ‘Thy glory,’ as he goes on, ‘that the Lord will rebuild Sion,’ he says, ‘and’ the same Sion ‘will’ henceforth clearly ‘be seen in the glory of God.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You speak of those things useful to you, I know well, and pass over those that do not contribute to your argument. But you will not pass over the mind of my modesty here silently; for we also know this divine Scripture by the grace of Christ, and it should not be difficult for us to oppose you from face to face. That the prophet said ‘The Lord will not cast off His people and will not forsake His inheritance,’ I know as well; but now you passed over the words ‘until then’ in silence, whereas I will bring them to light. The Lord, he says, will not forsake His people, ‘until righteousness will return to judgment, and all the upright in heart will possess it.’ So teach yourself Who is righteousness or Who will return on the spot to judgment, and who all the upright in heart are who possess it.”
Herban: “I wonder that you do not pervert my words here as well, but having been accused, you went on to inquire about other things. At all events, he says ‘until righteousness will return to judgment’ about the general judgment which will be carried out at the end of this world by the God of the law, for ‘until then the Lord will not cast off His people,’ for henceforth He will be with them forever.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You did not understand even an arrow's end of the word: For how have you done this, being blind at once, not having the divine rays of grace which bring light to the mental eyes? ‘Until righteousness will return to judgment, and all the upright in heart will possess it’ is explained in the same way in which the patriarch Jacob prophesied there: ‘No ruler will fail from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until He comes to Whom it belongs, and He is the expectation of the nations.’ In a way similar to this he spoke here as well: ‘The Lord will not forsake His people’ he says, ‘and will not cast off His inheritance’ until the Word of God will return from heaven, bright with uncontrollable righteousness, that is, He will come to earth to become flesh, to put an end to the old law by His righteous judgment, and to raise the new one of His grace. ‘And all the upright in heart’ of the Jews, or also of those who will believe in Christ from the nations, ‘will possess it,’ that is, clearly the divine judgment, and after they will have understood and perceived, they will join Him and believe in Him with a faithful mind, and then the Lord will cast off and forsake His former people Israel, since they did not believe in His resurrection. ‘You will arise and have mercy upon Sion’ he said about the Lord Jesus: Having risen, he says, in His humanity from the Virgin, Thou wilt have mercy upon Sion, that is, feeling pity Thou wilt turn the perceptible Sion into the spiritual and universal Church when the suitable time will be there, when in truth the time will have come that ‘Thy servants found pleasure in her stones’; the prophets and apostles and John the Baptist have chosen and prepared them as His elected people, that is, they provided the hierarchs, priests, archpriests, deacons, chanters and readers as precious stones to build the Church. ‘And they have mercy upon her dust,’ they will compassionately tend the crowd, the common people, he says. ‘And the nations will fear the name of the Lord,’ clearly because they believe in the only-begotten Son of God, ‘and all the kings of the earth Thy glory,’ he says. And so, Herban, do you not see how the kings of the earth stand in awe of the glory of the Crucified, in fear and trembling? Actually you see at all events ‘that the Lord will build Sion,’ he says, not ‘create,’ but ‘build’ her, just in the way he said there, ‘And God formed man taking dust of the ground,’ and thereafter he went on after some other words, ‘And God built the rib which He took for the woman,’ that is, which he took ‘from Adam,’ in such a way he spoke similarly here as well; for before the perceptible Sion was created by the Master of all things, that is, the congregation of Israel, and now the new Sion, the Church from the nations, was built for the glory of God, His blameless and holy name, in which He appeared before by His incarnation in the glory of His wonders, and now appears to us, who believe in the glory of His holy name. He will appear to us thereafter as well from heaven in the glory of His Father like a frightful bolt of lightning, when He will come with His holy angels at the end of all times ‘to judge the living and the dead and to repay everyone according to his works.’ Therefore this is the meaning of ‘and will be seen in His glory.’ Now answer to this, Herban, if you have a word to say.”
Herban: “Which word will be sufficient when speaking to you? Save that there the prophet said, ‘They are a nation that has lost counsel, neither is there any knowledge in them.’ And elsewhere, ‘Your hand has destroyed the nations,’ and ‘Scatter the people who want war,’ and ‘God is with us, know this, you nations, and be defeated,’ and ‘Do not give your glory to anyone else, nor the things useful for you to a foreign nation.’ And we find the holy God often at other places rebuking the nations through the mouth of the prophets, for example, ‘You have rebuked the nations and the faithless has perished,’ and ‘All nations have surrounded me, and I kept them off by the name of the Lord’ and so on. So why do you boast greatly, being a Gentile and from the Gentiles and fighting against me for perished Gentiles?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Having failed, Herban, to answer accurately to the things I asked, you have turned to insults and reproaches, and indeed you brought the insulting words in our midst and left the praising and blessing ones behind you. So hear which orders the prophets give about the nations, saying: ‘Praise, you nations, our God and make the word of His praise be heard,’ and ‘I will praise Thee among the nations, Lord, and will sing unto Thy name,’ and elsewhere ‘All nations,’ he says, ‘whom Thou hast made, will come and worship before Thee and glorify Thy name, for Thou art great and workest wonders.’ And at another place, ‘To Thee,’ he says, ‘all flesh will come,’ and thereafter, ‘All you nations, clap your hands, rejoice unto God with the voice of joy,’ and above, ‘Praise the Lord, all you nations,’ and elsewhere, ‘I will wake up early in the morning and praise you among the people, O Lord, I will sing to Thee among the nations.’ And Isaiah prophesies clearly and exhorts to take away all that is yours, and to give you to us nations. And attend here to his words: ‘Thus will the Lord God do,’ he says, ‘to all nations on this mountain,’ He will make them ‘a drink of foods,’ that is, He will offer the worthy blood which we drink as a drink, and He will give His immaculate body as food, a drink of lees which He will give to them. For He is the true vine, and we nations have now harvested the mental grapes of His sufferings, His burial and resurrection, and after having been afflicted we receive gladness to drink forever. For he says, ‘They will drink gladness, they will drink wine,’ the sweetness of the heavenly kingdom, they will be anointed ‘with the ointment’ of the honorable Baptism. And ‘they will be handed over’ without error ‘on this mountain,’ clearly to venerate God with the Christian rite, as our Jerusalem and Sion can also be seen full of Christians as well, according to the word of the prophet: ‘The nations,’ he says, ‘will be handed over on this mountain and will be devoured on this mountain,’ that is, the roots of their souls will mentally be enriched, being sprinkled with the sweetest water of the belief in Christ. And they will be placed on the unshaken foundation fearing Christ, and will gain perfect control of Sion and Jerusalem. And so it will not seem to you that I say this to help myself, the prophet goes on saying: ‘Give this all,’ he says, ‘to the nations, for this counsel is from God unto all nations.’ Which all, does he say, give it to the nations, whom does he exhort and says ‘give’? The divine counsel is exhorting the archangel Michael; for he was the mediator of the covenant of the Lord between Him and the people of Israel, to him He says: 'Give them away, thrust them out and give them to those; expel the Israelites as Sarah once did Ishmael for Isaac, lead the Christians in. Give Jerusalem to them, give Sion to them, give all land to the Romans, give the temple, give the prophecies, the Proverbs, the Psalms, and all other mysteries of the Hebrews to them, give to the Christians the perceptible things and those that are mentally in their mind; for this counsel,' he says, 'has not come from angels or men, but from the Lord unto all nations.' Now if you hear this, O Jew, do you dare to insult the nations, whom God has called and to whom He gave all your belongings, having expelled you from your inheritance? Rather call yourself miserable and reproach yourself, for in such a way you also have dropped from the love of God, in the same way as once also the devil did with his angels from the kingdom of heaven.”
Herban: “When the prophet said, ‘Give all this to the nations,’ he indicates the nations that in the future will attack and take all that and give it to desolation and destruction.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You say vain things, as you stand here. ‘The nations,’ he declares, ‘will be handed over on this mountain,’ that is, for spiritual chastisement, but the mountain will not be given to the nations for capture. So since you might pretend this, hear the following, how the prophet goes on making clear the meaning of the said things: ‘Death devoured, being strong,’ that means by the deceit of the devil, which he contrived from the beginning and so deceived the nations, giving them to the disgusting faith of the idols, ‘and again,’ he says, ‘God,’ when He became flesh from the Virgin, ‘took away all tears from every face’ which wanted rather to believe in Christ, and through Him to come to God the Father. And that you may not say that He spoke particularly about the Jews, that He took away the tears of affliction from them, or perhaps about another nation adopting this thought, therefore He introduced the word 'took away' in a general sense. For the Church of Christ is universal, calling all nations to her to understand the Lord. ‘God,’ he says, ‘took away all tears from every face’ of the believing, clearly through the divine Baptism. ‘He took away,’ he says, ‘the reproach of His people,’ not from the people of Israel, I think, but from the multitude which believes in Jesus Christ all over the earth. The teardrop he speaks about is that of Gehenna, which I would have to suffer with great force if Christ had not come. ‘For the mouth of the prophet has said this,’ says the prophet, and not I. The prophet went on in such a way, so that no one might suspect that he did not add this conclusion, saying ‘for the mouth of the prophet has said this.’”
Herban: “I thank the God of the law that I am a Jew and did not understand such a thing in the divine Scriptures of the prophets, which you pretend to do, as I see. But what does the prophet say here? ‘God is known in Judaea, His name is great in Israel.’ And he did not say that God is known among the nations and in all the earth, but rather he says [God] is known only in Judaea, and only in Israel is His name great, and not among some foreigners and Gentiles. Now you see how the prophets are uncertain as well, and sometimes one says other things in a different way, and somewhere else another one says the opposite; so there is mostly no need to listen to them when they speak.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Herban has hardly found a solution by insulting the prophets because of his inexperience. O heart without understanding and hardened mind, to both of which you have given audience by your foolishness. ‘God is known in Judaea,’ but in that which has been changed to Christianity, ‘and His name is great in Israel,’ but in the new Israel which has been invited from the nations. Isaiah says about the old Israel: ‘The ox knows his owner and the ass considers the crib of his master, but Israel did not know Me and the people did not consider Me.’ And another prophet somewhere else: ‘I was grieved forty years with that generation and said, they always astray in their heart, but they,’ the Israelites, ‘did not know My ways,’ but now God says: ‘As I have sworn in My anger, that they should not enter into My rest.’ There He says that ‘Israel did not know Me,’ here He says that ‘they did not know My ways.’ Now how exactly will the word ‘God is known in Judaea and His name is great in Israel’ be fitting to us? In no way, for He says thus: ‘As I have sworn in My wrath, that they should not enter into My rest,’ you know yourself that He has put you to rest so much and put your memory to silence in such a way that when you walk around, no one bears to see you with his eyes, but rather the true God Jesus Christ made you a abomination and a shame and reproach until the end of the earth. By fixing His humanity to the cross you crucified Him, as you supposed, but He rose on the third day and reigns forever in heaven.”
Herban: “Whatever we say to ourselves is idle, if there will be no judgment, if there is no repayment. We will not understand at all for whom the true faith and the teachings of God have correctly been stored up, for the Jews or the Christians; for if both of them will receive according to their works, then experience will teach the truth, and we will know.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “This is what you say: 'If I do not see my bad death and that frightful sentence which will inevitably be pronounced over me, I will not yet be convinced in any way.' I myself did not suitably speak God's word before which has been said through the prophet, that ‘I was grieved forty years with that generation,’ rejecting their mind which is worth nothing. God said that ‘they always go astray in their heart.’ Do you want a better testimony about your loss of sense and unstable opinion and, in general, your roaming about? In no way, never, for what the holy God has confirmed, who will dare to rise up against His frightful and inevitable truth?”
Herban: “If only this trial could happen in this hour, to see whether this roaming about is yours or mine, as you say.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Woe to you miserable man, if this would happen to you straightaway, and if you would be found to be a Jew who is not proud of Christianity. For it is written that the earth will be judged by the Word of God, and all those, who are disobedient in the thoughts of the righteous, will be refuted ‘by the spirit of his mouth.’ Now since you are hostile to the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ, you will understand which of it [will happen], that He will judge you by the fire of Gehenna, the nether world and the depth of destruction.”
Herban: “I have learned to adore and to fear the God of heaven and earth, but not a man or idols, the sun and moon, earth, sea and the others, which you adore roaming about.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Leave aside our deceit before the descent of the Son of our God; consider and teach us in which things we, who believe in Him, are deceived since Christ has appeared here.”
Herban: “Listen and see that first of all your house of worship is full of all kinds of idols, ‘works’ made ‘by the hands of men’ according to the prophet. For you have not stopped from the beginning until now to worship what your fingers have made. For there you say, that 'when Christ came, He redeemed us from the idols,' but here you worship them, being betrayed by this deceit. And the worst is that you light candles and also lamps, offering them incense and the other things which are fitting only for God Who has created heaven and earth. So is this not deceit if you offer the worship due the Creator to His creations?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “There is such a story in a legend, that when a blind man in the time of cold weather approached some charcoals that were spread on the earth, he thought that they were the incident rays of the sun, and when he stepped into them to warm himself, he burnt his feet together with his skirts, ran away from there, and said: 'I am happy that I do not see the sun which heated me up so much; how much more will it burn those that see it.' Therefore in such a way you proceeded to wretched words in this hour, for the frightful cold of ignorance is in your heart. And while you seem, as I think, to claim fear of God, having fallen into the charcoals of blasphemy just as a blind man, you foolishly consider the burning and the conflagration of the mind of the soul to be enlightenment. Therefore, you should first of all lament that you have dropped from the new grace, that you, since you did not believe in Christ, have been expelled from the ineffable kingdom of heaven, and then also that you did not raise your tongue for the blameless faith of the Christians, and understood the divine mysteries with simple heart and firm faith, when they were revealed to you from there, the immaculate truth, but were misled. So since you are a tempter, or rather very thoughtless, hear now my words. When the Flood happened in the days of Noah, how was he then saved by the Lord?”
Herban: “Clearly God saved him through the ark.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “In which shape was the ark prepared, from stones, from wood or some other material, tell me?”
Herban: “Clearly from wood.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Could God have saved him also without those wooden planks, or could He not?”
Herban: “He could, I think, for it is written, that ‘to God everything is possible.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “So if He could, why did He need a wooden ark to save the righteous one? For at all events Noah had to offer suitable gratitude for his salvation to the ark, by which he was also saved, and not to the Lord.”
Herban: “Let it not be; he had to send up his gratitude to the Lord, which he also did, and not to matter.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “So do you consent that God prepared salvation for him through this matter which is without soul? Therefore God, since He is good, has also mentally stored up salvation for us in this way through these images which you see, although they are without soul. For through them we understand the better things which possess salvation, and are led up to the zeal which is pleasing to God. As Noah found salvation through the ark, not in the ark, but offered his gratitude to the Lord through the ark by building an altar, in a similar way we do, being redeemed from the mental flood by the coming of God's Word in the flesh, and considering His humanity as another divine ark, by which He bore our burdens and consumed our iniquities, for He, together with His holy divinity, was accepted into heaven. Since we do not see this with our corporeal eyes, we paint the immaculate likeness of that humanity with pure colors, and through the shade of the likeness of his body we worship that God-filled humanity which was accepted into heaven, and through the worship of the blameless humanity, which was accepted into heaven, we worship the Word of God the Father, which is without beginning, through the Holy Spirit, which is united with the body without being mixed; and through the worship of the immaculate Word of God we worship the living Father, out of Whom everything comes. And being deified in this way, we are sanctified by His life-giving and all-holy Spirit. For this reason we both paint the icon of Christ and venerate it, by which, as I have said, He brings us up from below to such a height.”
Herban: “Having prepared your references you applied them to one person of the image. Now let it be as you have said concerning the image of Christ. But what will you answer about the remaining ones?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Which remaining ones?”
Herban: “The ones you venerate, calling them saints and painting them, considering them gods, whose dead remains you consider worthy, also giving drink-offerings to them, honoring and adoring them.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Do you honor the prophets that have shone forth in Israel, or do you dishonor or despise them?”
Herban: “I honor them and celebrate their memory. But I do not paint representations of them as you do it, nor will I stretch out my hand to a dead image, as you perform it, nor do I also bend my knee before the golden, silver or brazen picture of this and that saint, as you express yourself, and to that which is painted on a plastered wall with egg, white lead, mosaic cubes, wax-work and countless other materials, earthly and vain and dead colors, which are inefficient for the support of man.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “A man, who has infinite longing in his heart and desire, personal relationship and boiling love for something or for some other objects, contrives many adequate practices, by which he will treat with honor as necessary those whom he was desiring for long, more than his beloved ones. But just as you offspring of Abraham did not love God, in the same way you do not even love His saints, but have become stiff-necked transgressors, liars and betrayers, being opposed to God and His saints.”
Herban: “There is one holy God Who is in heaven, for He did not nominate saints here. There is one God of Sabaoth Who made heaven and earth, and ‘there is none holy as the Lord, and there is none righteous beside our God.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You arrived here by a long way to bring envy to the appellation of saints. Now what such things did the prophet say or about whom? ‘In the saints that are in His earth did the Lord make wondrous; all the acts of His will are in them.’ So to whom should we listen, or rather whom should we hear when he speaks, to you feeble and profane man or to David, the great one among the prophets and greatest among the kings, who said: ‘The Lord magnified His saints who are in His land’? And Solomon: ‘The righteous live forever, and their reward will be from the Lord.’ Therefore we embrace in particular these holy and righteous men who have pleased the Lord well on earth and paint the worthy icons of those that went up gloriously to the highest in their spirit, with insatiable longing and divine desire, adoring not the matter, but the shape and sight of every single saint. For we embrace in the spirit the sight of their shape, when we enter the holy churches of God and His saints, and by our insatiable love we imagine them to stand together with us as living persons. And by this we are also incited to imitate their God-pleasing life and receive extraordinary wonders from them by the grace of God which has been bestowed upon them, and are crowned and sanctified and enlightened in our Spirit.”
Herban: “I wonder whether God at any time has stored up His grace for the icons which are depicted on the wall and on boards, abandoning those that live on earth; go ahead and speak.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Yea, God has stored up the same grace forever for his saints, both living and dead. So tell me here, which authority did the sheepskin of Eliah possess over the prophet Elishai, that God gave His grace to the dead sheepskin, deserting the living Elishai? For through it he struck the waters of Jordan, which he could not pass before by himself, and it was divided hither and thither and he went over on dry ground. And when Moses did wonders in Egypt, God put the power of working portents not into him, but into his rod; for he worked these extraordinary things throwing it away and striking the waters of the Red Sea with it. And was the tabernacle of the congregation not made by a divine ray or by a shining cloud? At all events the ark within it was made from incorruptible wood and built from pure gold, and it itself was equipped with curtains of material linen and wool and pure color. So since it was matter and made from matter, teach me for which reason God gave fear-inspiring adoration unto it in Israel by His grace, though it was material and without soul. Although Aaron's rod was material and without soul, for what reason did Aaron, who had a soul, not bloom, but his rod brought forth leaves immediately, though being without soul and dry? And was the censer of the covenant of the Lord not made from dead matter, and were the tables of the covenant not from stone, and was not the jar material in which the manna was? So if all these things were material and made by human hands, teach me why God stored his grace up in them. Now in the same way as God has worked in those perceptible things, I say, so he does similarly also in our saints and in their worthy relics which you believe to be dead. Not only that, but storing up His divine grace also in the worthy images, which you call idols, He has worked from the beginning the things pleasing to Him and still works them, and we faithful see and are astonished in ecstasy, and He will work once more until the end of the world. You have said that it is not right that men be called holy, even if they have lived according to God. And the great prophet shuts up your shamelessness saying to the whole world: ‘God is wonderful in His saints, the God of Israel,’ and ‘God is to be glorified in the counsel of the saints, He is great and frightful,’ and so on.”
Herban: “As it seems, you have studied this privately a long time ago, since you knew you would debate with me. So you see, that you know yourself as well, according to experience, the good wonders which have happened in the law and in the Jewish rites by the grace of God, by which and from which you received proofs, and thus you anointed the words of your mouth making them strong. Now if this is so, for which reason did God not command us to paint images of our righteous ones as well, of our prophets and of all those that pleased Him well both before the law and in the law, but granted this only to you, as you say? In which way did the prophet say: ‘The idols of the nations are gold and silver, works of the hands of men,’ and so on?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I confess that the law and the prophets were from God, and that they were also justly nominated for Israel from Him. But now, since they have been fulfilled by the righteous judgments of the Almighty, I say, also an end has been put to them in well measured time. For since the old wine, he says, has been spent, the master of the house should have opened the new jars and have offered the new wine to his children and friends. And about what you said: 'For which reason did God not order us, who are in the law, to depict images, but to you that have recently invented this faith,' listen: First, because you have killed your just ones yourself, you stoned the prophets, sawed Isaiah in two and murdered him hurling him down, and did not even bear their words to penetrate your ears. Second, that you despised him who had appeared to you in a pillar of fire and a cloud, you made a calf in the desert and, sacrificing your sons to the carven images of Canaan and your daughters to the demons, you made angry the One Who lives forever. How could He allow you, who were so outstanding in your deceit and folly and unbelieving, to paint images of your prophets and just ones? That the prophet says, as you have said before, ‘The idols of the nations are gold and silver, works of the hands of men,’ this I do not contradict; for the venerable one said that this is so in truth. For in very old times, before the only-begotten Son of God the Father visited us and led us to the truth, the forefathers of us who are from the nations, being in great deceit and ignorance, had devoted themselves continuously with sacrifices to magicians, deceivers and sorcerers, to warriors because of their manliness and to young men and girls because of their beauty, and simply aimed at those who worked wonders, as it is said, by the imagination of the demons, or were in full vigor of their body in their midst, though they were transitory, erecting statues, temples and carven images of idols as places of worship. Concerning these events the prophet thus said this. But if you have to learn the truth: The prophet spoke also about these that they are works of the hands of men, to whom you, having gone astray, sacrificed your sons and daughters. Those whose worthy representations we now paint and venerate and adore, honoring them, were worthy and saintly men who were beloved to God, who raised the dead and opened the eyes of the blind, cleansed lepers and drove away demons, raised the lame and restored the paralytics to health, and simply all of them, being full of the Holy Spirit, shone like some other prophets of the new grace. Now, because of this, since they have well pleased the good One, if we paint their worthy representations, our Master Who loves mankind is not at all grieved about this, for He knows that they are His intimate and beloved ones, His friends and true servants. On the contrary He accepts this, inasmuch as we glorify and adore them for His holy name. For Solomon also says about this: ‘The souls of the righteous are in God's hand, and although they seemed to die in the eyes of men and their departure was considered an affliction’ and so on, ‘they are,’ he says, ‘in peace, and their hope is full of immortality.’ And David: ‘Worthy in the sight of the Lord is the death of His holy ones, and it will be fitting for eternal remembrance,’ and so on.”
Herban: “Do you not hear what the prophet David says about this deceit, that they are unacceptable for worship with good reason? ‘Lord,’ he says, ‘annihilate their image in Thy city, for my heart was burnt up and my kidneys were altered.’ How do you say now that your icons are suitable for veneration?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “First teach me which one is the city, and announce to me which is the one image that has been presented by him to the multitude, and explain to me in which sense ‘the kidneys’ of the speaker ‘were altered,’ and then we will accept that the speech you made was made firmly to refute the veneration of the venerable images.”
Herban: “The city about which he speaks is Jerusalem; the word 'image' is said being a plural in singular form against all idols, for the Lord annihilates all the idols and images of us Jews.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “That lord, who rests in the hearts of you Jews and through you ‘arrogantly and contemptuously’ calls our venerable icons idols, is that wicked demon, the enemy of God and the saints. For he did not believe, when those worthy images began to be depicted in the holy churches of Christ, that the abominable veneration of his idols came to an end. And because of this, since he cannot do anything to us, he bites badly and bitterly. And since he is a spirit unable to insult the things disgusting him with an organ made of flesh, it is necessary that he insults and sets at naught through your abominable hearts, those which had themselves truly devoted to these, the immaculate truth of the arrival of Christ and the adorable veneration of the noble images of the saints. So far to this. The word ‘Lord, destroy their image in Thy city’ is not to be explained as you have said, but somewhat different. For he called this out about those about whom he had said before, teaching us of their folly, ‘And they set their mouth against heaven and their tongue walked through the earth.’ For he said ‘annihilate their image’ according to the word at the beginning, but not about a perceptible statue or about representations, figures, and icons. For in the same way as he says there that ‘God made man according to His own image,’ and that ‘Man walks around in an image, but is troubled in vain,’ so he speaks here about this, that is, about the image of those arrogant ones. The prophet asked it to be annihilated by the Lord; when he said ‘city,’ he meant the upper city in which those that please Him well are glorified after having been transferred from this world as heirs of the kingdom of heaven. But from those, that have consumed their life here indecently and in iniquities and go there after their death, the word ‘according to His image’ will miserably be taken away, which they had received here, and they will be set at naught as being faithless and arrogant, receiving [this appellation] from the Judge of all, and so will be sent to Gehenna for punishment. And this is the unerring solution of this word.”
Herban: “At all events the images of the so-called gods, which you now condemn as well, calling them idols, once had such a sensual perception as now the icons also have, which are called those of your saints, as you say; for there is no difference between those and these.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Did your garment and the tabernacle of the testimony, which consisted both of wool and linen, perhaps possess the same power and honor? Do your rod and the rod of Aaron, which brought forth leaves, possess the same glory? Did the earthenware vessel in your house and the jar, in which the manna was, have the same glory? Will the chest, in which the needs of your body are stored within the house, and the ark of the covenant of the Lord be considered by the well thinking to be of equal value? Will you perhaps compare the torch, the fire and oil, which you inflame in your house for lighting in the night, to the golden candlestick with seven lamps and the most divine censer? Will you also compare your house in which you live to the temple, which Solomon built for the Lord? O no, never, although they both are of matter and idle of sensual perception. At all events you honor the things by which the grace of God used to come to you, understanding that this will happen habitually and in the same way, so observe ours as well. For the former idols were dead and dull and blind, since they were statues and representations of unlawful and sinful men; rather those also gave oracles for the corruption and outrage of souls, as the demons once worked through them. Our present icons are those of holy and god-inspired men, although they are without soul (for how could I say that they have a soul which they do not have?), and perform great and wonderful things not of themselves, but the grace of God and that of those saints does this, of whom these are the images, their intercession and authority in the Holy Spirit. The same will also happen to us concerning their holy relics, for our salvation and certainty of incorruption.”
Herban: “As to that I should speak, I actually do not have anything to say, as you declare. For you say that in the same way as the things in the law, which were material, possessed honor among men, since the grace of God prevailed in them, in the same way the things are honored only by you Christians because of their grace, since this grace has come to them, and are not made gods. This I accept as well, save that even if this should be so, I will not bow my knee to a dead image forever.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Who is ‘to one who appears to be without understanding,’ as the local law says? So did you not hold the brazen serpent in honor, which Moses made and set up in the desert, when the serpents bit you because of your faithlessness and you died miserably? And yet, which sense-perception did the brazen serpent have or which force, that it was honored?”
Herban: “Perhaps we held it in honor because God had given the order to Moses himself to make it; but which God commanded what is made by you, or which Moses set it up, being in charge to do so?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Moses did not indicate what is made by us, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. And even if it would happen to be so, you can not ignore the image which Jesus Christ, Whom you crucified, impressed into a linen cloth only by touching it, and sent it by the messenger Ananias to Abgar in Edessa, who had been afflicted by a terrible disease for a sufficient number of years. When he only received and embraced this image, which was similar to the humanity of Jesus Himself without any change, he regained strength immediately, and standing up from his bed led his life soundly with all the others, blessing the One Who had healed him. The city of Edessa still holds this divine likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ in glory and very great honor, because the linen cloth and the worthy impression have lasted incorrupt so many years, and is glad and rejoicing and full of joy. From there now we had the best starting-point to paint the worthy icons of all holy, God-bearing and wonder-working men.”
Herban: “Jesus is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses? I do not accept this. For when did Abraham and his offspring emigrate and in which time Moses, and at what point now finally was Jesus born from Mary, the daughter of Joachim? Now how is Jesus the God of Abraham?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Do not examine this according to the word of His humanity, but considering the measures of His divinity, understand that He is the God of Abraham and Adam.”
Herban: “We must speak and talk much and get a headache.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “God gives sometimes to a man the power to raise the dead, to open the eyes of the blind, to restore the paralytics to health and to cleanse the lepers, I think, and especially to one of low education to do many portents, who has transgressed badly and did things which were not fitting to God.”
Herban: “Let it not be. ‘God does not hear sinners.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And with what intention did Jesus work all these wonders in the midst of you, He Whom you crucified? Does God not give His glory to somebody else?”
Herban: “Let it not be, for God does not install somebody else in His glory instead of Himself and goes away Himself.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “When the Lord Jesus Christ worked signs and wonders in your congregation and said, ‘I am God and the all-true Son of God,’ for what reason did the God of the law not hinder Him, since He told lies, if He was clearly the Antichrist and hostile to God and appropriated His glory, but let Him work miracles and advance into all the ends [of the world]?”
Herban: “He opposed Him so much and was angry with Him in such a degree, that He gave the order to us, His beloved ones, and after He had been arrested, we crucified and killed Him.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And how is He now, having risen from the dead, glorified from end to end together with the God of the law and His Holy Spirit, and the God of the law does not become angry, but accepts this? But you who crucified Him were scattered like the chaff of the world, according to what the prophet said about you: ‘Let God arise, and His enemies shall be scattered,’ it happened only to you immediately that He rose from the dead. Now if He was hostile to God, for which reason did God not hinder Him to make portents and to rise from the dead, and that His enemy would not be glorified Who robbed His heavenly and earthly glory, but rather He expelled you from your inheritance and your land, and gave it to the Christians who believe in Him and glorify Him until now?”
Herban: “About this I am astonished as well; but now when thinking about it I say, that it was once necessary to give time also to the faithless, for tempting us, whether we would keep the oaths to Him among the nations as well, God allowed this to happen to us in this way.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You kept many oaths to Him also being at peace, you who sacrificed your sons and daughters to the demons. Now He recently wanted to make trial of your love among the nations as well? Therefore you say vain things as you stand here.”
Herban: “There is no man without iniquity, but God always awaits the repentance of us all.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If you will not receive the divine Baptism of my Christ in the holy name of the life-giving Trinity before you leave this world, your repentance will receive and await you in the Gehenna of fire, for even unwillingly you will repent, with your ignorance, of the most vain and destructive things.”
Herban: “You have insulted me sufficiently saying this word, but now take care that such a thing may not happen to you.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I am worthy of all punishment and confess this, but because I adulterate the divine orders of my Christ and God.”
Herban: “And I myself am a sinner as well, but because I do not keep the law of Moses as it is necessary.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I testify to you that if you keep it, you will not receive any reward from him, and if you transgress it, there would be nobody to judge you for it; because you despise the faith in Christ, you will be condemned by a righteous judgment.”
Herban: “Rather take care that you will not be greatly condemned because you are no Jew.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “For what reason will I be condemned?”
Herban: “You will be condemned because it is written about God in the law: ‘He will judge the nations, He will fill the place with dead bodies, He will smash their heads on the earth.’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “This has not been written about the God of the law, but the one about whom he spoke in the same psalm in the beginning, saying: ‘The Lord said unto my Lord: Sit at my right,’ and so on.”
Herban: “All violent interpretation has been done because of your Lord, Whom you call your Christ; for once for all there was nobody else, that the prophets should have abandoned the God of the law and sung prophesying and writing about your Christ, Whom you desire.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If you have heard few things which testify that He is God and man and the Son that has no beginning together with the Father, answer once more.”
Herban: “I have heard much, but forgotten most of it, and thereafter again I contend with you just as in the beginning.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Did you forget what Isaiah said about Him: ‘A Child has been born to us and a Son has been given to us’? When he said ‘Child,’ he spoke obscurely about the word of His humanity, for humanity is childish compared to the wisdom of divinity; the words ‘and a Son,’ as to the Son of God, referring to the power of divinity. In the same section he declared, ‘Whose government was upon His shoulder, and His name is called the Angel of the great counsel’ of his Father. Listen, Herban, ‘a wonderful counselor,’ he says, ‘a mighty God.’ Who is the Child that was born as a person in authority, ‘a prince of peace,’ who? The Son about whom Isaiah said, that He was given to us as the Father of the age to come, who is He? The Child that ‘has been given to us as a Son,’ the Father not of this world, but of the future one, he says. Now since this Child, which is also the Son of God, must be the Father not of this age, but of the future one, this means of that endless one which has no end. If you do not believe in Him, you will find it out at that time when you will stand naked and open before Him at the day of the resurrection and offer your account, that although you were initiated into the writings of the prophets and have been trained thoroughly in all the Old Testament, you did not want to recognize the One Who has been prophesied. But instead, you stopped up your ears and closed your eyes like a dull snake that stops its ears, in order not to hear the voice that sings about your salvation.”
Herban: “By heaven and earth and sea, my mind is divided because of the Crucified. I want to say that He is the One Who comes with all truth; but then His cross offends me, His spittings and beatings and death offend me. I want to believe in Him but fear surrounds me that I might not be deceived and strike against the God of the law, and perish in Hades with all my bones scattered, as the psalm says. Now I do not know what to do.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Since the prophets of old have testified about Him, that He will become flesh, will work signs and wonders and be betrayed and crucified, as you have learned before from me, and will suffer death and rise from His grave on the third day, why do you then think that it is a scandal to believe in Him and to go to Him, as those testify in truth?”
Herban: “I know that the word ‘God of the law’ is true; with what intention should I therefore afflict my Master by believing in the Crucified? Perhaps this is not at all pleasant to Him.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If someone loves your son with his whole heart, will you become angry and irritated or will you be furious with that man who loves him, tell me?”
Herban: “I will rather love such a man, and I think I will also honor and glorify him: Since he loves my son, it is clear that he also loves me.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The God of the law might do the same to those who love His true Son, Who is coessential and of equal honor and similar to Him, in and according to all things.”
Herban: “I have listened to all the things you said to me, and I know that just as the prophets say, you have rightfully pronounced to me yourself as well. But now my heart does not believe that it is pleasing to go to Christ and believe in Him; for I fear that I will perhaps be deceived and fall into an error, and will be completely under a curse and in shame among my whole race.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And if you do not listen to your Scriptures that teach and instruct you about Christ, that it is He, then you also will not listen forever to what they command you about the God of the law; but now, following your own mind, go on simply and as it happens to any steep place or plain without distinction.”
Herban: “I love being a Hebrew, and I desire to be in the law, for God loved Abraham much and accomplished remarkable wonders with Isaac and Jacob. In a similar way He raised the all-comely Joseph, who had been sold as a slave, to be a king, and with Moses He made strange signs and wonders which exceeded all understanding, showing him also His ineffable glory; and miraculously supplied us with manna to satiate from heaven in the desert, and gave us the Promised Land unambiguously, as He had promised to our father Abraham, and brought us from there unharmed, dividing the Red Sea in the middle like a green plain, enlightening us in the night by a pillar of fire and protecting us in the day by a shining cloud. And there are many other wonders, which He performed with us and which you do not fail to know. And besides, considering this I cannot ‘fall away from the living God’ and come to a new faith, of which I do not know whether it is sure according to experience or wrong in some point.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Hear, Herban, ‘the old things have passed away, behold, everything has become new.’ The things which you enumerated here will not offer you any profit, if you do not listen to me and are reborn through water and spirit. For it is written: ‘Wash you, make you clean, put away your wickednesses of your hearts,’ and thereafter, ‘If you want and hear Me, you will eat the goods of the land, if you do not want and do not hear Me, the sword will devour you. For the mouth of the Lord has said this.’ So if you are convinced by me, leave the old things aside and care about the recent ones, knowing that Judaism has ended and the law has become silent, and what the prophets have prophesied has found an end. And we have seen a certain change and things gone in a different way, and the priesthood ‘after the order of Melchizedek’ was established and the new Jerusalem bloomed and the new Israel brought forth leaves and the holy kingdom was renewed and the new congregation has faithfully assembled. Therefore the prudent one has to choose his benefit and not ‘to pretend a pretext in his sins.’ For Abraham, as you have said, was beloved by the Lord, but not for anything other than that he kept his commandments. And Isaac and Jacob and Moses similarly were beloved for no other reason than because of their virtuous deeds. And those wonders, which were worked in the Old Testament by the Lord, were performed for no other reason than to prefigure the present new ones by the old ones, so that the divine command to men should have a beginning and the things ordained by his law should be confirmed more firmly, and the people seeing it should accept the commands more courageously. Therefore, although all those wonders happened, not even so that people listened to God, although that law had ended and that land had been taken away from you, about which you said, that he gave it to you after having spoken to Abraham. And since those signs and wonders passed to us together with your land, it is necessary to understand that the legislation also has been handed over to us from that God Who had offered the law, and to yield to it, to be baptized and saved.”
Herban: “Abraham died as a Hebrew, and you testify yourself that he is holy, and similarly the prophets and the others. Therefore if I am a Hebrew as well, for which reason do you say that 'you will not receive salvation by the law'?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Before the law began, and when it had begun, before it ended, many pleased the Lord well through it, and I do not deny that; but when Christ came, the law was silent and has no effect anymore. For in someone's field, as long as its lord is not there but went to town, perhaps the administrator may exhort the servants and hired laborers disposing in his place. But once their lord has come back from the town, the administrator of the field does not dare anymore to dispose something new to his fellows, but waits, feeling affection for the pure orders of the coming master, and what he commands, this, I think, is done at once. Therefore, in the beginning your administrator Moses disposed according to your law, to you who were in the field of the law. But when Jesus Christ came and gave other much better orders, the administrator was silent, and you, his servants, who were also his hired laborers, muttered. Therefore, if Abraham, about whom you testify that he died as a Hebrew, would also live now, he would abandon without any controversy the law which he had not received, and the circumcision which he had been ordered to perform, and readily would have come to Christ and believed in Him, and would have been numbered among the Christians, although Moses himself pleased the Lord well in a way worthy of God, as it is said, being guided by the inherent law of nature already before the written law had been given.”
Herban: “This is the thing in question for which I have asked often: who will instruct us according to necessity whether this Man is the Christ?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Inquire and see, how you did not gain any advance for good anymore, since Christ has come, because you were disobedient. Comprehend this and understand that from the day on which Jesus Christ lived among you having become flesh from the Virgin, a prophet or any other wonder did not rise among you any more; for this reason no sign nor vision, nor righteousness and truth did happen to you, but famine and plague, affliction, siege and captivity, the sword, wounds and murder, and the most bitter scattering among all nations. You should consider all this and understand the truth, and go to Christ and believe as in the Father, so also in the Son and the Holy Spirit, and gain the kingdom of heaven, and not sit in shadow and dreams, play and be deceived.”
Herban: “Did you ever see a man, who wants a bad thing for himself willingly?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “First of all I see that you do this today.”
Herban: “Let it not be, that I should willingly want some evil to happen to me. It is for my salvation, what I tell and speak here, so that I will be able to understand, what the relation is between the law and Christianity.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You have said this wisely; but know that the whole law and the prophets testify in their records, that Christianity will come being composed by God, as you have heard these few of many things from our modesty.”
Herban: “For which reason did the prophet say to the God of the law: ‘Thou hast destroyed utterly all those that have deserted Thee,’ and ‘It is good for me to draw near to God, to put my hope in the Lord’? How should I not also be destroyed completely, tell me, having deserted the God of my fathers, as you say to me? Therefore I will rather draw near to my savior, Who offered me the law, for He is good, and will put my hope in Him, and He will be my helper and protector.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I do not give you the command to deny the God of the law, I do not agree to this. For I myself also believe in Him and in His only-begotten Son and in His all-holy Spirit. As to the Son, I exhort you to accept him with His Father as well; for if you do not accept this, the God of the law will be angry with you Whom you claim to love, for you appear to hate His only-begotten Son, Who is celebrated, glorified and beloved, and do not accept Him as your God and Lord together with the Father and the Spirit.”
Herban: “Did God, Who is invisible and incorporeal, have a wife, that you call His coessential Son, Who is clothed in His flesh, a man? For did God put on flesh, that He needed a fleshly woman, of which He would have the One Whom you call His Son?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The commander-in-chief Gabriel brought the good tiding to the Virgin Mary, coming from heaven: ‘Rejoice, thou who art highly favored, the Lord is with thee; thou wilt conceive a Son,’ he ‘says, from the Holy Spirit, and therefore the holy One that will be born will be called Son of God.’ For since we, being men, are unable to see or imagine God as He is, the Word of God created an animated flesh for Himself from the immaculate blood of the Virgin, and having been borne by her He was born after nine months and was raised according to the law of the body, and appeared first to you Jews; and when you did not accept Him He rushed to us and we received Him, and now He has loved us, although we are unable to imagine His divinity as it is. For we would not behave in the way Moses did, since he also desired to see God's face. And he heard from him: ‘You cannot see my face, for if a man will see it,’ he says, ‘he will not live on earth anymore.’ Although we rejoice aiming at His immaculate humanity and considering it, it is necessary, since He is truly God and man, that also His divinity be inside Him. And since His humanity is the cause of this good for us, we also depict its form and honor the shape and not the matter, and venerate the appearance of His shape and not the board. So for this reason is Christ the Son of God, according to experience.”
Herban: “And is this divinity so small that it has room completely within the humanity of your Christ?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “God is complete in a small place, as once in the hut of Abraham, and He is the same in a large place, as in heaven and on earth.”
Herban: “For which reason was the whole divinity inside your Christ? For it is rich and cannot be enclosed anywhere.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “We find a rich fire within a small piece of charcoal; for if I would take a little fire, I could burn the whole world setting it aflame with it, and if I would take much fire, I would accomplish the same with it and nothing better. For the same fire that becomes big starts from a small one, and a weak spark will be raised to a frightful flame, when it spreads to burning material.”
Herban wondered about this answer and said: “It is written: ‘Who makes His angels spirits and His ministers a flaming fire.’ How can you venerate the honorable essence of the angels by depicting them? Perhaps [you venerate] those who have bodies, as you say, because by depicting the form of their body one honors them, venerating their shadow, and does not make them gods; but now for what reason [do you venerate] the angels who do not possess bodies, nor did anyone behold the incorporeal shape which they possess? For they are spirits of the mind, being completely invisible and immaterial.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You will not have anything to say here either, for we learned from you to paint the angels of God.”
Herban: “Under which pretext do you say this? For I myself do not know at all this thing to exist among us.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Did you not understand the reason for this thing, having been trained in the whole Old Testament?”
Herban: “[As true as] God lives, I do not know at all that we should have depicted representations of angels of God and should have venerated them.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Yea, when Solomon built the temple of God the highest, he represented the cherubim of His glory in mosaic inside in the holy place and in the holy of holies above the mercy-seat overshadowing the altar, and made cherubim at the first gate of the sanctuary, and cherubim at the second gate of the temple. Now see how you have venerated the incorporeal nature, depicting it, and reproach us because we honor and venerate the saints who pleased the Lord well, while in their body, by depicting them.”
Herban: “It is true that Solomon erected this, and there is no problem about this; save that he depicted them not for veneration, but made them in a convenient way only for the honor and glory of the temple and the mercy-seat.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Is everything inside the temple and the sanctuary, which serves a purpose and is of use, called a holy offering as being offered to the Lord because of the need for which it is useful, or is it called unholy and inefficacious?”
Herban: “As the temple is with all its furniture, so it is completely addressed as holy and as ‘a house of God the Almighty’”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Now if the temple is completely addressed as holy and a house of God the Almighty, then it proves that the things in it, being sacred and holy, are worthy of honor and worship as well.”
Herban: “So it is, save that the things, which are used in some different way in the temple, necessarily must be fitting in order to be worthy of honor. I believe that it is not right to venerate the figures and images of different and other men.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If the law orders to honor father and mother, namely, every one of our parents in the flesh, who often are also sinners, how much more is it necessary to honor our spiritual fathers and to venerate them in particular, who did not give birth to us corporeally like those but spiritually gave us rebirth, enlightened us, and led us to the light of the knowledge of God and to the upper Jerusalem, to the honor and kingdom?”
Herban: “Honor the living as you want; but why do you adore and venerate their forms and images which are dead? For all this is without soul and motion, and gives no profit, either to itself or to those who adore it.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Do you honor the tomb of your father, or do you go there and accomplish the need of your stomach upon it?”
Herban stood there bewildered, for he had said 'you have to honor the living and not the dead.' And here he did not have anything to answer.
When he remained silent, the archbishop said: “Every spiritual thing in which the grace of God prevails and shines, overshadowing it, and in which it is active, is more worthy than you and me, who possess a living soul, a mind and reasoning, and by offending commit more sins than the unreasonable animals.”
Herban: “So it is, save that man was made according to the image of God and is more worthy than all others, even if he is very sinful.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Here you have spoken badly. If the sinful man is worthier than all others, for which reason did the divine trial, when you embittered God in the desert, give you to the serpents and scorpions for food? And when the prophet Jonah did not obey the order of the Almighty and neglected his obedience, did he not deem that sea-monster to be better than him, and gave the order to it to devour him for chastisement?”
Herban: “You are superior to me in all things, and there is nothing I can do to you. But what does the prophet say as to God, ‘Thou hast submitted all things under his feet,’ that is, of man?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The prophet said this word obscurely from the Holy Spirit about our Savior Jesus Christ as to His Father and God. For when he said ‘Thou hast submitted all things under His feet,’ it is clear that he spoke obscurely about the things in heaven and on earth in general, but did not submit everything to men. For man fears the creeping and wild animals in the field and the crocodiles in the lakes, and, worst of all, fleas, bugs, and even the gnats and flies that bite man painfully.”
Herban: “You have spent a sufficient number of years to learn these awesome things by heart, so that you can silence your opponents. I was young and have now become old, I have discussed with a sufficient number of Christians from my childhood on, with wise and uneducated, with rich and poor ones; as God lives, I cannot remember that anyone came up against me in such a way at a discussion. But why do you honor the first day, ceasing to keep the Sabbath and to be circumcised, and are baptized giving up circumcision and preferring Baptism?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “In order not to be Jews, but Christians. For circumcision serves no other purpose than that the one who suffered it is marked as to which nation and race he belongs; so you often see litters of pigs whose ears are cut in twain, to know to which people or to whom they belong. Concerning the reason why we do not keep the Sabbath, but Sunday, which is the first day of creation, listen: The Sabbath has become old and is now at rest. We honor the first day as the beginning of the future age and as the announcer of the kingdom of heaven. We are baptized, cleansing our body from sins with water, and making our soul whiter than snow, invisibly through the Holy Spirit. Why do you therefore not become baptized yourself as well in the All-holy Trinity, that you be cleaned in your body and sanctified in your soul, and enjoy yourself delighting in your spirit?”
Herban: “So did God mark us by circumcision, as you have said, instead of pigs and not as His beloved and worthy nation? Obviously you have appeared as someone that insults us, O archbishop.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Let it not be! I just gave you an example of what the use of circumcision is. For you see, some people often also cut the ears and tails of dogs to please themselves and to recognize their property. And often they also brand horses, asses and mules with an iron seal which is made glowing. So you will not suffer any trouble in respect to this, for I have introduced such things to do you a pleasure, describing them as an example.”
Herban: “You have introduced them for our dishonor, I think, and not, I say, as examples. For it was not enough for you to make us pigs, but also dogs and asses and mules. Therefore, who is a pig here, the one that eats pork or the one who does not?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Neither the one who eats it nor the one who does not, but he who foolishly has become similar to the works of the pigs.”
Herban: “Since the law does not allow eating pork, for what reason do you eat this meat and transgress?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Before you went out of Egypt, why did you eat it as well?”
Herban: “Because the law had not yet been established by God and Moses; and with what intention should we therefore have refrained from a thing about which we did not receive a commandment?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The same to us: We do not refrain from a thing about which we did not receive a commandment. And we do everything so that we may not be found to be Jews.”
Herban: “So we also do everything and take every pain, that we may not be found to be Christians, but Jews. For in the same way as you are disgusted by the faith of the Hebrews, similarly we also are disgusted by the veneration of the Christians.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “It is necessary to examine everything and to take every pain, and then to embrace the good and to keep away from all kinds of evil. It is further necessary to leave the moldering bread behind, to run to the newly baked and hot one and to partake in it sweetly. It is also necessary to run away from the house, which was built once ago, and to run to the one that has been constructed recently and miraculously by the all-creating wisdom of God, His peace and goodness that has created the visible things together with the invisible ones; but if not, to be mixed up and corrupted badly together with the bread which has become uneatable, and, remaining in the decayed house, to depart pitifully by an evil and bad fall, and to scatter the bones in Hades most hatefully.”
Herban: “Everybody believes his own ideas to be good, and nobody will call those bad forever that are the old, prudent and faithful. The new seems to me dubious, incomplete, without quality and foolish.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “An old evil will forever not become a new good. An old wineskin will not be suited to receive new wine, if it has passed the night in the frost, and an old garment and a decayed rope will break more quickly. A decayed and worn shoe will not be put on the foot of a king. An old man who is decayed by his very bad age will not regain his youth like an eagle. The web of a spider, when it becomes weak, indicates clearly the simple mind and worthlessness of its maker. So what about you and your Judaism? He disappeared from his kinship, left his veneration and fled to my Lord Jesus Christ in that time when He came down to earth, became a Man, and walked around according to His commands, that is, to His law, fulfilled and ended it, saying to him: ‘No fruit will grow from you forever,’ for I have no need of the lawful fruit which is in the shade, since the grapes of the new grace have come to those that need them, and ‘the living bread which came down from heaven’ for the hungry. Then He, being God and the Son of God and a lawgiver, since He had the authority to do so, established Christianity and ordered that the new sacrifice should be accomplished, mixing His worthy blood and His immaculate body, and removing forever the animal rituals and sacrifices of the law and the worshipers of idols. And he ordered that the God of the law should be glorified as the Father, He Himself as the Son, and the Intercessor of His Father as the Holy Spirit, and that these three Persons, without being divided and confused in the one name of the one Divinity, should be praised, honored, adored and glorified as one God by everything that has breath. So it pleased God the Father, and He agreed and assented to this same most beloved legislation of His only-begotten Son, and found pleasure in it. And confirming Christianity, He put a seal on it and ordered every man to enter the kingdom of heaven being led by this very legislation. To the disobedient and contradicting He gave the repentance of waiting until their last breath, so that he who believes and is baptized will be saved, and he who contradicts and ends his life in unbelief will be locked up in the fire of Gehenna, together with the demons. Therefore I exhort you to desist from the old law which has become silent, and to run to the new grace of truth. But if you delay in this being unwilling, I am guiltless of your iniquity; for I have told you this before, and you will not have a cheap excuse on the Day of Judgment, when everyone will be called there to account for what he has done and achieved here.”
Herban: “You did not stop to present such things to me in an insulting way, as if I were one of the unbelieving worshipers of idols, who is destined for complete destruction. Therefore, if this is so, for what reason did the prophet say such a thing? ‘You spoke,’ he says, ‘in a vision to your sons and said: I have laid help upon the powerful, I have exalted the chosen one out of My people, I have found David My servant, I have anointed him with My holy oil. For My hand will help him and My arm will let him be strong. The enemy will not achieve anything against him, and the son of iniquity will not afflict him, and I will beat down his enemies before his face and will put those that hate him to flight. And My truth and My mercy are with him, and the horn of the righteous will be exalted in My name, and I will set his hand in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers. He will invoke Me: “Thou art my Father, my God and protector of my salvation,” and I will set him on high as My firstborn among the kings of the earth. I will keep My mercy for him forever, and My covenant will stand fast with him.’ See how the love of God is uninterrupted for David and his kingdom, which we are. ‘And I will set up,’ He says, ‘his seed forever and his throne until the days of heaven,’ that is until the end of the world, and ‘if My sons will forsake My law,’ He says, ‘and do not walk in My judgments, if they profane My statutes and do not keep My commandments, I will visit their sins with My rod and their iniquities with My scourge. But I will not take away My mercy from them, nor will I do wrong in My truth, nor will I profane My covenant and despise the words which go out of My mouth.’ Hear at this place God's exceptional bonds with His people, that He will not take His covenant away from His people until the end of the world, but strengthen it by swearing oaths. For He adds the following and says: ‘Once I have sworn in My holiness, that I will not lie to David. His seed remains forever and his throne as the sun before Me, and as the moon established forever and as a faithful witness in heaven.’ Therefore listen to this and understand that God does not take away His covenant until the end of the world, which is the law, but declares to chastise the transgressors and not to take away His mercy from them; so stop condemning us just because we came across you, [we] who please God well through His law and in a way worthy of Him.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Then explain to me what the psalm says after the section at the verse ‘as a faithful witness in heaven.’”
Herban: “Consider the things you have enumerated; but which need do you have to inquire on those that go beyond them?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I have this need, because the words which are said after those you enumerated to me have been composed for the dissolution of the things you said to me. For thereafter the psalmist says (and who is the psalmist, I think, but Ethan the Israelite): ‘Thou hast cast off and annihilated, Thou hast put aside Thine anointed, Thou hast destroyed the covenant of Thy servant, Thou hast profaned his sanctuary on the earth, Thou hast reduced his fortress to timidity and have demolished all his fences. And all that pass by the way plundered him, and Thou hast exalted the right hand of those who afflict him and have turned away the help of his sword’ and so on, and also until [the verse] ‘Where is Thy former mercy, Lord, which Thou hast sworn to David in Thy truth’ and so on? So what he composes well before, for what reason does he testify this calumniating in an insulting way and saying to the Lord: 'For what reason didst Thou speak allegorically about the things on which Thou hast agreed with David, but did not do them?'”
Herban: “So did God deceive us, if He also happens to be a liar?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You do not know the power of the things that have been said, as you should, because even the one who composed this psalm perhaps ignored it. God is found to speak the truth well everywhere. For God appears to have made His good agreements with David. He fulfills these in Jesus Christ, Who has providentially risen from the seed of David as God and man, who is Son and Word of God in both natures as the same Person, for it was He Whom He exalted from the people as the chosen One. This is the humanity which is united with the inaccessible divinity without being mixed, and the man about whom He says ‘the enemy will not achieve anything against Him,’ is Jesus the Lord. Consider what you, who have crucified Him, have achieved against Him at all events, Who has shattered and smashed to pieces His enemies before His face. Christ is the Son of the blameless Mother of God Mary, with whom truth and mercy are, and in Whose name the horn of salvation will be exalted. Jesus Christ is the new David according to His humanity, Whose hand will be ‘in the’ mental ‘sea,’ that is in the world for the sake of the knowledge of God, ‘and in the rivers’ that let their water mentally flow forth from the bodies of His believers to water the new people of Israel for the protection ‘of His right hand.’ Jesus Christ is God and man; ‘He will invoke Me,’ says God, according to His essence which He possesses, that is, of His divinity. ‘Thou art My Father,’ for He has begotten Him before all times from His own womb, speaking about the Man Whom He has created, Who descends from the seed of David for the sake of the unification with the divine Logos, ‘My God and protector of My salvation.’ So ‘I will set’ this Man ‘on high as My firstborn,’ says God because He was the first to be born from the grave, where you put Him after murdering Him; for His humanity rose, which you had killed. And His divinity remained immortal, and since then His humanity does not die, but is eternal and reigns. At all events, every man who has died and gone into the womb of the earth must be reborn thereafter and rise again from the earth, and give account of what he has done before he gave himself to the womb of the earth. Therefore, Christ is for this reason the firstborn from the grave, and elevated so high among the kings of the earth that even the kings of the earth themselves fall to earth and worship Him with fear and trembling and believing in Him. ‘I will keep My mercy for Him forever,’ He says, ‘and My covenant will stand fast with Him.’ The Scripture is not without testimony that His throne will remain on earth in the churches, or where the faithful and honest kings of the Christians are His corporeal deputies, ‘until the days of heaven’ (for thereafter comes the kingdom of heaven). ‘And His throne is as the sun before Me’ has been said about the throne that has been erected in heaven, which stands before that inaccessible and most awe-inspiring power, I say, the Divinity, and on which Jesus Christ, when He was assumed from earth to heaven, sat down by order of His Father in His humanity which He raised from the tomb incorrupt. The Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, Who is also our God in heaven, is a faithful witness that this is so. He truthfully gives testimony altogether about all these things through the mouth of His prophets about His only-begotten Son.”
Herban: “By the One Who has spoken to Moses on the mountain, the Crucified has opened a great abyss for you against us. But tell me, for what reason did your God die? Did you ever see a God die? A mortal God will probably never appear. Now if He was a God, for what reason did He die the death of the evildoers?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You have asked all this before and received an answer, so for which reason do you again want to cause us trouble by asking us?”
Herban: “I forgot what I have asked, but you do not hesitate to answer my questions.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “But now it is written: ‘To a prudent man one word is sufficient, but the one that gives explanations to a fool will not convince his heart.’”
Herban: “So do I seem to you a fool as well?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Very much and beyond telling, for you do not recognize what is to your benefit.”
Herban: “For which reason? Because I do not devote myself to the Crucified? And I say that the Christians also appear to be accursed, since they do not venerate God according to the tradition of Moses. It is written in the law of God that ‘accursed is everybody who does not continue in the book of the law to do what is written in it.’ Now since you do not keep what is written in that book, but are Christians, you are accursed.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Of that curse nothing applies to us Christians in any way. For those things have not generally been legislated for us, but for you deceitful and erring Hebrews. And even if this would have been allotted to us, our Christ, Who was hung to the wood and therefore became a curse, removed that curse from us, which was in the law, for He alone is merciful.”
Herban: “Tell me, for what reason your God died, for this devours my heart.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “He died to kill the sin of Adam and death, and to liberate those who were held captive in Hades, going down Himself, being almighty.”
Herban: “Were there no angels or archangels and no divine powers attending Him, so that He would have been sent with them and His will would have happened, but instead He labored alone, sending Himself as a poor man without possessions?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Two bad things would come to pass if this would have happened thus: The one is that the demons would say: 'There is no justice in the world, but perhaps there is somebody unjust to us, for we have overcome man in paradise and defeated him, holding the reins on good ground; God has robbed him from us not by justice but by some illegal act and injustice, simply by using His strength.' And by this, the divine also would have been reckoned among sins, which is impossible; for the divine is without sin and faultless. And this is the first origin of the things mentioned; the second is that if salvation would happen in the world by an unlawful act of the angels, then those men who worshipped fire and the sun and bowed their knee to Baal as a god would also worship the angels as gods, ‘and the last error would be worse than the first one.’ Now it is not like this, but the Word of God came down and became a man in all things except sin. But when the devil and the demons also saw this man, they tempted and tried Him, whether He would commit sin, and when they found out that He was not subjected to the yoke of sin, they wondered about His being sinless. However, they incensed their badness and envy against Him, as they usually do to all those who do not work their sin, since they did not understand that He was God as well. Aiming at His humanity only, they fought to kill Him as a man, so that they did not realize that He was not subject to them through sin, and were bitten and set aflame even more, not bearing their shame. Therefore, when they resolved upon a way how to kill Him, they decided to murder Him through you miserable ones, which they also did. But considering all for Himself with the mental eye of His divinity, He endured on just grounds to seize the devil and his demons and to prevent them from holding a trial, and to redeem His own creature reasonably and rightfully, which also happened. Therefore, when Jesus was killed unjustly although He had committed no sin, He was killed in His humanity and not in His divinity, and His soul was brought down to the chambers of Hades by death and the devil willingly and voluntarily, possessing also divinity invisibly in itself. Now when Hades and Satan and death wanted to enclose His soul below the first man, Adam, and came together to do this, at that time the Divinity, producing that worthy soul of the body just like bait on a fish-hook, showed Its divine power and revealed Who It was, asking for the reason of their boldness. For He said to them, frightful as a lion in His roaring: 'I am the true God from God, Who has descended from heaven and became a man; therefore you have presented My sin to Me. For what reason did you condemn Me and My soul to this place?' When they were amazed because of the punishment which had suddenly appeared to them, as the prophet says, ‘Their sin will be looked for and not be found,’ they discussed a lot and were not able to find any reasonable excuse, and were ashamed frightfully. But He condemned those miserable ones, who wanted to condemn His most godly and worthy soul in the dark chambers, to stay in these themselves, throwing them into Hades and binding their hands and feet with spiritual iron fetters. He first took away from Himself the captivity, by which they had held Him captive, when His humanity came up from Hades, made it captive and led it to the bliss which is there [above]. He Himself appeared to His disciples and apostles, rising on the third day, and when He was accepted into heaven before them, He sent them out into the whole world to proclaim that He is truly Christ the Savior of the world; and they went out and proclaimed this everywhere. And so, look and see that the belief in Him has covered all the world, as much water from the sea, as the prophet Isaiah says. Therefore, O Herban, my God and Lord has suffered His pains in His humanity and died.”
Herban: “And that fear-inspiring nature of the Divinity suffered so greatly that, being held by the devil and death, it was brought down to Hades as a captive and like one helpless and condemned?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “That power of His divinity suffered so greatly by His condescension, that as it has been said before, the Man Who was ‘free among the dead’ according to the prophet, might steal those in Hades in His humanity from the hands of evil on good grounds, while this humanity remained incorrupt. For He did not accept that His humanity should be corrupted by Hades, as the prophet says about Him, that ‘Thou wilt not give Thy holy One to see corruption,’ although He accepted flesh in a way similar to us from the pure blood of the Virgin. But He suffered that He was held captive by death and those similar to Him, though not openly, for if those would have known this, they would have run away immediately. And He put an end to [death] by bringing Himself down there, but secretly, for the fear-inspiring Word of the Father was hidden invisibly inside His soul, stretching it out like bait on a fish-hook to the serpents and scorpions and the great dragon Satan, until they were pierced by the frightful lightning of God, having gone astray and believing to have found suitable food for feeding.”
Herban: “The prophet said about himself to God that ‘Thou wilt not give Thy holy One to see corruption,’ and not at all about your Christ, as you say. If this were the case, he would have said that 'Thou wilt not give Thy Christ to see corruption'; but he said ‘Thy holy one,’ which means the divine nobleness of that man [David]. For he, the most venerable one, was of noble birth, descending from Abraham, Isaac and the other blessed fathers.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And yet you are convinced that David did not see corruption after his death. But did David not die when he had reached a very old age, as I think? Is his grave not still existent among us? So did he not die, was he not corrupted? If you do not bear ill concerning this, go and open the shrine of his remains, and you will see your holy one being completely corrupted, having become dust and ashes by the effect of time. Do I now convince human beings, or you who has no humanity at all?”
Herban: “By the support of the God Who is in the law, I am in good health and feel well and am in complete possession of my mind and spirit, although you have declared us to be most stupid and useless and without experience. But tell me what the prophet says here: ‘O God,’ he says, ‘the nations came into Thy heritage, they spoiled Thy holy temple, they made Jerusalem a garden hut’ and so on. For what reason does he call you a pollution and an abomination, as being unworthy at all events to enter the temple of God and believing to worship God in a way better than that of Moses?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You should not have spoken such nonsense, Herban; and if he would have supposedly usurped this psalm as a cheap pretext to aid himself, for what reason did he then say obscurely: ‘They put the dead bodies of Thy servants as a food for the birds of the sky, and the flesh of Thy holy ones for the wild animals of the earth?’ At all events, he said this lamenting about the capture of Jerusalem, when she was given to the Assyrians for plundering because of the multitude of her innumerable trespasses. For where was the domination of the Christians at that time? In no way, never. I hold this speech about the Christians who believe in the coessential Trinity, for why should I take trouble with some other nations that are unbelieving and profane? Let it not be! I say this safely, that every man from every designation and tribe, from every race and clan, who does not believe into the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the only divinity and lordship, be cursed; if somebody does not love our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema; if somebody is not initiated by the Holy Baptism to the Holy and miraculous Trinity, he should be strangled with Judas and share the lot of you unlawful Jews, who once cried out in the time of His suffering, I say, of the Lord Jesus, ‘Away, away, crucify Him.’ For although you believe yourselves to be Hebrews, yet you are no Hebrews, but the congregation of Satan.”
Herban: “From where do you know that Judas has perished, and how do you know whether you will be our friend on the Day of Judgment? And from where do you know that you will not humbly beg the Jews then and say: 'Take me as well, I beseech you, and I also will go with you into paradise'? You will never accept to be placed together with us who, as you say, once shouted, as you tell, ‘Away, away, crucify Him.’ Will a man be able to hate his own children? So the Lord of Sabaoth, the Almighty and holy One of Israel, also ‘will not cast off His people and will not forsake His inheritance’ forever.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “But I know that Judas has perished. For David said about him: ‘O God, do not pass my praise over with silence, for the mouth of the sinner and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me and have spoken against me with a deceitful tongue.’ And so he simply speaks about him as a prophet, cursing him until the end of the psalm. And the same prophet says about you, writing from far away to Jesus Christ, Who will arise from his seed and from the Virgin Mary: ‘Lord,’ he says, ‘from Thy few, separate them from the earth,’ and ‘Let them fall away from their own counsels; thrust them out because of the multitude of their faithlessness, for they have embittered Thee, O Lord; for there is no truth in their mouth, their heart is vain, their throat an open grave, and they deceived with their tongues; O Lord, judge them.’ So were you not divided among all nations, were you not once thrust out and expelled, and cast off from the face of the Lord of Sabaoth the Almighty? Therefore, may God not let it be that I should be placed together with you polluted and scattered and banished and hated and notorious ones, the prophet-killing Jews; but may my part be with the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and his only-begotten Son, my Lord Jesus Christ, Who supplied every believer miraculously with the new grace, and with His holy and life-giving Spirit Who proceeds from God the Father and rests uninterruptedly, indivisibly and undivided in His Son forever and ever. Therefore, you are the unlawful Jews, about whom the prophet says: ‘You are not a God Who has pleasure in iniquity, nor will the wicked dwell with you, nor will the unlawful remain before your eyes.’ Will I have to be placed there on the Day of Judgment with those unlawful Jews who do not remain before his eyes, but are thrown off far away because of their iniquity? Let there not be a bitter and heavy misfortune. And will I have to humbly beseech those at the time of the repayment whom the Lord hated and cast off, I say, ‘all those that commit sin,’ I mean your people, begging them 'Take me as well, and I will go with you ‘into the sweetness of paradise’? Let it not be! He that does such a thing be accursed and thrice imprecated and put under a ban; and every mortal man be completely drowned by the multitude and weight of those endless punishments forever and ever, who shares this aim with you, saying that from now on you will be led to salvation by the Jewish rites, unless you will be baptized in the Holy Trinity and become Christians.”
Herban: “If God gives a law, then regrets it and says: 'I have given this law badly, I will abolish it,' then such a person, since he is subject to oblivion, is no god. Now did God, Who gave us the law, simply give us an idle and inefficient one, that we find pleasure in it, or rather [a great blessing] through it from the One Who has set it forth and offered it?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You most shameless man, did you still not understand the point having learnt so much from the previous discussions? At all events, I have said to you very often that the law was given well by God, and a sufficient number of people has pleased God well through it in a faithful way, but now finally the only-begotten Son and Word of God came at a good time, since it had become old, put it to rest, abolishing it and making it rest. Therefore, what do you think about this? The bread in the law was of barley; therefore, when the bread made of wheat was kneaded and leavened, baked and brought to the table and served, and exuded forth pleasantness by its heat like a sweet odor to those who loved it, should the godly ones not leave the former as being rough and irregular and run sweetly to the bread of wheaten flour, which smells joy and life and spills forth gladness, I say, since it comes from heaven? And then again, the fruit of the law was a mulberry; when the true Vine bearing grapes arose, should the sons of the kingdom not leave the mulberries and run to the fruit of the true and all-beautiful Vine, and taste and be initiated, ‘that the Lord is good’? The law of Moses saved a small and modest number of people and made them worthy of the kingdom of the heavens; but the Gospel of the only-begotten Son of God the Father gained the choirs of the apostles, assembled the battle-lines of heralds and evangelists, gained the struggles of the martyrs, and this in such a number, that there are plenty of heavenly luminaries in the heavenly tents, ‘more than the sand which is upon the sea-shore.’ He gained the choirs of confessors, He gained the choirs of ascetics, He gained the flocks of hierarchs, the priests, deacons and subdeacons, He miraculously gained the order of the singers and readers in a large number, He gained the choirs of His saints, He gained the multitudes of the righteous on ‘mountains and in caves and the holes of the earth,’ namely the Word of God the Father gained His own servants well against that wicked demon that had conducted a campaign to thrust Adam out of paradise. Look, Herban, how much fruit the branch and fruit of God the Father bore to God the Father when He became a man, He Who is ever green, unfading and unconsumed. Now He is the sweet fruit of divinity, Whom the God of the law bore as fruit of His own womb before all times. Therefore, for what reason are you disgusted and turn away from the love of the most beloved and sweet fruit of divinity Whom He brought forth alone, similar to Himself in His essence and appearance and in His similarity, and in all things in every way, except His celebrated, frightful and most holy incarnation from a virgin?”
Herban: “Does anyone want something bad unexpectedly and suddenly to happen to him? It is obvious that he does not wish this. Accordingly, if I myself would know clearly that you speak the truth in all the things you have told me before, I would believe and have no doubts. But since I see that the law feels disgusted by the nations, and then that the nations feel a loathing at the law, and am carried back and forth between both these thoughts, for the time being I defend and fight for what I know and understand, and in which I have been born.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I have often said to you when you apologized in such a way, that you do not hear your Scriptures which testify to you about Christianity. Whom else will you believe, who will explain this foretelling to you in a most obvious way? So what does the prophet say here: ‘God,’ he says, ‘is the King of the whole world, sing to Him wisely.’ Now since He is the King of the whole world, that is, of all men on earth, he also orders us to sing to Him on the whole earth in the Holy Spirit, that is, from all of humanity. For what reason do you then think that the belief of the nations is a scandal, which God has invented and given to them, just like to you, if you only wish?”
Herban: “May God avert that this be so. But since the prophet was a Jew, he told this only to the Jews when he said, ‘God is the King of the whole world,’ for He has also created it. So ‘sing to Him,’ for He is the King and God.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And what does the same prophet say going on thereafter? ‘God,’ he says, ‘reigns over the nations; God sits on His holy throne,’ that is, he says that that Man reigned over the nations, Who became a Man and also was accepted into heaven after having fulfilled His work, and sits to the right side of Him Who has begotten Him, on His holy throne. For if you want to say, that this has been said about the God Who appeared incorporeally to Moses and Eliah on those mountains that are seen all around, I think, I will silence you, for ‘he sits’ and ‘sit’ and ‘you sit down’ and ‘falling down’ and the things similar to these have been said about those that have a body, not about the incorporeal Divinity, of which nobody knows how It is, I think, whether It stands or sits or does not sit, or whether It maybe reclines.”
Herban: “You tell me most extraordinary things. For what reason does the same prophet say thereafter: ‘God has submitted the people to us and the nations under our feet, He has chosen His inheritance for us, the beauty of Jacob whom He loved?’ Therefore, for which reason did He, Who chose the nations and reigned over them, submit them to the beauty of Jacob, that is to us Israelites who rose up from Jacob?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “This psalm has been sounded forth in a mysterious way through the Holy Spirit by the prophet about the Ascension of Jesus Christ, since he says ‘God is gone up with a shout’ about the flesh, which was deified by His being incorrupt after the resurrection of the only-begotten Son of God from the dead. For the Lord goes up and down in the flesh, first when He was accepted into heaven, and thereafter, when He will come down from heaven to judge all sinners on earth. For ‘He is gone up’ and ‘down’ has not been said about the Divinity. The apostles are witnesses of His Resurrection and His Ascension. So since He sent them out to teach all nations, and since they were from Israel and happened to be of the seed of Jacob according to their flesh, wherefore Jesus Christ had elected them above all others out of Israel for His inheritance, David, who said to God, ‘Thou hast revealed the hidden things and secrets of Thy wisdom to me,’ seeing from above what happened with his mental eyes, spoke about the hidden things as in the place of the apostles, or rather of the whole community of Israel: For when he saw the expulsion of Israel, and that God will actually cast off His people and keep only those whom He has chosen, when He came, because of their blameless faith, he said: ‘God has chosen His inheritance for us,’ the group of the twelve apostles and the others, ‘the beauty of Jacob whom He loved.’ He took the flower, one might say, which He once wanted, so that it will work what He wishes, and left the unsuitable one aside, the remaining unbelieving people, that is, He scattered them, abandoning them as being useless. He declares that ‘God has submitted the people to us,’ and says in the place of the apostles ‘and the nations under our feet.’ For when Christ had been assumed from them into heaven, those went out immediately into the whole world and proclaimed the Gospel. And immediately the highest God submitted not only people and tribes and languages to them, as the prophet also said, but also kings, satraps, rulers and those under dominion, as I think, and those beyond them. And if I am wrong, telling lies, look and see to which people you are subjected, and which are the nations, which God has recently submitted to you. But you will not be able to show this. Look upon the apostles of Christ, how nearly all the world is spiritually submitted to them, having become Christian.”
Herban: “When some nations were submitted by David in the days of his reign, I think he also wrote the psalm about this event. But you be careful, for you usurp all for your help.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “‘All you nations,’ he declares, ‘clap your hands,’ so did David submit all nations manifestly? And he goes on saying: ‘Rejoice to God with the voice of exultation.’ So does he urge the nations which are under the dominion of a foreign kingdom: ‘Rejoice to God with the voice of joy’? You commit an error, Herban, and are wrong: Things are as I tell you, and not any different.”
Herban: “He who wants to speak with you must be one of those about whom David said: ‘They have set their mouth against heaven, and their tongue walked through the earth.’ For the race of the Jews has received you as a very great punishment because of me. But teach me what the prophet says here: ‘God, Thy way is in the sanctuary. Which God is as great as our God? Thou art the God Who workest wonders.’ The great God is clearly that of Israel and no one else, the only One Who commits wonders. ‘Thou hast made known Thy power among the people’ of the pagans, ‘Thou hast redeemed Thy people with Thine arm, the sons of Jacob and Joseph,’ and not, I think, the sons of the nations. So when he began the discussion about God and introduced the tokens of power and redemption, why did he not call Him by name saying: Which God is as great as Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary? He alone is the God Who works wonders. Or again, why did he not say: ‘Thou hast made known Thy power among the people and have redeemed Thy people with Thine arm,’ the sons of the nations which are worshipers of idols, but ‘Thou hast redeemed Thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph’? Here tell me what seems right to you.”
When these things had been said by Herban, thereafter the king stood up, since the time had passed, and the meeting was dissolved. Now the Jews met at one spot waiting for the meeting on the next morning, and they rejoiced that Herban had withstood the answers of the archbishop, and they encouraged him saying: “You withstand well, and do not be afraid, but still stand steadfastly; for we see that God is with you. Therefore speak and do not be afraid, nor may your heart be afeared; for we see that the king listens sweetly to both of you as well.”
But Herban said to them: “Brothers, the man whom I see and the wisdom which is sounded forth to me through his words and which I understand completely, when we both are sufficient in the discussion, such a man I will not be able to convince. For you see that he debates with me despising me somehow, and made all the words of my mouth despicable and vulgar. So I testify to you, brothers, without any error, that we will be defeated by him. For in this night I have seen the prophet Moses and Jesus, about Whom the competition between us is. I saw them both standing on the turret of a temple and discussing. And I saw that Moses worshipped Jesus and put his hands together before Jesus as before God his Lord, and stood before Him with fear. And as I was surprised about this thing, suddenly my mouth opened and I said: 'Lord Moses, is this good what you are doing here?' And he turned to me and reproved me, saying: 'Stop, brother, because I am not wrong; I am not one of your people, for I know my Creator and Lord. But now, what about you and the righteous archbishop, to whom you cause trouble? Nevertheless, I think, you will see on the following day, the morning after today, that you will be defeated by him and will worship Jesus as I do.' This is what I have seen, brothers, and I do not understand what it means. Nevertheless, in the meantime I will not neglect my duty, and perhaps God will find pleasure in us.”
Dialogue Ε (5)
When this had been said in such a way between them and many others, and when the meeting had been prepared thereafter in the morning, the king and the archbishop appeared. And when they had sat down in the presence of the whole senate and the crowd of the city, Herban stood there as well with the priests and teachers of the law that followed him, and the archbishop said:
“Yesterday you said, I think: 'He who wants to speak with you,' that is, with me, must be one of those about whom it is written: ‘They have set their mouth against heaven,’ and so on. But I tell you, that he who wants to speak with me must be a follower of Christ, so that by Him he may have also the Holy Spirit within himself, which opens the ears of the dull and somehow miraculously makes the tongue of the dumb speak clearly. He must not be a Jew, who spends his life like you, circumcised and uncircumcised, in unbelief, iniquity, evil and wickedness, who fights against God and talks nonsense in his simple mind, and badly and hatefully carries about the veil deep in his heart in a moonless night, and who darkens his mind and understanding and reasoning in vanity. In truth, you are rather one of those profane and vain ones, about whom you said yourself, that ‘they have set their mouth against heaven’ by their blasphemy ‘and their tongue walks on the earth’ by their insult and slander against the Lord Christ. For you did not stop to slander the living God Jesus Christ, the ineffable offerings of God the Father, in all your days until now. And when you said, “Explain to me the meaning of: ‘O God, Thy way is in the sanctuary,’” you rather should make known to me who is the holy One, in Whom God's way was.”
Herban: “That is, ‘in Thy holy people of Israel’; for things higher than these have also been said to us in our law by the Lord, namely, ‘I have said, ye are gods,’ and so on.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You are badly mistaken, you most hostile man. For are you holy that killed the God of heaven and earth corporeally, about whom it was said ‘Seed of Canaan and not of Judah,’ are you holy yourself and the crowd that surrounds you? If you are chosen, demand from God that the earth may open her mouth, and we all may go down into her caves, as once the congregation of Dathan and Abiram. But you will not be able to do that. That it has been said to you, ‘I have said, ye are gods and sons of the Highest,’ I know as well. But where will you hide the following part of the verse? For he goes on: ‘You die like men,’ he says, ‘and fall like one of the rulers,’ that is, in the same way as the ruler of the upper forces, he says, having dropped from the greatest glory and becoming an accursed devil. Therefore, you also have fallen out in a way similar to that ruler from the glory of the only-begotten Son of God, and you do not die as sons of God anymore, but verily the miserable death of soul and body as sinful and torpid and hated men. ‘God, Thy way is in the sanctuary’ indicates the way of God the Father Who works and prevails in His holy Son Jesus Christ. ‘Which God is as great as our God?’ He is that great God, Whose way is in His holy Son Jesus Christ, Who are both one, and about Whose unity he says: ‘Thou art the God Who works wonders,’ Thou, God the Father and holy Son, in Whom is the ‘way’ of God the Father, that of incarnation, by which holy One and by which incarnation He saved those of the Jews who believed in Him, and led all nations into the kingdom of heaven. With such a spirit, Herban, the spiritual things are interpreted, and not as you understand them, being completely drowned in your fleshly thought. ‘Thou hast made known Thy power among the people’ means that the Lord made Jesus Christ known among you people, Who is the great power of God the Father. For he has accomplished many manifestations of his power and many signs and wonders, being God from God, when He was present in His body in your synagogues, although you did not pay attention. However therefore, even if we should say so, still a sufficient number out of your crowd, when they saw His signs and wonders, believed at that time in His name and did not perish. And indeed, I think it applies to them what is spoken by the prophet, when he says: ‘Thou hast made known Thy power among the people and hast redeemed Thy people with Thine arm, the sons of Jacob and Joseph.’ For truly, only these were worthy to be called sons of Jacob and Joseph. But you, who remain in your unbelief, are nothing other than what John the son of Zachariah called you, saying, ‘Offspring of vipers’ and so on. Indeed, this is so; but listen how the prophet goes on, speaking about the vocation of the nations, saying: ‘Bring to the Lord, you clans of the nations,’ and he did not say, bring you clans of the Jews, but ‘you clans,’ he says, ‘of the nations,’ and what shall you bring? ‘Bring,’ he says, that is bring to the Lord ‘glory and honor.’ And now you see at all events, how we clans of the nations glorify the holy God of the law, and how we will now offer honor to His name and to His only-begotten Son. ‘Take,’ he says, ‘sacrifices and go into the courtyards of the Lord, worship the Lord in His holy courtyard; the whole earth be shaken at His presence.’ It should be shaken, but being astonished by awe and overwhelmed by the fear of the wonder, considering the condescension of the Word of God and His incarnation, His signs and His wonders and His inexpressible salvation, which He, having become flesh, offered to His believers. ‘Tell it among the nations,’ he says, ‘that the Lord reigns.’ Being God, in which way did He reign? The word ‘God’ was said about His divinity, ‘king’ about His humanity concerning His incarnation, so that he says, ‘tell it among the nations, that the Lord reigns.’ Here the prophet brings good tidings to the nations, giving order to all prophets who will be raised into life out of them: ‘Tell it,’ he says, you too ‘among the nations,’ for I have told it as well, so that you know that the Lord reigns among you. Out of those again he gives orders to the apostles as well, saying: Christ has risen from the dead. And he says to you: ‘Go into the whole world and teach all nations,’ and henceforth I speak revealing to you, just as to the forefather of the Lord in the flesh. ‘Tell it among the nations,’ that the Lord Jesus, having become a man, will succeed in making the world lead her life in knowledge of God and God-pleasing works, ‘which will not be shaken.’ This is so, Herban, in truth and righteousness, and not differently. So listen to me, hear me and give ear to my words, and abandon Judaism, go to Christ and become a Christian, ‘that it may go well with you’ in this world as well as in the future one.”
Herban: “With what intention does the prophet say ‘that all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord’ of Israel ‘made the heavens’? Now since all gods of the nations are demons, you will have to open your mouth about such a thing.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “That all the gods of the nations are demons, is very true. The Lord Jesus Christ made the heavens and the earth and the sea with much understanding, and in addition he also created the kingdom of heaven. So, as you suspect those things to concern my master and creator and Lord, you will not be able to discover this. My Lord Jesus Christ, being a master, silenced the demons and idols and the impure dragon himself who had been hurled down from the heavens, and not only that, but he also destroyed all his practices. And you see that from the day onwards, on which He was nailed to the cross, all the gods of the nations and the demons ‘disappear like smoke.’ For when the name of Christ is called, the demons shudder, become irritated fearing His venerable cross and are amazed. And if you do not believe this, bring forward as many possessed as you want, and I will only invoke the Lord Jesus, and the demons will be caught by trembling and disappear from them.”
Herban: “The prophet said about the gods of the nations that they are demons. Therefore, if the Man Whom you call Jesus is also a god of the nations, He is clearly one of those about whom the prophet also spoke.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Cease and do not talk nonsense introducing blasphemies in our midst. For if we come to ourselves, so that everyone shows the power of his own faith, you will be fixed in temptation and affliction, and your remaining lifetime will be precarious. For truth is not proclaimed by the dry word but by the strength and power of the faith.”
Herban: “I have heard that the prophets of the Christians, who have renounced the world and stay in the desert, work many and great signs in these days. If you also are one of those, I know it well, you will not be unable, if only you want, to do harm to me. But convince me now by words and then, if it is possible for you, do such things as well.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If you had listened only a little, no argument for anything would have been detected that was sung according to necessity; but since you desire to hear it again, listen. ‘The Lord,’ he says, ‘reigned, let many islands rejoice.’ So tell me here which are the islands? And elsewhere he says: ‘Sing unto the Lord a new song, for the Lord has worked wonders; His right hand and His holy arm have saved Him.’ So does God save Himself, and defend Himself with His arm against whom, I think, for who is it who makes war against Him? Tell me what he declares here: ‘The Lord,’ he says, ‘has made known His salvation’ to whom? ‘He has revealed His righteousness to the nations and remembered His mercy towards Jacob, and His truth to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.’ Therefore use your conscience here and consider for what reason the prophet said this so, and tell it to us.”
Herban: “At all events, he exhorts the islands to rejoice when the scattered ones from the house of Israel will be recalled from there, when the Lord reigns in Jerusalem. ‘His right hand and His holy arm have saved Him,’ he says, I think, about the people whom He saved from the slavery of the Egyptians, and that ‘the Lord has made known His salvation’ to the house of Israel at all events. ‘He revealed His righteousness to the nations,’ that is, He hardened the heart of the nations, so that they believed His righteousness to be hostile which he remembered when He did His mercy to the house of Jacob, and according to His truth to the house of Israel. So ‘all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God,’ which He worked upon us Israelites, leading us out of Egypt. This is so, what you have asked about.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Will the islands rejoice, when you will be called back from them, for being redeemed from your tyranny, or being glad together with you because you will be recalled as our brother believers?”
Herban: “Let it not be that we should have oppressed anyone, and let it not be that we be brother believers of the Christians. He says all this about us Jews who simply sit on the islands of our diaspora. So He should care about you nations.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “He who says, ‘I will not gather their bloody congregations, nor will I remember their names with my lips,’ will that man recall you hated apostates? Let it no be! And he who delivered ‘all that spoke lies’ to perdition will not despise what has gone out of his lips and show himself to be a liar. It will not be for your benefit, if it should be the way you have said. ‘Sing unto the Lord a new song, for the Lord has worked wonders’ he has said about my Christ and God. For he said that you should sing a new song and not an old one. What else is the new song other than the recent one, that is the one of the new grace, namely the worthy songs of the Christians? The Lord did wonderful things in the midst of your congregations, raising the dead, making the blind seeing, cleansing the lepers and restoring the paralytics to health, raising the lame, expelling the demons and so on, feeding the five thousand from five loaves of bread, converting the water to wine and so on? Therefore the prophet says: ‘Sing to the Lord a new song,’ and not anymore, he says, the Jewish one, though it is old, that is in the law, but now sing to Him a new song, a recent song, a song called by Christ's name, that is, a Christian one, ‘for the Lord has worked wonders. His right hand and His holy arm have saved Him.’ Clearly His divinity saved His humanity not from anywhere else, but from you unlawful fighters against God, and from the wickedness of your most beloved demons; for He was God and man, one Son of God in one Person, that is also one subsistence, most incomprehensible in two natures and two essences. ‘The Lord has made known His salvation’ not to you Jews who once knew it and were well-known [to Him], but ‘to the’ unknowing ‘nations.’ For this is the meaning of ‘He revealed His righteousness to them.’ The righteousness of God, I think, is nothing other than the word of His divinity which became flesh from the Holy Spirit and the perpetual Virgin Mary. ‘All ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.’ You have eyes and see how the whole world has been filled with the knowledge of the Lord. For from end to end of it, as I have often said to you, the Gospel of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is proclaimed, deemed worthy to be accepted, is believed and accepted.”
Herban: “In the same way as you do not feel affection for my words and have no hurry to be convinced by my explanations, similarly I am also disobedient towards what you command me.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “It is just, that he who tells remarkable things will also be heard; for if you follow my words with wrath, we spend our time idly and in vain discussing this.”
Herban: “I know in my conscience that the things I say must be preferred to yours; I know this well, and you are suspicious of yourself. Now what will hereafter happen between us?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “We need not discuss with one another ‘proudly and contemptuously’ but with fear of God in truth and righteousness. For it is written, that ‘he who loves injustice hates his own soul.’”
Herban: “I do not love injustice, let it not be. It is written in the law that every unjust and arrogant man, so it says, will be subjected to a fourfold punishment from God. For he who steals one ox will have to repay with four, and he who takes a sheep away will have to repay it fourfold, and he who takes a garment of a man away will be fined four, and he who takes a chicken or a pigeon away will be fined fourfold, and similarly in every thing. But if the theft is not discovered, says the law, and the Highest does not punish [the thief] because of another affair, yet at some later time he will make him repay this fourfold without any controversy, and he will not be held guiltless. If you beat a poor man, it says, the same will happen to you four times from a side whence you did not suspect it; if somebody loses a thing and somebody else finds it, and the one who found it learns about this when it is sought after, but does not give it back, he will have to repay in the end fourfold, like a thief when he is caught, and not be held guiltless; if somebody inflicts an insult or some other evil on a needy person and he does not contradict, but passes over it in peace, a similar thing will happen to you. Do not fear the judgments of the Almighty: If it be passed over in silence in this world, you will frightfully find it in the future one, and there will be the same punishment for everything from the Lord, either here or there, for every man. So since both word and deed will be called to account, I will not discuss with you ‘proudly and contemptuously’ but as my mind is instructed that the things said are without error.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And I know as well that this is so; but now our discussion is not about that but about belief and truth, and that you may understand and recognize the truth in Christ Jesus and inherit the kingdom of heaven. For verily, I bring you good tidings, that you will appear as a servant of Christ both in the beginning and the end, and that you have to serve Him and must attach yourself to Him, knowing Him when He will come and look down from heaven and open the eyes of your heart and enlighten and sanctify them, and will indicate the whole truth to you, and that He is the Messiah Christ with all truth, about whom the prophets have foretold so much.”
Herban: “It is a great thing for me to be instructed about your Christ, that He is to come, and it is full of amazement. For it is strange and hard to believe that One Who is God comes down from heaven, becomes a man, and willingly suffers the death of the evildoers. And if this is true, which force did He possess, that He hurried in such a haste, although nobody urged Him, to come here and hand Himself over to death? I am astonished when I consider this. Be assured: Did that frightful nature, that awful might, that ineffable power, at which the mountains trembled seeing it, when He appeared to the people on the mountain and announced the Decalogue going out of Egypt, did He, Who has this frightful glory, go so far as to simply dishonor His own greatness? This is impossible and a completely inconsolable thought.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “You ignore the power of the mystery, as it is, and therefore you wonder. For it is impossible for someone, who is kept in the gloom of night and sits there, to see the things clearly that fly in the air. And he who bears mutilated eyes, how will he be able to see clearly the rays of the sun? For you act in a similar way. For among those in whom the Holy Spirit does not dwell, the spiritual things can hardly be seen. Therefore, believe in the Lord Jesus, become baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and then you will understand that clearly, about which you are now bewildered, astonished and amazed.”
Herban: “It is impossible for me to be convinced simply through this act unless I receive also the instruction as I desire it. Therefore tell me thereafter also about what I ask you. For what reason did your Christ suffer those terrible things, and also die in addition to it?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Did I not tell you many times about these things, and thereafter you ask again?”
Herban: “Some ignorance gains possession beforehand of my reasonings, and immediately it comes and delivers to oblivion what you have said to me.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “This is what I think. For those, who are not enlightened in the life-giving and enlightening name of the Holy Trinity, will suffer things that are even worse than these. Concerning this, that Christ was despised and died after having suffered a lot, listen: All men from Adam and until the arrival of Christ have miserably fallen into great error and into most awful transgressions. And I am not speaking about the nations that were simply led astray at that time to the vain idols, but also about you Jews yourselves, who received the law as a command of the angels and did not keep it. For you also fell to the bad luck of being bound in chains to the deceit and the aberration of the so-called gods. So that wicked demon, who had led Adam astray, rejoiced when he saw how all creation gaped after him, and boasted greatly. Now what happened? God Who had created mankind was grieved, and what happens? He did not want to drag away man from the hands of the beast by an act of tyranny. Accordingly He invents a just reason and sends His Logos from heaven to the holy Virgin, and getting into her creates a man for Himself out of the immaculate blood of the Virgin. And He is united in subsistence without being changed and is born from there, and being God He increases in His humanity, and wrestles with the demons in His humanity, having the mind of His divinity inside. He defeats the demons and puts them to shame, and the demons wonder about it: He is a man, they say, and does not even slip in a slight transgression. Thereafter they are jealous of the sinless one: They prepare, as I have also told you before, His death by you Hebrews, and this is what He wanted as well. Now what happens? He is sold for thirty pieces of silver, is betrayed, arrested and bound, He is led away and is judged and beaten and dwells in prison for the condemned Adam, and yet suffers much for those men that cannot suffer and become clean because of their uncleanness, and there, instead of the sinful and weak world, wrestling He defeats the demons, is brought down to Hades, and wrestles there as well with Hades and corruption instead of those who are kept there ‘in the dark and the shadow of death’; He tramples Hades under foot, defeats corruption and drags those out who were kept there; He makes Himself and His followers rise after having been three days in Hades; He Who is the forgiving makes His twelve disciples witnesses of His resurrection, then the seventy, then the five hundred, He goes up into heaven in His humanity after before having sent His disciples to you who crucified Him, He Who is the forgiving. Then, while you remain in disobedience, He gives them His Holy Spirit and sends them to all nations saying: 'Say to the nations: Leave the idols, leave deceit aside, get rid of the demons and believe in God the Father the Almighty and in His only-begotten Son, Who was beaten and crucified and drank vinegar and gall, and Whose side was pierced with a lance and Who died, was buried and guarded with much security, but rose miraculously, in the Holy Spirit. Everyone of all men, who is not offended about Me when hearing of My sufferings (for My sufferings are in truth a scandal and a kind of trial for the unbelieving), but will accept these scandals and believe in Me freely and without machinations, will be saved because of his worthy and simple belief, and also his bad sins will be forgiven to him, for he came to Me in an acceptable way, setting the supposed scandal at naught by his good will and being not wicked by his belief; but he, I think, who believes My sufferings to be a scandal and does not want to come to Me and to believe in My name because of the scandals of My sufferings, will be condemned, for I have demanded only belief from them for to save them, and they did not even want to grant Me this because of their hesitation. ‘He’ now ‘who believes and is baptized will be’ sanctified and ‘saved, but he who does not believe will’ become foolish and ‘be condemned.’ Therefore now, O Herban, our Lord Jesus Christ has suffered in the way I told you, as you have also asked.”
Herban: “And if He wanted all to be saved, for which reason did He want to introduce the scandal of His sufferings as an offense before the faces of all men? Would it not have been more worthy of God that no one should be offended by the scandal of His sufferings, but all should have come there straightaway, should have believed again and be saved?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “The holy God does not want to do injustice, not even to the devil himself, so accurate is He in matters of justice. And because of this He sanctifies and blesses those as well who are excellent in their righteousness and sanctity. For God created man from the beginning as being free in his decisions, and He loves it more if we yield to all His will from good choice and not out of some compulsion. So since we all have sinned and the coming Judgment and repayment of the eternal punishment awaits us, the perfectly good and very merciful Master wanted to have mercy upon His own creation and to save it, since there was no other good reason, and necessarily contrived this [way of salvation] out of His compassion, to redeem us rightly by this accepted and secret belief. So just as [the divine nature of Jesus] escaped the notice of the devil there, and [the devil] fought with Him as with a man and while believing to wrestle with a man struck against His divinity and was put to shame, in the same way [Jesus] displays His sufferings here as a proof of His faith, and answers to the devil, who perhaps complains about those that have been saved by their belief, and says: 'Their belief is great,' and he says: 'For which reason great?' and the Lord says: 'They hear Me when I am betrayed, sold, arrested, bound and condemned, beaten and spat at, dwelling in prison, flogged and crucified, mocked and beaten with a reed on My head, wearing a garment of mocking, insulted, wearing a crown of thorns, drinking gall and vinegar, restrained at My hands and feet with nails, pierced in My side with a lance, when I die not a good death, but the most shameful one which the evildoers die, when I am buried as a poor dead man and rise once again; and when they hear all this, they are not troubled in their heart, they are not grieved, they do not turn away from Me, they are not dismayed, they do not disbelieve, they are not offended, but now what do they do? They believe Me to be God from God and their Lord, they confess Me to be their King, Creator, Maker and Lord. They do not inquire after Me, they do not examine Me, they do not weigh Me, they do not call Me either small or great, they do not reproach Me, but with the fervor of belief they simply believe Me to be their God and Lord. How should I not accept them and have mercy upon them, and thereafter deem them worthy of the unaging kingdom? For if I would have worked signs and wonders, and if I would have been present in My naked divinity and they would have believed when seeing Me, you would at once have a cheap reason to answer Me, and accuse Me of doing you harm. But since this happened in this way, your justification has now at once broken down before your face, and you are unable to tell about Me and those that believe in Me in any way.' This is so, Herban, and no deceit will be found in my mouth, and therefore the supposed scandal of His sufferings is introduced by Him. His sufferings seem a scandal to the unbelieving, and to some even folly as long as they are unbelieving; but after they have believed, these things are regarded by them as God's understanding and God's wisdom.”
Herban: “This is a frightful mystery, if things are truly so. But for what reason did He walk around on Sabbaths and perform healings, a thing which the law happens to forbid, and punishes those who insist to do so as being unlawful? For this reason, as I suspect, our fathers also crucified Him in their anger, because He did not keep the Sabbath according to the law, but did and accomplished things He should not have done.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “And which transgression of the law was His performing miracles on the Sabbath? You have said rightly that He did healings. However, He did not heal like the physicians of this world, but just like God He only spoke a word, and immediately the sick was found to be sound, of whatever disease he had been possessed. Which transgression of the law is this? Being consumed by their envy the rulers of the synagogues, the scribes and Pharisees in such a way did to Him what was not right, for the people exalted Him highly above these when He worked wonders and left them behind as bare men, sinners and useless ones. Now what transgression of the law is it to raise the dead and to open the eyes of the blind and to say to the paralytic: ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk,’ and similar things?”
Herban: “If He was the true Son of God, for which reason did He announce to His disciples: ‘I go to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God?’ Here He declares himself through His own mouth to be a man similar to His disciples, and not a god. For although you suspect me as a Jew, yet I have often read your Gospels privately; dissimulating to some beloved Christian friend, I said to him: 'Give me some of your books, perhaps I will be helped when I read them, and will become a Christian myself as well.'”
Archbishop Gregentios: “It is not reproachable if you read the Scriptures of the Christians one time. For we also approve of this, since perhaps some unbeliever will understand when reading them and will be helped at once. Concerning that you suspect my Lord Jesus Christ only from this word to be just a man and not God, since He said to His disciples, ‘I go to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God,’ listen: In His divinity, because He was God and Son of God, He called God His Father according to nature; according to the measure of His humanity He showed that He was in truth a man as well, and being made with His own hand, that is, that of His Father, He spoke of His Father and God. He was God and man, twofold in His essence, but not in His subsistence. Often you declare, from among you men yourselves, a genuine father to be your friend since he is someone's lord and master, but you do this perhaps in regard to his honor, not because of the reverence, desire to love and friendship [a man] has towards the one that has begotten him. And there is no contradiction to this. He did not lie concerning His disciples, when He spoke about this in a similar way to Himself and to those, that He called the God of His disciples Father according to the saying of the prophet, ‘I begot sons and brought them up,’ and that He called Him also their God, for every earthborn is a creation and work of God. God is rather the Lord of the saints, for this has also been revealed by their good works. But God is not the Lord of the faithless and sinners, but sin is their god, which they love and work. God is the Father of the righteous not according to nature, but according to His grace, and God since He has created them before all times.”
Herban: “These words will also be announced to others.” For he saw Palladios, the legal adviser of the archbishop, whom he had brought from Alexandria as a secretary, recording the words of both of them, of Herban and the most blessed archbishop.
Archbishop Gregentios: “Therefore the prophet said, ‘The announcement of your words will enlighten the infants and make them wise.’”
Herban: “Who are the infants, about whom He said that He would enlighten the infants?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “He called you Hebrews infants, because you were nourished and educated like infants with the incomplete law as with another milk, so that, when time progressed and Christ came, you achieved perfection through His grace, although you had missed your intention before.”
Herban: “Were not Moses and Eliah regarded as perfect by the God of the law through this incomplete law, because they pleased him well? So for what reason did you disparage the law calling it incomplete? For it appears that the one of them spoke mouth to mouth with God, just as a friend to his dearest friend. He chastised Egypt, I think, with seven plagues like a god sent to Pharaoh, he divided the sea with his staff and led the people across from there with unmoistened feet, and having fasted for forty days he received the tablets of the law which were written by the hand of God, and announced the law to the people; and the other things you perhaps know yourself. And did Eliah not bring fire down from heaven, and that twice and thrice, and did he not stay rain from the pastures for three and a half years by his will? Did he not fast forty days without eating, and above all, when he traveled in his days, did he not walk through the Jordan as through dry land, did he not see on mount Horeb the holy God of the law in a light wind, when he went there, did God not send him a chariot of fire, and was he not lifted up with this chariot and accepted into heaven as in a whirlwind, and was to be among the living until today? Now how do you declare the law to be childish, incomplete and inefficient?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I have called the law incomplete, maybe once also very childish, but in no way inefficient; for by many proofs it was deemed worthy of the kingdom of heaven by a sufficient number of people. Concerning Moses and Eliah there is no argument for you. I know very precisely myself that all this has been done to them by the Lord, save that the completion of the virtuous living does not appear in these wonders, but in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which every sin is destroyed. For the law was unable to dissolve the deceit of idolatry and to destroy sin, but rather the grace and truth of Jesus Christ. For not even Moses could resist the intemperate rush of the people, so that they would not commit sin but be faithful and fear the Lord. Rather it appears that he himself sinned before the Lord, when he came with the people to Marah ‘and they could not drink water from Marah, for it was bitter,’ and the people murmured against the Lord and said: 'The Lord did a bad thing to us, when He led us out of Egypt, and we cannot even find water, as it would be needed for our property to be satiated.' Then, it appears, Moses went up and murmured against the Lord together with the people, wherefore he did not even let him walk in the Promised Land, but leading him up on a high mountain He showed him all the Promised Land from there, and then said to him: 'Go ‘up to the mountain and die,’ for you will not inherit the Promised Land, for you have made Me angry,' He said, 'together with the people.' And it appears that he died on this mountain and did not place his feet in the Promised Land, he that had spoken to God mouth to mouth, had chastised Egypt like a God sent to Pharaoh, had divided the sea with his rod, had received tablets which were written by the finger of God, and so on. And not even Eliah could resist sinning; instead of destroying sin and redeeming the people of the Lord from this damage, he became angry when he saw all the people in his days bending their knees to Baal, because he was unable to do anything, and turned to curse them instead, advanced against creation and put on mercilessness. And first he demanded that fire should come from heaven and devour the commander of fifty and the fifty soldiers who were with him, which also happened; then, when another commander of fifty came to him with another fifty soldiers, in his anger he inflicted on them a destruction similar to the previous one, although they had not done him any wrong; then he slaughtered the priests of Baal, and driven by his mercilessness he charmed heaven to make the whole world disappear in famine and drought. ‘For as the Lord lives,’ he says, ‘there will be no rain on earth, if not by my word.’ And his word became deed; so for three years and six months the whole world was miserably affected by a most awful drought and bitter heat as with a most unusual fever. And need increased frightfully, and there was hunger with thirst, violence with force; and death itself, finding the declaration of the prophet as a pretext, ravaged human nature with all might by corruption. And when all this happened, Eliah felt no pity at all and did not put an end to the misfortune, but raged even more, and if he had found a pretext, he would even have extended his anger. Now how did these, who slid into such sins, become perfect in the law, as you declare and say, just as it happens? O no, never! For they were mere men, and so necessarily they were also subject to sin. There is only One Who is perfect. Who is He? Jesus Christ, Who was not enslaved to the yoke of sin through His work, Who never worked iniquity, Who did not do injustice to anybody, He ‘Who has guiltless hands and a pure heart, Who did not beguile with His tongue’ and never did anything bad to anybody according to the prophet, but remained faultless, sanctified, pure and free of sin in His perfect humanity, and rather strong, as being ‘mighty and powerful.’ For He assumed the sin of the whole world within Himself, killed it by His own sufferings in righteousness, dragged the nations, that had gone astray, away from the devil and led them to His Father and God. And He divinized nature which was lying below, led it up to heaven and made it sit together with God the Father. This, Herban, is perfection, for Moses and Eliah were unable to achieve anything completely for the salvation of the human race, but only ‘one Holy, one Lord, Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father. Amen.’ And if you believe that the wonders, about which you said that God works them through Moses and Eliah, are the perfection of virtue, then you should also believe that those sixty thousand, who crossed the Red Sea with dryshod feet, whom also the cloud of light overshadowed in the day and the pillar of fire enlightened by night, were perfect in their sanctity. But you will not be able to say so, for all those thousands utterly perished there in the desert for forty years because of their great iniquity. And thus it is shown, that this is not perfection if the Highest works wonders in somebody, but rather if somebody is punished for the Lord, is tempted in distress and contempt, endures in humbleness and gratitude and works no portent except in the case of some necessity. This is the perfection among the saints, when they are constantly in their mind with God, and deny creation. I did not say this to accuse Moses and Eliah, let it not be, but [to show] most clearly the characteristics of the perfection of virtue. At that time God made Moses and Eliah perfect, giving to them from His own perfection, that is His grace, when my master Jesus Christ, having become flesh, was transfigured in mount Tabor between Peter and Jacob and John, ‘and His face shone as the sun, and His garments were white as the light.’ Then He gave His order, and behold, Moses and Eliah were brought to Him by the spirit of power and stood before Him being entertained sumptuously and shining together with His grace, for also His Father testified about Him at that time speaking from heaven: ‘This is My beloved Son,’ saying, ‘listen to Him.’”
Herban: “Perhaps he presented Eliah as being alive, but for which reason Moses who was dead? For a man that has died never comes back.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “Everything of man is his soul, since his body is nothing. It is a garment grown together with his soul, and when God commands, He sends out His angels and they take the soul's corruptible garment off, the body, since he has to go to God where there is nobody who wears such a fleshly garment, for all are spirits. And then they bring it there as a spirit, and it is settled where God orders, that is, wearing the robes of the angels. Now in such a state was also the soul of Moses, and when God had need of it, He formed a body for it by His own power and presented it by His arm on mount Tabor, to let him see His transfiguration; and thereafter He restored it with His right hand to the place where He had taken it from.”
Herban: “Why do we bide our time with discussions? I will resolve the case: If you want me simply to believe in Jesus, that it is Him, show Him to me living, and I will address Him, see Him, and talk to Him, and I will confess my defeat immediately and become a Christian.”
When Herban said this, the surrounding crowd of Jews behind him shouted: “We beg you, our teacher, do not be deceived and become a Christian, but rather ‘be strong and of good courage’ about the truth. For you know that nothing is more true than the real God, the only God of our fathers.” Herban said to them: “Why do you introduce such nonsense into our midst? Hear: If he assures you that it is Him, about whom the prophets have foretold, I will be alien from the God of our fathers if I do not believe in Him as well.”
When the archbishop saw that he spoke sincerely and not in jest, he said to him: “How do you want me to assure you?”
Herban: “Entreat your Master earnestly, and if He is in heaven, as you say, He may come down to me, and I will see Him and talk to Him. And, as true as the Lord lives about Whom you say 'He is the Father of my Christ,' I will let myself be baptized on the spot and believe in Him.”
When Herban said this, the crowd of the scribes that was with him shouted and said: “Yes, great lord, do it now, let us see whether the claims of your words will be confirmed by works. Show us your Christ, and we will believe in Him with fear and trembling, and not have anything to answer anymore.” And when they said this, again they spoke to each other: “Do you want him to show Him to us?” and “Alas that we will become Christians.” Some people said: “If he will show Him to us, why should we not believe in Him?” Others said: “Yea, let him show Him, let this Man confirm [these] uncertain things, Who today has been dead for such a long time. How should He appear, as even His sinews and bones have dissolved in the shrine of His tomb?”
The archbishop understood within himself that, if he would not grant their request to them, they would believe it to be a very great victory if he would pass over it in silence, and answered and said to them: “I will show Him to you at all events, and you will believe in Him even if you do not want to; and if not, ‘the sword will devour you.’ If I will not show Him, you may go away from here according to your will.”
Now this pleased Herban and the scribes who were with him. For they said among themselves: “He will not be able to show Him to us, a Man Who was killed by our fathers and died, and they closed Him up in a grave, and He was stolen by His disciples.” But since Gregentios of holy memory knew that the Lord said, ‘If you have faith in God, say to this mountain: Lift yourself up and throw yourself into the sea, and nothing will be impossible for you,’ he rose and walked out alone from there after having entreated the king to remain at the same place, so that the congregation would not dissolve. The king and his grand men wondered whether the archbishop would accomplish this fear-inspiring portent. And when the blessed one had reached a certain distance from the congregation, he placed himself for prayer, and when he had assumed the attitude of solemnity and most sacred beauty (for he was very gentle), he bowed his knee three times down to the soil of the earth at the same place, worshipped the Lord God, and stretching out his hands to heaven he said:
“Frightful Logos of the frightful and great and invisible Father, Thou Who hast been begotten, not created before all times without having suffered or fluctuated, the only-begotten One Who flashes as lightning from the unbegotten light, Thou Who hast made heaven and earth by Thyself in the beginning, and by Thy Holy Spirit Thou hast laid the foundations and roofed both on the waters, that Thou hast bowed the heavens and come down ‘like a rain upon the grass’ on the frightful, great, holy, sacred and worthy perpetual Virgin and Theotokos Mary, at which occasion the archangel, the great Gabriel, announced Thy holy and awful condescension to become a man and to save the lost; Thou Who wast born in an underground cave from our unwedded Lady and Mother of God Mary in the times of King Herod, and wast praised and glorified by the multitude of heavenly powers which was dispersed there with the great song of songs: ‘Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, good will towards men’; Thou Who wast announced beforehand by the star and received gifts from the holy magi, Thou Who wast announced by the angel and worshipped by the shepherds, Thou Who wast circumcised at the age of eight days and fulfilled the law, Thou Who didst suck the milk of the Virgin and procured heavenly food for the world, Thou Who wast put to rest in the crib and wast recognized by the animals, wast brought by Thy parents to the Temple and embraced by Symeon and praised by Anna, fled to Egypt because of the child-murder of Herod and shook the hand-made idols of Egypt, Thou Who wast recalled from Egypt, dwelt in Nazareth and found pleasure to be called a Nazarene, went up at the feast and opened the book of the prophet Isaiah in the midst of the teachers, Thou Wisdom of the Father, and Thou Who wast admired greatly by the scribes and Pharisees and law-teachers and teachers and glorified by the whole crowd, Who submitted Thyself to Thy parents and at the intercession of Thine immaculate mother turned water into wine at the wedding of Cana in Galilee and pleased the reclining guests, Thou Who wast baptized by John in the Jordan, wast testified by the Father and overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, Thou Who madest a scourge of cords and drove the merchants out of the sanctuary, Who fasted forty days for him who had stretched out badly his hand in Eden and eaten from the tree of knowledge, Thou Who wast tempted by the spirit of sin in the desert and defeated the tempting devil, Thou Who wast served by the angels as their Master and came to help Thy creature Thyself, Thou Who didst choose disciples for Thyself out of the congregation of the Hebrews and wast transfigured before their heads on mount Tabor, and Thy face shone like the sun, and Thy garments became white as light, and Moses and Eliah appeared talking to Thee, and a voice came from heaven, saying: ‘This is My beloved Son, listen to Him,’ and the disciples fell to earth on their faces struck by fear; Thou Who didst raise Lazarus from death in Bethany and pleased Martha and Mary and amazed the Jews, Thou Who wast praised by the innocent children with ‘Hosanna in the highest,’ when Thou camest from Bethany to Jerusalem on a foal of an ass having compassion, Thou Who didst raise the only son of the widow from the dead, Thou Who madest the child of the centurion alive, Who raised the daughter of Jairus by Thy word, Who cleansed the lepers, Who drowned the legion of demons in the sea, Who healed the women flowing with blood and had mercy on the woman of Canaan, Who cured the lame and restored the paralytic to health, Who enlightened the blind; my honey-flowing light, Jesus, Thou Who madest the withered healthy and relieved those suffering from dropsy and visited the feverish, Who ate and drank with the sinners, the merciful and holy physician of souls Who healed the weaknesses of our souls, Lord, Thou Who didst put the bad peasants to shame, Who called the prophet-killing city miserable and made her house desolate, Who walked on the lake and stretched out Thy hand to the doubting Peter, Who censured the winds and provided calm for Thy disciples, who ordered the sphinx of stone to go away and to call Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that they may refute the faithless scribes, Pharisees and Saducees, because they did not receive Thee Who camest in the name of God the Father; Thou Who wast received in his house by Simon and mentally entertained by the harlot, and received her ointment and tears, Who worked fear-inspiring portents, ineffable wonders and extraordinary marvels in the midst of the unlawful Jews.
“Holy, merciful Lord, compassionate and patient, Thou Who wast envied by them, Who wast hated by the faithless, against Whom a plot was made, Thou Who wast sold, Thou invaluable and long-suffering, Thou Who wast betrayed, arrested, bound, judged and beaten, Who dwelt in prison, stood before Pilate and wast flogged, Thou Who wast led away to crucifixion, were mocked and beaten with a reed, were clothed in a red mantle, wore a crown of thorns, ate gall and drank vinegar from those, for whom Thou hadst formerly prepared a table from five loaves of bread to five thousand persons, Thou Who wast crucified and fixed by nails and pierced by the lance, and died before, and blood and water flowed from Thy side, [Thou Who] didst open Paradise to the robber, Who madest the light of the sun dull, darkened the day and rent the veil of the temple showing the defection of the Jews and gave Thy spirit into the hands of the Father, Who trampled death under Thy feet, shattered corruption and killed sin, strangled Hades and bound the devil below and raised ‘many bodies of the saints which slept’ from their tomb; Thou Who wast taken down from the cross, embalmed and buried, Thou Who didst smash Hades, were guarded and confounded the guards with trembling, rose on the third day appearing to the myrrh-bearing women and making Thy disciples and apostles witnesses of Thy resurrection; Thou Who didst offer Thy peace and Thy blessing to them by the abundance of Thy mercies, Who wast assumed into heaven before them and sit to the right of the greatness of God the Father in the highest and on a height above all rule and authority, and sent Thine Intercessor on the tenth day to Thy beloved ones; for Thou reignest and livest now, Thou dost appear and beam and emit rays by the splendor of Thine almighty divinity and the upper ten thousands and thousands of the angels, without the abominable ravens of sin, the stained demons, we should say; for Thou dost reign and live, Thou Who art more than God, at a place without the vain and faithless congregation of the defamed Montanists and the accursed Jews, without the hated Hagarenes for the shame of the impure idol-mad people, without the accursed heretics; Thou dost most frightfully reign and live at a place without those who hate Thee, to the disgrace of those who abominate Thee, to the shame and reproach of all Thine enemies who do not accept Thee and do not want Thee in any way to be their master; Thou dost reign and have authority over the things in heaven and on earth and below the earth, both the visible and invisible ones, and sit to the right side of the greatness of God the Father, to the glory and honor and praise of those who love and receive and venerate and worship Thee, Lord and master; and Thou wilt come at the end of the world and judge the whole world and give to everybody according to his deeds.
“Jesus Christ, Thou honey-flowing name, we beseech Thee Who fillest all things and is everywhere, have mercy upon these darkened crowds, and overshadow them with Thy power and open their gloomy eyes, which the devil has blinded, and show Thyself corporeally and sensibly to those who have been blinded in both eyes and do not see Thee, as Thou hast said through the prophet Isaiah: ‘I have hardened their heart and blinded their eyes’ because of their wickedness, ‘that they should not see with their eyes nor understand with their heart, and should return, and I should heal them,’ therefore, my Lord, they are blind. Therefore, O Highest, holy and glorified God Who is more than God, Thou good and blessed, Thou almighty, forbear Thy judgments, forbear them, have compassion and mercy ‘according to Thy great mercy and according to the abundance of Thy pities’; show Thyself to them sensibly so that they will behold Thy life-giving humanity with their bodily eyes, which Thou didst wear because of us humble ones and with which Thou wast accepted into heaven, so that when seeing Thee they will see Thee clearly, and will believe in Thee, the only true God, and in the true Father Who has sent Thee, and in Thy Holy Spirit. Amen.”
And when the faithful crowd and the noblemen together with the king had said “Amen” (for the eyes of all were gazing upon him), a great earthquake happened, and it thundered with great strength in the east, so that they all were seized by awe and fell to the ground on their faces. So when they all rose after a short while and looked to the East, they see, and behold, the gates of heaven were opened and a shining cloud was spread from the gate of heaven, like a plain extending unto them. And when they were still watching, behold, the Lord Jesus Christ came out of those gates and drew near to them with His holy pace, walking gently on the top of the clouds before their eyes.
And He was very beautiful. Now He came and stood on the top of the cloud close to the archbishop and the congregation, about two hundred cubits above them, so that He could be seen by everybody. And He was, as it has been said, very bright in His beauty and very sweet to be looked at, having put on a very beautiful purple cloak, of which the flashes of His divinity went forth, and on His head there was the shine of lightning and a beautiful crown which seemed like a crown of thorns by its rays, and He held a book in His left hand, and with His right hand He grasped His cloak. Now when the Lord stood opposite to them most mighty in His shape, an ineffable trembling befell the king with joy and all his noblemen and all the crowds of the Christians that were assembled there, so that they could altogether not say a word because of their fear. They only stared up and looked at Him somehow sweetly, and were amazed by their infinite gladness.
But the Jews together with Herban did not bear to see the invisible shape of the face of the Lord, and were amazed greatly, beating their breasts, and in their trembling they looked around here and there and sought for a way to escape. For the splendor of the divine brightness consumed them and urged them to run away.
Now the archbishop said to Herban with loud voice: “You see, Herban, about what the long discussion of our words has been, and be instructed that there is ‘one Holy, one Lord, Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father. Amen.’” And Herban was silent. And then there came a voice from the Lord to the Jews: “Because of the intercession of the bishop, I heal you, I Who have been crucified by your fathers.”
Now when this voice was heard, everybody was afraid and fell to the ground on their faces, and just as once the blessed Paul remained blind when the Lord appeared to him, in a similar way this happened also to them; for when they opened their eyes they could not see anybody, so that they were deeply troubled and lamented bitterly. And when this had happened so in the presence of the Lord, the shining cloud that was spread below Him expanded upward and hid Him from their faces. And so, while the Savior went up inside, the cloud was also folded together behind Him from both sides until He had proceeded into the heavens, and then disappeared as well.
But then the king and the crowds of the Christians, being encouraged, cried with a loud voice the “Kyrie eleison” (Lord, have mercy) behind him, while the worthy archbishop was lying on his face on the ground and offered the Lord a prayer for the people. When this had happened so and thereafter all had assembled in the congregation, the king and the people around him honored the archbishop exceedingly, celebrating and admiring him with great reverence and fear.
But the Jews asked each other: “Do you see anything, brother?” And the others said: “Nothing at all.” And they said to Herban: “Woe to us, our teacher, what shall we do?” And Herban said to them: “Were only we blinded when we saw the God of the Christians, or did they suffer this as well?” And when some of the Christians heard this they said: “By His grace, we Christians who have beheld Him, see as we saw before. Only you are those who have become blind because of your unbelief.”
Now since they all were blind and did not see anything, Herban was straightway led by the hand, came to the archbishop, and said to him: “Every man sees his God and suffers a good thing, we have seen your God and have suffered evil. If He offers such kindnesses to those that come to Him, therefore He does not possess the goodness of His Father.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “‘The Lord is the God of vengeance,’ and now ‘He has spoken.’ For this has happened to you because of your blasphemy.”
Herban: “And if He repays a bad thing for a bad thing, what will you then decide concerning us?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “A physician who cuts away one rotten limb of a sick man still is not responsible for the cut. You have seen the Lord with unworthy eyes, and so the Jewish and fearful eye has been cut away from you, and you have perished.”
Herban: “From all the things we know and have heard and seen from you, there is only one missing, that our eyes should be opened and we should become Christians. If you will not accomplish that with us, you will answer for us on the Day of Judgment.”
Archbishop Gregentios: “If you want, I will baptize you, and being baptized you will see again with the eyes of the Christians.”
Herban: “If you baptize us and our eyes will not be opened, what shall happen then?”
Archbishop Gregentios: “I will baptize one of you, and if he will not see again, you will not receive this.”
And this pleased Herban, and when one of them had been baptized, immediately his eyes were opened, and he cried: “Jesus Christ is the true God, and I believe in Him.” When the remaining ones heard this, they received Holy Baptism with great readiness and were reckoned among the Christians. And there was great joy in the Church of Christ on that day, and many inconsolable damages to the devil.
When Herban and all his followers had been baptized, their eyes were opened on the spot, and they praised God, having received their light back. Herban, being counted among the Christians, was astonished at the vision of our Lord Jesus Christ that had appeared to him, and he was bewildered greatly and wondered, saying: “The Lord Jesus Christ was in the heavens, Whom our foolish fathers took, crucified and killed, and we most silly men assumed that He was with those who lie in the graves.” And beating his breast he said with tears: “O Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, forgive me that I have sinned against Thee, being ignorant about Thee.”
And he also adored the blessed Gregentios and honored him, exceedingly respecting him like an angel of God, and did not want to be separated from him. Since Herban was very wise and learned, the king became his sponsor in Baptism, changed his name to Leon in the holy Baptism and appointed him as a member of his senate, making him also his hypekklesion, whom the Romans used to call ‘patrician’ and ‘secretary.’
When this had happened thus and also the followers of Herban had been baptized, a number of about five hundred thousand, and had received not a few gifts and returned home with gladness, by order of the king and the most holy archbishop, the whole congregation of the Jews, which lived in all towns belonging to their kingdom, was baptized as well. And immediately by proposal of the archbishop the most pious king scattered their clans separately from each other and ordered them to be mixed up among the dwelling-places of the Christians. And the most blessed Gregentios enjoined the king that a law be issued that no former Hebrew should dare to take a husband for his daughter from his former fellow Hebrews, but “He will take a son-in-law for his daughter from the Christians which are from the nations, and for his son,” he said. “He will take a daughter-in-law from the daughters of the Christians. And he that adulterates the law and puts it under his feet, shall be subjected to the punishment of the sword.” And when this law had been issued, the whole race of the Jews was mixed up in this way with the race of the Christians, and being mingled, with the time going by, they completely lost the memory of the former times, first being baptized and then passing away at the end of their lives.
Therefore, when the whole kingdom of the Homerites had been enlightened and was piously Christian, there was great joy in the holy churches of God, and all celebrated with desire the feasts of Christ, and deep peace was everywhere. And the king, living free from care together with the most holy archpriest of God, performed without hesitation the laudations to the Master which lasted all night; and as it has been said before that he was possessed by divine zeal, he was constantly giving alms to the weak and orphans and widows. And he dissolved every unjust contract, lifted every wicked sentence and demanded handwritten guarantees of safety from his noblemen not to do injustice to the poor, nor to deprive someone of the right he possessed, to give it to somebody else who did not possess it, and to condemn the innocent. And those that trampled the law of God and the orders of his majesty under foot, he executed by the sword and in the depth of the sea, and as some people say, he did not spare from the revenge of the law of God neither an official nor a poor man nor any other person, so that for this reason he was feared, and all were full of awe for him. For when his noblemen went in to him in fear because of some administrative matter of the kingdom, they entered shuddering and terrified, mute and looking downward, praying in their heart that they would leave safely from his face again, for they had transgressed also in words against him and he called them foolish and silly, not having a sound mind concerning gains from injustice. His decisions and resolutions about peace and war, the employment of local rulers and noblemen, about the common people and the excellent ones, about the state and any other affair, he accomplished readily after having asked the Lord before through the blessed Gregentios for the things commanded to him, and he never missed his goal, since he had undertaken it by the order of God.
So having reigned in his kingdom for thirty years, he passed away from his life in peace, after the blessed Gregentios had foretold to him his departure from this world. He was buried in a royal shrine in Zaphar, the reigning city of the Homerites, and the whole kingdom of the Homerites lamented him greatly. His son Serdidos took over the scepter of the kingdom in his place, and he governed it according to the procedure of his father, following the most blessed Gregentios most wisely in his reign as well.
Gregentios of holy memory, having tended the flock of Christ also, having erected it on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and having performed many wonders and portents for the glory of God during his lifetime and after his death, passed away from life shortly after the death of the king on the 19th of December. And he was also buried in his own shrine in the mausoleum of the great church; many bishops, priests, Levites, monks, and a crowd of people were assembled at his funeral and bewailed his loss greatly. For he had become a good father to them all, who distributed alms at every occasion, and a mediator who was very pleasing to God and men, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to Whom be glory and might, now and forever. Amen.
Source:
Life and Works of Saint Gregentios, Archbishop of Taphar: Introduction, Critical Edition and Translation. Ed. by Albrecht Berger. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. pp. 451-803.