Three, but one, beyond our reach

Like many ancient philosophers, Christian thinkers were convinced that the world was an ordered place, behind which was something divine. While pagan philosophers were usually willing to consider the possibility that there are many divinities, Christians insisted that there is only one, divine Creator - concept of God implied perfection that could not be split among multiple gods. But this idea of monotheism was not specific to Christianity, being something believed also in Judaism.

If one wanted to underline one special characteristic of the early Christianity, it might be the notion of Logos, divine being who embodied itself in the shape of an earthly human being, Jesus. The relationship of this Logos to the Creator was eventually a source of considerable controversy. Tertullian had already criticised people who simply identified Creator and Logos as two roles the same person had taken - beyond material world he was the aloof ruler of the world, but within the world he became a more accessible figure. Tertullian noted that this idea would imply that Creator had been put to death on cross, which he concluded to be impossible.

An apparently simple solution, suggested by Arianus, was to completely separate Creator and Logos - Logos was simply the first creation and divine only figuratively, as being the most eminent figure after Creator. Yet, the suggestion of Arianus went against an important idea that Logos had to be truly divine, so that his death would have enough power to redeem the humanity.

Thus, against Arianus, thinkers like Athanasius and the so-called Cappadocian fathers - Basil of Casearea, his friend, Gregory of Nazansius, and Basil's little brother, Gregory of Nyssa - denied that Logos would have been created by a free choice of God at some point in time. Such a notion, Gregory of Nyssa said, would have tied Creator to time and implied that God had come to existence at the same time as time itself. Instead, Cappadocians said that Logos had existed always, although its existence was based on the existence of Creator, just like in Plotinian philosophy self-thinking intellect was a sort of projection of the energy of a primordial unity.

Some followers of Arianus suggested that this sounded like the existence of Logos would be against God’s will, but Athanasius simply noted that what does not happen from choice of will still isn’t necessarily against one’s will. Still, even thinkers otherwise inclined to agree with Athanasius, like Gregory of Nazansius, suggested that generation of Logos was more like an eternal choice of Creator.

Figuratively, the relation of Creator and Logos had been long likened to a relation of a father and a son. Now, this figure of speech provided another way to understand the relation. Human parents could not just decide to bring children into existence, but these just grew out of their parents, when the conditions were right, Athanasius noted. Similarly, he continued, Creator necessarily had to sustain something - with God, conditions were always suitable, so Creator would in Plotinian fashion necessarily project another entity into existence - or as Gregory of Nazansius would say, Creator has eternally chosen to relate itself to another entity, which was perfect image of Creator. This another person would be a truly different person from Creator, although as the majority of Christian thinkers said, it was also our only source for knowing Creator - it was like a ray of light revealing where the sun is. Logos was a faithful image, in which even Creator recognised itself and rejoiced of this recognition.

Logos was not just a natural self-revelation of Creator, but also a designer of all creation - God’s wisdom personified,with which God communed before willing to create other things. Greory of Nyssa noted that even some pagan thinkers assumed that wisdom or reason was required for governance of the world. Yet, he would note, Christians believed that this wisdom was not just some impersonal force, but as a source of all worldly life it must itself be alive and have consciousness and freedom of choice.

Athanasius criticised followers of Arianus, because in their view Creator appears to have created Logos for the sake of creating other things with his help. Athanasius noted that Creator should have no need for middlemen, and on the other hand, the explanation of Arianus did not explain how Creator then created Logos without any helpers. Athanasius’ reading avoids these problems because it takes Logos to be an inevitable consequence of Creator’s power, which is then just assigned the duty of building the universe. As Basil of Caesarea put it, Creator could choose to use its energy directly, but such an unleashing would be so powerful that no creature could withstand it.

What did Creator then create through Logos? Basil of Cesarea suggested that the answer could be found simply by reading Genesis. With this suggestion Basil wanted to show that all cosmological speculations of pagan philosophers could well be ignored - since they didn’t agree even with themselves, their credibility was low. Furthermore, Basil’s intention was to speak against Origenes’ too allegorical reading of Bible, which had in principle ignored the literal meaning of the divinely inspired book.

Basil’s account of creation followed then closely the Genesis. Firstly, God had created something timeless or immutable - the angelic spirits. Then, in a timeless moment or “beginning” God had created the temporal world, which was required as a place for all temporal entities, such as humans, and which certainly hadn’t existed eternally. Nothing indicated the substances of which the different parts of the world were made - for instance, whether heavens were made of some “fifth element” different from all the earthly elements. Furthermore, no clear explanation of the reason why earth would not fall down could be given. Perhaps it just floated at the center of the universe, where all heavy matter proceeded, like Aristotle had suggested. This was a hypothesis no better than any other, Basil said, but if it were so, it would just show the craftsmanship of God.

The temporal world, Basil said, contained two regions - heavens above and the earth below. Of these, Basil said, heavens did not create any Pythagorean music by their movement - we would definitely have heard it, he insisted. Earth, on the other hand, was at first covered by water and thus invisible. God had then lit the air between them, making things for the first time visible. Next in the order of Genetic account was the creation of the firmament. This second heaven, Basil explained, was no solid structure, but simply a concentration of air or aether that kept a certain amount of water from falling down to earth. This unlimited reserve of water was required, according to him, so that fire used for warming the universe and its denizens could be quenched, if necessary. After the creation of the firmament, Basil continued, God changed the nature of water so that it wouldn’t completely encompass earth, but would remain level in ocean and smaller areas of water.

The creation continued, Basil noted, with the growth of plants. Most of them were simply meant for the benefit of humans, while others, seemingly useless, were for the benefit of animals. Basil suggested that truly harmful plants had grown only after the fall of humans and were degenerates from good plants.

Next phase in Genesis was the creation of Sun, Moon and stars, which, Basil suggested, were just vessels for light existing before them. Like such philosophers as Aristotle before him, Basil thought that the movements of celestial objects had various effects on Earth - e.g. plants grew differently according to the phases of the Moon. Still, Basil did not believe that stars had such effects on human lives as astrologists described. Indeed, endorsing astrology would have been a denial of human responsibility.

With his account of the creation of animals Basil could borrow even more material from philosophers. Although Basil denied the idea that Genesis would be a mere analogy, he did suggest that humans had a lot to learn from the behaviour of various animals. For instance, Basil commended fishes who either stayed put or wandered to new habitations according to their divinely set nature, while humans often were estranged from the demands of their true nature. Bees, Basil also suggested, were a model for a perfect human society, while the capacity of some birds to lay eggs without fertilization was a precursor of immaculate conception.

All these animals, Basil suggested, had been originally generated by Earth, and although many animals now continued themselves their species, he could read from zoological treatises of philosophers that some animals were still spontaneously generated. Because of their source, Basil said, animals were drawn toward earth, while humans gazed toward the heavens. Like humans, animals are animated or they have soul, but they all have a single, common soul, Basil insisted, although their bodies have various capacities. This common animating element of all animals is something irrational, Basil continues, while humans were created as an image of Logos and are thus by their nature rational.

This created world, Gregory of Nyssa noted, was of dual nature. Compared to the divine simplicity, world is mere chaotic non-existence, vanity of vanities. Yet, due to being created and thus originating from divine, it does have some stability and its elements remain and move in a constant fashion. In this duality, world reflects human being, where sensible side is characterized by instability, while reason governs and regulates this instability.

It was commonly held by Christians that something else in addition to Creator and Logos was involved in the act of creation. While Creator was the ineffable source of divine power and Logos the lens through which this power was directed and thus also the lens through which the Creator could be viewed, the outcome of this process flowed, Athanasius suggested, as naturally and eternally from Logos as Logos from Creator, and was also to be reckoned a distinct entity. This “divine breath” or Holy Spirit was the result of the process beginning from Creator - indeed, Gregory of Nazansius noted, it perfected the relation between Creator and Logos. Spirit was, Athanasius suggsted, like energy permeating everything in the world. Basil of Casearea was left to more fully describe its properties - the omnipresent Holy Spirit was felt especially by people more liberated from their bodies and made them attune with the invisible world.

As a perfect image of Creator, Logos shared Creator’s divinity, and similarly Holy Spirit as an image of Logos shared in it. Indeed, Athanasius noted, all three had the exactly same divinity, by which he meant that Creator, Logos and Spirit were part of the same process of power, which made it reasonable to say that there is only one God. As Gregory of Nyssa said, when thinking one entity of Trinity, it is necessary to think of the other entities, making it impossible to discern any clear difference between them. Despite forming just one divinity with one indivisible essence, Gregory of Nyssa noted, the Creator, Logos and Spirit are still distinguishable by their central properties: Creator has no source, Logos has its source in Creator and Spirit is something controlled by Logos.

Followers of Arianus criticised the notion of Creator and Logos sharing divinity by pointing out various Biblical passages where Jesus apparently lacked full divine knowledge and power. Athanasius suggested that when putting on a human form Logos had assumed the nature of humanity into his own person and could thus speak both as a divinity and as an ordinary human being. As Gregory of Nazansius put it succinctly, divinity should not be contracted into a lifeless unity, as if Creator could produce only non-divine, temporal entities.

It was necessary, Athanasius noted, that Logos would assume full humanity, so that it could salvage humanity through its own suffering. God, as the source of all being, had created human being as a mirror of divine perfection, Gregorius of Nyssa taught, controlling a combination of physical elements or body, just like God governed the whole world. But, Athanasius added, humanity had turned away from its connection to the divine and lost its instinctive knowledge about God, becoming enraptured with the sense world and replacing God with false divinities. This falling away from grace, Basil of Casearea and Gregory of Nyssa insisted, had not been instigated by any eternally existing force opposite to God’s will, but had simply been the responsibility of humans themselves and their own free choice. Or as Gregory of Nyssa said, we had ourselves lost the light we were originally made of.

True, Basil admitted, there had been a figure who had enticed humans from a virtuous way of life, which God had tested by creating a fruit that produced enormous sensual delight. Still, it was the free choice of humans to taste the fruit. The figure provoking humans - Satan or devil - had also freely chosen to oppose God. God had no part in these free choices, Basil insisted, since God was only the source of good things, while evil existed only because of lack of goodness, for instance, lack of a good choice.

Gregory of Nyssa noted that all the entities created out of nothing had an innate tendency to return to this state of nothingness. What kept these entities existing was their connection to God, the source of being. Evil meant turning away from this source, because of e.g. envy toward divinity and its power. All evil required then a perverted use of free will.

Other supposed evil things God had created, like diseases, Basil explained, were just tools for testing the virtue of humans, or as Gregory of Nazansius suggested, they were good from the omniscient perspective of God, which humans could not fathom. Even the possibility of free choice, which enabled evil choices, was a good thing, Basil concluded, because freedom was a necessary condition of virtuous life. In fact, Gregory of Nyssa concluded, as a source of all being God could not be responsible for evil, which was not in the proper sense of the word, but merely was not good.

Turning away from divinity had broken the intrinsic connection between human soul and body, making body eventually waste away. Still, Gregory of Nyssa noted, soul retained the connection to the elements of its body, and with help, it could pull these elements together and reconstitute the body. The soul just had to be purified, so that the bond between soul and body would not be broken again.

Like a doctor seeing sickness, Gregory of Nyssa poetically described, Logos saw the perverted and sick state of the earthly human realm, waited for the moment when body of humankind had excreted the ooze of all various types of evil and at that moment took on bodily form in order to cure humans from their sickness. For this cure, said Evagrius, a disciple of Gregory of Nazansius, Logos had to do something contrary to its divine nature, that is,take on a human form - this act of incarnation was from our human perspective something above our nature or supernatural. By being incarnated in a human body, Athanasius noted, Logos sanctified all human bodies, and by showing the death and eventual rebirth of its body, Logos had created the connection with divine anew.

Because Logos had to assume full humanity, Logos as Jesus could not have had a mere appearance of body. Indeed, Athanasius noted against pagan philosophers, there was nothing strange in Logos assuming body. Furthermore, the body Logos took on could not be just its own creation, because it would then be more perfect than a human body. In other words, this body had to be conceived by a human mother. Because of its humanity, this body did not then form a fourth part of divinity, which remained a trinity even after incarnation.

Assuming human body, Gregory of Nyssa insisted, was not below the dignity of Logos, because natural processes responsible for formation of bodies had a divine root and were thus not evil - indeed, reproductive organs were even the most noble sort, being the only dedicated not to survival of an individual, but of whole human race. Human birth of Logos didn’t even require previous succumbing to sensual pleasure, but was a virgin birth. The divine nature of Logos was also not limited by the body, Gregory continued, as little as human soul was limited by its body in its imaginations. Indeed, divinity of Logos also reformed the link between human soul and body, leading to the resurrection of itself and eventually all humanity.

Logos was not just connected to a mere body, which it would then move around like a mindless automaton, Gregory of Nazansius noted against the followers of Apollinaris. Instead, he insisted, the body of Jesus had to have its own soul, or faculties dealing with such mental processes as sensation, imagination, reasoning and will. Only by being connected to a complete human being could the death of Logos redeem the whole humanity.

The redemption process, Gregory of Nyssa suggested, showed all the positive attributes of divinity. Because God was good and loving, he wanted to save humanity. Because he was wise, he knew all the possible means by which to free humans from the bond of death, and because he was righteous, he chose to do it in a manner that was suited to the conniving ways of the instigator of human death, that is, the devil. Finally, because he had the ultimate power, he could embody divinity in human form.

Resurrection of Logos would ultimately prove to be a salvation for all conscious beings, and indeed, had already changed human condition, Gregory of Nyssa thought, since pagan rituals were almost a thing of the past. Renewed connection to the divine was fortified by baptism. In baptism earthly desires were washed away by water, just like water cleared away Egyptians attacking Hebrews. Divine touch had given ordinary water the power to cause an experience about the effect of death and rebirth of Jesus in submerging, just like divine breath had given liquid semen the power to grow into a living being.

Basil also insisted that one should clear one’s soul of all sin and to begin this one should be baptised. Basil stated that there was no good reason to avoid baptism, since that meant just holding on to one’s old life, tainted by sin. If one fell to sin even after the baptism, Basil instructed them to ask their superiors for a punishment, which would again heal their soul from sin.

Gregory of Nyssa noted also Eucharist as a way to connect human and divine. In Eucharist, a small crumb of bread was sanctified by Logos. This sanctified bread was then enough to stabilise the decay of human body and make it thus more divine.

Full connection required still that human beings should follow, by their free choice, a certain way of life. Evagrius noted that this way of life meant simply following the true nature of humans, while acting contrary to human nature was to be avoided. Similarly, Gregory of Nyssa noted that one should follow the proper measure and time that had been allotted to each thing. Humans were called to live at a time chosen by God, he thought, and they then waited for the moment, when they could leave their earthly existence - it was always a good time for death. If someone failed to purify oneself during one’s earthly life, there was still the possibility of being purified after death. This postmortem purification would feel like cleansing fire, but it was just pain felt by a person who had been enamoured of bodily existence and was then deprived of it.

Gregory of Nyssa also remarked that the proper way of life concerned all the facets of human psychology, described by Plato. Through reason, one should have clear knowledge of what is divine and what is valuable and not be attracted by heresies or superstition. Through desire, one should set one’s eyes to true, heavenly beauty and not be distracted by earthly delights. Finally, through spiritedness, one should bravely fight against vices and not be enraged by trifles. Of these three, only the first, the reason, was completely good, while the other two could lead to impure life, if not governed by reason. Furthermore, only reason would be left after the purification was complete, since at that state there was no reason to desire anything or to feel any anger - only love of divine would be left.

Only the proper way of living really was something, Gregory of Nyssa noted. In comparison, he clarified, all other ways of life lacked something. For instance, someone might not have the sufficient wisdom to understand how one should live or one might lack the fortitude to follow the rules of good life. The properly Christian way of life was embodied in some exemplary figures. These ascetics had often isolated themselves from civilisation and lived either alone or in small communities, regulated by strict rules. Basil of Casearea compared them to an army battling against the forces of evil, although not in a physical manner.

Ascetics could be women, as evidenced by Gregory of Nyssa’s story of the life of his and Basil’s sister, Macrina, who had dedicated her life to God after the death of her husband even before the consummation of their marriage. Macrina showed, Gregory noted, a truly philosophical mindset, which could maintain its self-control and rationality even faced with the sorrowful passions caused by the death of close friends and relatives.

Because of their holiness, these exemplary figures were told to be able to do wondrous things, such as heal sick by their prayers. Athanasius suggested that they also had a power to resist embodied temptations or demons, which encircle human beings constantly and after a person’s death try to prevent her from going toward the divine level. In addition to wonder-works, these exemplary figures were told to show their extraordinariness by their speech. They held conversations with pagan philosophers and won them in debates, showing that mere belief was higher than knowledge.

Evagrius was especially interested to guide new initiates into ascetic life. One should ignore such distractions like married life and try to avoid contacts even with friends - rare meetings would help the friends, without distracting the initiate too much. Even visits to cities should be shunned, and if possible, someone else should be sent for errands.

Yet, Christian way of life was not meant for just monks and nuns, Basil said, but touched upon the life of a common person. The highest rule, which everyone should obey, Basil found in the Bible - we should all love and honour God. Following this highest principle was the command to love and serve our fellow human beings.

Basil was not interested in changing the structure of society around him, but advised people to conservatively follow the rules and regulations of Roman empire. Thus, a slave or a servant was still to serve their master - although Basil added that the master should also treat their subjects fairly - and married persons should stay married, although virginal life was to be respected more.

Despite the fact that Bible admitted some leeway to common people and allowed them to engage in marital relations, this did not mean life outside monastery was simple. Indeed, Basil insisted, monastery was in a sense the easier environment, since it contained less temptations. Life of a human being, he said, was just a road toward their true goal, and this road was filled with distractions luring us from our proper end. We should not be too entangled with things we encounter in our journey, since they were not truly ours, but could easily vanish from our grasp. The only things we really owned, Basil insisted, were our body and our soul and a good use of them both.

Infirmities of human body reminded us that we lived in a fallen state, Basil noted. Yet, he was not against using medicine for curing illnesses. Indeed, he insisted, God had given humans such arts like medicine and agriculture to help humans in this fallen state, where body decayed and required constant sustenance. Basil also held that medicine as healing of body was allegory of similar cleansing and healing of one’s soul.

One of the most stubborn obstacles of our purification, Gregory of Nyssa noted, were sensuous delights. True wisdom would note how fleeting and ephemeral these delights were and how they polluted human reason. Luxurious dwellings just hid the ugliness of personality, while wine intoxicated reason and could lead us to all sort of debauchery. Even such seemingly innocent thing as laughter was like an uncontrolled turbulence, shaking body irrationally.

Everyone, Basil noted, should try to disentangle their soul from the cares of material life, and what better way to do that than fasting. Paradoxically, fasting also strengthened body by purifying it, Basil noticed, and heightened sensations and pleasures - the first bite of food after fasting tastes sweetest.

The opposite of fasting or gluttony was then condemned by Basil. For instance, although wine was healthy in small amounts, Basil said, a drunkard devoured it so much that he fell into a mindless stupor, a condition worse than that of any animal, in which a person was prone to all sorts of sinful things.

Even further the idea of gluttony was taken in the writings of Evagrius. He personified thoughts leading us away from divinity as demons that used our senses and brain to imprint distractions in our soul. One type of demon lured humans with food, which then acted as a nourishment for further impure desires. Although eating appeared to quench our desire, Evagrius thought that it would lead us to just wish for more and different kinds of food.

Like Basil, Evagrius also spoke of fasting as means to quench the demonic thoughts binding us to earthly life. Fasting helped us to control the flame of desire and concentrate our attention on what lied beyond our current life. It might not completely destroy gluttonous thoughts, which just took on new shapes, scaring ascetic with notions of hunger causing illnesses. The remedy for these new thoughts, Evagrius said, was to reduce its rations even further, so that even a tiny morsel of bread became a great pleasure.

Evagrius insisted that intake of food and satiety could also open ways for new temptations, such as pleasures of sexual intercourse. Evagrius, probably speaking only for heterosexual men, asked novices to avoid the company of women. Yet, even this was not enough, Evagrius said, since sexual imagery could easily disturb our thoughts even through memories and dreams. Here, Evagrius recommended fasting and especially avoidance of water, which would take the mind of ascetic to other matters.

Bodily pleasures were not the only thing to distract us from proper life, Evagrius said, but all goods and possessions could tie us to imperfect life. Indeed, an important step in purification, he and all the Cappadocian fathers said, was to avoid avarice, which tied human being to earthly riches and instilled a fear of poverty and shame of begging in us. Gregory of Nyssa noted that hoarding riches usually meant stealing them from someone else. Basil condemned even gathering possessions for the sake of children, since that would mean merely enticing innocent youth into the ways of sin.

The best use for wealth, Basil stated, was to give it to those in need, so that the difference between the rich and the poor would be abolished and all would have only as much as they need for their sustenance. In this he was of the same opinion as Gregory of Nazansius, who said that poor and destitute should be helped, as we had no way of knowing whether they were to be blamed of their condition. Evagrius added that we still shouldn’t horde riches for the sake of giving alms, because it was a greater good to give from meager than from abundant means.

The purification of the soul implied that one should thank God daily about one’s life, that is, see all things positively or as having a divine origin. This didn’t mean that one could not feel sorrow or cry for bad things happening in the world. Indeed, Basil said, tears were a natural process, by which humans relieved themselves of melancholic sentiments. Still, Basil insisted, one should not feel overly distressed about such natural events as the death of loved ones, which also meant their relief from the distresses of earthly life.

Even if grief was a natural emotion and sometimes even a godly one, purifying our soul from its imperfections, Evagrius warned that it could be used by the demons. This corruption of sadness could occur when we grieved over losing some earthly good or some occasion for sensual pleasure. The obvious solution was to avoid being attached to any worldly things.

Basil was also against certain negative emotions. Anger - if it was not righteous anger for the condition of good persons or aggression toward thoughts leading us toward imperfection - was something Basil shunned, because it easily made us retaliate and respond to evil with equal evil. Similarly Evagrius warned against careless anger and resentment, which at worst made people lose their reason and fight other people over trifles.

A cure against unrightful anger, Evagrius noted, was to incite compassion. A good means for this, he noted, was music. Gregory of Nyssa also endorsed music as a way to bring us closer to God. He returned to the idea of ancient philosophers that world itself was full of inaudible music, generated by the harmony of celestial spheres. This music, Gregory of Nyssa noted, was designed by God and earthly music could be used to awaken this celestial harmony in our souls. Thus, psalms, Gregory of Nyssa suggested, were songs designed to lead a person from earthly to heavenly life.

If a person managed to avoid lure of both bodily temptations and negative emotions, Evagrius told, the next attack might consist of acedia, in other words, a feeling of emptiness, ennui and boredom, caused by long isolation from other people.Because of acedia, people might search for all sorts of distractions, which would give them an excuse for not continuing ascetic discipline. Such a distraction could be even a beneficial task, like charity work, but a bad motive would taint its goodness. If such thoughts occurred, Evagrius advised, it was best to persevere in one’s practice and not to give in to the allure of acedia.

The most difficult demons to contend with, Evagrius noted, were those of vainglory and pride, because both could deceive us to think that our ascetic practice was working. Vainglory made us care for ascetics only when we could receive honour and reputation for our achievements. It incited a hope for miraculous abilities, like that of curing sick, and when we were not able to do such wonder work, vainglory was replaced by a thought of sorrow. It was difficult to get rid of the thought of vainglory, because getting rid of it once might just awaken a new thought of vainglory. The true remedy, Evagrius said, was to find the joy in the proper way of life, which replaced any need to gain further reputation.

Pride, on the other hand, made us believe that what we had achieved was due to our own strength of mind and fortitude, with no help from divinity. Evagrius advised to counter pride with humility. One should think of one’s former life and note that only through divine help one could have progressed so far.

It was then no wonder that Gregory of Nyssa saw a humble acceptance of the imperfection of humanity as part in the process of avoiding temptation of material world and of becoming divinised. Temptations attacked us through all senses and especially through touch. We should therefore, Gregory suggested, be patient and forgiving with our fellow humans so that God would in turn be patient with us. Gregory particularly implored us to act respectfully toward our subjugates, such as slaves and animals we were meant to guard.

Another negative emotion related to vainglory and pride Basil found unacceptable was envy, which was in itself painful and demanded as relief that bad things happen to others. Envy was thus a starting point for other types of bad behaviour, and indeed, Basil and Gregory of Nazansius pointed out, it supposedly was the reason for devil’s turning against God.

Instead of envying better positions, Basil suggested, one should admit humbly that one had really no reason to be proud of oneself, since all good things ultimately derived from God. Thus, calling oneself wise was foolish, since all wisdom came from God, and boasting of one’s achievements in battling evil was equally foolish, because one couldn’t have done them without God’s help.

Another sort of humility was to accept one’s own position in the hierarchy of Church, Gregory of Nazansius noted. Only some people, after considerable preparation, could rise to the level of understanding the deep intricacies of Trinity, while for others it was sufficient just to agree with the official dogma and help the congregation with manual work. Indeed, Gregory noted, these lower positions were even safer, since people who tried to aim for a more exalted position could too easily succumb into some heretical position.

The goal of ascetic practices, for Evagrius, was to reach impassibility. Impassibility was not a rigid state, Evagrius added, but vigilance against demons was still required. Impassible person just had the expertise to counter demonic thoughts so that these did not prevent anymore thinking about the nature of things: memories of passions no more had any power over an impassible person. Evagrius noted that such philosophical thinking gave an impassible person also new tools for getting rid of the demonic thoughts through conceptual clarification. Suppose, for example, that we had thoughts about gold, creating in us a temptation and longing for this substance. After a clear meditation on the nature of the gold we could conclude that it is not this substance that is evil nor even thinking about it, but the unnatural passion involved. Such clarification could replace demonic thoughts with simple human thinking. In best case, it could lead us to angelic thoughts, where we might see e.g. gold as a symbol of something divine.

Another important tool in guarding oneself from all evil, Gregory of Nyssa said, was discussion with God, that is, prayer. Without regular discussions with and considerations of the ineffable source of everything, human being would quickly be lured by routines of everyday life into forms of behaviour that disconnect them from God. This discussion should not mean, Gregory of Nyssa clarified, that we just asked God to satisfy our desires - although God might sometimes graciously give a gift to us, he would do this only for the sake of educating us about his power, not just to tie us to earthy lives. Similarly Gregory of Nyssa warned us not to pray punishments for our enemies, since the only enemy we should try to eradicate was evil and sinful life.

Indeed, Gregory continued, there was a certain danger in trying to open up a discussion with the Creator, if one’s attitude was wrong. If one started the discussion with the words taught by Logos, initiator of mankind into communion with Creator, by calling Creator one’s Father, one was already assuming that one was or at least was on a way to become like Creator, that is, as perfect as one can be. If, on the other hand, one was still ruled by earthly desires, one blasphemed by suggesting that these desires would have their source in the Creator. In a similar fashion, self-perfection meant for Gregory sanctification of God’s name and building of the proverbial kingdom of God.

Gregory of Nyssa compared the discussion with God to medicine. Just like earthly medicine fixed the bodily disharmonies, the divine medicine or submission to God’s will cured the disharmony of the whole human being - disharmony caused by a sinful turning away from divinity to earthly pleasures. The divine medicine reformed human being and reinstated its position between immaterial or angelic and material realms. It did not thus, at least in this life, mean cancellation of all bodily elements of human being, but merely dropping all luxuries and being satisfied with necessities required by the sustenance of body.

An important step in the purification process, Cappadocian fathers noticed, was trying to understand oneself. Bible was, obviously, an instrument they had in mind for this task, but Basil also recommended reading carefully selected instances of pagan literature, which at their best had at least an inkling of important truths. This appreciation of Greek and Roman cultural traditions was shared by Gregory of Nazansius, who tried to create Christian poetry and perhaps even drama following the example of Greeks and Romans. Gregory of Nyssa noted allegorically that just like Moses, born of a Hebrew mother, was raised by an Egyptian mother, so was Christian, mothered by church, also raised by ancient culture, and just like Hebrews took precious items with them from Egypt, so should Christians appropriate what was best in pagan literature.

This appreciation of tradition concerned only selected facets of ancient culture and philosophy. What Gregory of Nazansius wanted to especially appropriate from philosophers was a persistent attitude when facing hardships and troubles. Then again, he disparaged the pride of philosophers who supposed they could live a decent life without the help of God. Furthermore, he was somewhat disdainful of intricate and abstruse questions that one could meet, for instance, in works of logic, but could still apply them, if occasion suggested itself - for instance, he noted that since Liar’s Paradox showed that something could be neither true or false, one could also admit that Logos was not generated from a prior state of existence nor from a prior state of non-existence.

Understanding oneself meant for Basil particularly that one should recognise that one was something more than mere decaying body. And from the experience of oneself as immaterial and still as a governor of body, Basil continued, one could understand the notion of something immaterial controlling the material world. Beyond the material world, Gregory of Nyssa said, there was the intelligible world, filled by disembodied angelic powers. Unlike the intelligible realm of pagan Platonists of the time, it was not eternal and pointed to something else beyond itself - that is, God.

This intelligible reality formed in a sense also the limit of what we as finite humans could know, the Cappadocian fathers said, since the infinite power of God and his triune nature were something that eluded our restricted minds. As Basil was wont to say, now we viewed only a reflection or shadow of God. Basil’s implication was that at a later time - when we ourselves perhaps became part of the intelligible world - we would be able to see God in a much clearer light. Yet, both Gregories suspected, even immaterial creatures could not fully understand God.

We should know when to speak, Gregory of Nyssa noted, and essence of God lied definitely beyond what we could say something positive of. God itself did not need language for thinking reality, and while he had given humans the ability to form languages, these were essentially human creations, with no necessary relation to what really existed. Thus, Gregory could easily disprove the notion of some heretics that they knew words that fully expressed the essence of divinity.

Although we couldn't ever fully know God, Gregory of Nyssa suggested that we had some means by which to become better aware of this mystery behind all existence. This awareness, Gregory suggested, required another sort of sensation from the one we were accustomed to. This other type of sensation required us becoming like God, that is, perfecting and purifying ourselves. By becoming pure, he continued, our soul could reflect the perfection deriving from God and let us, as it were, smell the sweetness of divinity in ourselves.

This smell of divinity was not the ultimate in us getting to know divinity, Gregory of Nyssa noted - we could hear his voice, see a glimpse of him etc. All these sensuous analogies revealed the same thing. We could be like mirrors of divinity, as long as we polished ourselves to receive its beams - then we did not just receive divine goodness, but spread it further to other people. Yet, the very essence of divinity escaped us, and when we thought of having captured it, we found out that we had viewed only some of its effects. Indeed, he noted, just like Moses, we had to enter darkness, when we wanted to meet divinity.

A beam of divine light, Gregory said, would make us press for even more, to become even more perfect and more like God. This was a goal which we could never reach, but we could still get closer and closer to it. Even Moses could only see the back of God. In fact, this was even necessary - seeing a back of God meant that we were following and moving toward him. Seeing the face of God meant moving to the opposite direction and thus away from the source of all life.

Origin of Christian metaphysics

Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian symbolised in a sense two possible roads that Christian philosophy could have taken. Former related positively to pagan philosophy and thought it a possible source for the enlightenment of Christians. He was a clear Platonist, who accepted the idea of an immaterial soul. Latter, on the other hand, was not convinced of pagan philosophy, thinking more about the charismatic experiences of pure believers. If any philosophy was near to his heart, it was Stoicism, where he appropriated the idea of a material soul and a material divinity. In the end, it was the road of Clement of Alexandria which was chosen, while Tertullian’s rigoristic and materialistic thought was left out of the official creed of the church.

Like many early Christian thinkers, Origen made considerable efforts to understand what Bible was saying. Indeed, he considered exegesis of scripture as more worthy of scholarly attention than philosophical research. While thinkers like Tertullian had been very literal in their readings of the Bible, Origen followed the example of Philo of Alexandria and saw biblical stories more as a metaphor. Tales of Old Testament implied in his eyes truths revealed more openly in the New Testament. Thus, the tale of Isaac being saved from a sacrificial death by the appearance of a lamb showed for Origen that even early Israelites were convinced that human death would one day be vanquished by the seeming death of Logos.

Origen also thought that these stories were parables about proper human life. Thus, the story of Abraham fooling a king by introducing his wife, Sarah, as his sister, showed according to Origen that a righteous person (Abraham) can share virtuous life (Sarah) with other people. Similarly, the story of Egyptians selling their land voluntarily to Pharaoh at the time of famine was in Origen’s eyes a warning about weak persons willingly debasing themselves under the yoke of Devil.

The allegorical method of reading Bible pertained not just to stories, but also to laws about the Jewish rituals - for instance, the various sacrificial commands were signs of the sacrifice of Jesus. Indeed, the story how Moses could not enter the promised land, while his follower Joshua - or Jesus, as it was written in the translations of Old Testament at the time - did, was in Origen’s eyes a proof that Jewish law in its literal sense was not enough for salvation, unlike Christianity.

Not just the Old Testament, but also New Testament was not to be read too literally, according to Origen. For instance, Origen thought that the story of Jesus discoursing with Moses and Elijah and afterwards reproaching Peter for suggesting the construction of separate huts for the three was a parable about not separating Jewish law and prophets from gospels.

Although Origen’s interpretation of Jewish rituals as mere symbols of more spiritual events was quite in line with the ideas of first Christians, few of his spiritual readings obscured some tendencies of gospels. For instance, when gospels presented Jesus preaching that one should give money to the poor and not to those who already had riches, Origen suggested that this saying actually meant that we should teach especially those who were spiritually poor, that is, had misconceptions about God and his relation to humans.

With this rather imaginative way to read the Bible, Origen quickly found reasons to appreciate the philosophical tradition. When the Bible told of the skirmishes of Abraham with a king and his two companions and the final signing of peace treaty, this was for Origen a clear sign that the kingly discipline of logic with its two companions, physics and ethics, had battled with Christianity, but would finally find their peace with it. Indeed, one might even find some morsels of wisdom from texts of philosophers, just like Moses could learn something from his father-in-law who served another god.

Although Origen thus appreciated philosophy, he was quite adamant that church was of a much higher nature than any philosophical school. Indeed, although pagans might ridicule Christians for accepting things on faith, no philosophical school had managed to show that the others were wrong and their followers had to simply believe in their teachings. In addition, although Christianity was criticised for being based on mysteries, Origen thought that these mysteries were still much more common knowledge than esoteric teachings of philosophical schools, and indeed, they were mysteries only because understanding them required more effort.

Furthermore, despite the worth of other philosophical treatises, Bible contained in Origen’s opinion the core of philosophy in the form of Salomonic treatises. Salomon’s Proverbs indicated the ways of good life and the corrects method for using reason, thus covering ethics and logic. The essentials of physics, Origen said, were described in Ecclesiastes, which described the futility of all worldly things. Finally, the Song of Songs was to Origen a model for Platonic metaphysics, in which earthly love of a lover toward her beloved served as a symbol for the love leading a person toward the ultimate source of everything, or in religious terms, God.

This God should, according to Origen, be called the God, because to it the word “god” is most properly applied. Indeed, what names to be given for God was quite an important for Origen. Although pagan philosophers were happy to identify e.g. Zeus of Greek mythology with the creator of the universe, Origen thought that Zeus was at most some lesser entity trying to present itself as the highest being in the universe.

Against Tertullian, Origen noted that God must be immaterial, because all material objects need sustenance and cannot be eternal. Thus, whenever Bible ascribed a body to God or spoke of him as being made of some type of matter (e.g. pneuma or breath/spirit), this was just a metaphor. God is the ground of all life and it is figuratively called light, because it is devoid of any touch of impurity, and just like we never see the true light or Sun, but only its emissions, similarly, Origen suggests, we can be aware only of the effects of God’s power. Despite God being the most powerful being, Origen still thought that God’s powers had limits, because he thought all things must have their limits.

Because of its purity and goodness, Origen points out, God is only source of positive things, while he cannot be source of any negations. Thus, lack of goodness - in other words, evil - is not based on God. This still does not mean, Origen clarifies, that material world would not be work of God - even corporeal things have their own perfection. Indeed, God had made the world into an organic unity, in which all things were connected and eventually served the needs of rational beings.

God as such would be beyond human mind, but something called Logos could lead humans to the knowledge of God. Sometimes Origen seems to go even so far as to suggest that Logos is nothing else, but a name for the general capacity to know God - whatever this capacity or Reason is, it is for Origen definitely something higher than ordinary perception of earthly realities. When looked from another viewpoinr, Logos would be just the revelation or “word” of God about God itself and about the relation of other beings to God, since without the help of God humans could not truly know God. Still, at other places Origen makes it clear that Logos is a separate being - it is like a smaller model, through which the vastness of God can be represented.

This Logos, says Origen, has existed always, but is still dependent on God - Logos is like an image of God and always connected to its source. Although God and Logos are distinct, Origen says, they still are unified, just like a married couple is unified and still retain their individuality. Because of its close connection to God, Logos could also be called a God, although Logos certainly isn’t the God. Indeed, following the Gospel by John, Origen said that God has created everything else through Logos. Just like the God, Logos can also be called light, but it is not completely pure, but more like a spark emitted by the true source of light and a ray shining in darkness. That is, Logos can enter a state containing impurities - it can become embodied.

The purpose of the embodiment of Logos was, according to Bible, to perfect the work of God. This statement was somewhat problematic for Origen, since all works of God should be perfect. Origen’s solution was that due to some voluntary transgression a number of other entities had turned themselves away from God and thus become imperfect. The persons who now existed in the fallen state had originally existed in a different place - perhaps in immaterial fashion or perhaps in some more perfect region, with more perfect bodies, made out of the same substance as stars. Then, because of having become tainted by sin, they had been, as it were, thrown down to the earthly human existence. This falling could also be described figuratively as opening of their eyes, since it meant the beginning of sensory perception to these persons. Thus, they required Logos to perfect them, to cleanse them from earthly impurities and to return them to their original state.

The embodied or incarnate state is necessary for Logos to first reach human beings. And just like Logos is only an image of the God, the body of Logos - the person called Jesus - is just an image of the Logos, although for the majority of humankind Jesus is the closest they can come to the real Logos. At first, this Jesus was still something distinct from Logos, and like all rational entities, lived in a state of perfection, before arriving to the material world. Yet, unlike other rational entities, Jesus was supposedly in constant connection with Logos. After becoming materialised, Jesus lived a perfect life and suffered for others, thus becoming completely identified with Logos. In fact, when Origen appears to equate Logos with reason in general or with revelation of the God, then this identification of Jesus with Logos becomes a simple statement about Jesus being intimately aware of the God - and in this sense every human being who could share in this awareness is united with the God.

Logos could be called God, because it still was quite close to God. Some people think of forces of nature as gods, which is a step further from the proper use of the word. Still, Origen noted, these worshipers of natural forces can still recognise traces of true divinity in them. For instance, many animals show traces of acting in quite rational manner, although they do not have a reason of their own, because God has made them. It even makes some sense, according to Origen, to worship Sun, Moon and planets, because they are, as many philosophers of the day said, living and rational beings, moving freely through the heavens. Of course, Origen noted, if we asked the planets themselves, they would tell us to worship their creator - they are more perfect than earthly beings, but still far from the God. Indeed, stars had probably also sinned, although not as badly as human beings. In their current state they helped humans by giving them light and warmth.

The final and the most incorrect step away from the truth is to call mere human built images gods, which is complete folly. Indeed, Origen noted, from time to time some maleficent beings occupied such idols, in order to lure humans away from the knowledge of true God. These maleficent beings or demons were, as some Platonists of the time supposed, gaseous entities. They had also fallen from the immaterial or heavenly realm, because of turning away from the God, but their fate was bleaker than that of humans, who in their fleshly state could at least strive for moral perfection, while demons did not have even the will to redemption. Origen suggested that the demons might require incense and sacrificial fumes for their sustenance and that through some unknown natural mechanism they were perhaps linked to names of pagan gods, arriving whenever someone mentioned them. Despite being opponents of the God, Origen supposed demons would still get their chance to perfect themselves.

Analogically with the hierarchy of what to mean by god, Origen offers a similar hierarchy of what one should mean by Logos or reason. We already saw Origen’s notion of people taking embodied Jesus as Logos, although he was only an image of Logos - thus, what Logos was to God, Jesus was to Logos. One step further are proper philosophers, who follow what is commonly called reason, which then should be analogically a creation of Logos, just like forces of nature are creation of the God. Finally, there are people who follow their own fabrication of what reason should be (Origen especially mentions Epicureans), which is then as erroneous form of behaviour as worship of idols.

The route to perfection for human beings lies then, Origen said, in following Logos and through it finding knowledge of God. Against gnostics, Origen noted that there was nothing in the essence of people who followed this route that distinguished them from other human beings. In other words, all human beings could in principle still find perfection, which was then more a matter of choice than birth. Human being had two forces or tendencies drawing them to opposite directions, toward animal life and toward heavenly life, and human being had to make a choice, which path to take. Following Paul, Origen noted that all one needed for salvation was faith in Logos, which would cleanse human being of all imperfection. Even after finding faith one still had to live a decent life, lest one not fall back into a state of sin. This decent life meant going against the way of the world, which often held as profitable what was really something that one should not do.

In comparison to Logos, Origen speaks very little of the role of the so-called Holy Spirit. If the God had power over all existing things and if Logos was meant to speak to all rational beings, Spirit was, according to Origen, supposed to come in contact with people who behaved perfectly in accordance with the guidance of Logos. Spirit thus gave these holy persons, for instance, visions of life in the immaterial realm. In a sense, then, Spirit provided an access to Logos, because it gave people even more perfect wisdom, just like Logos provided an access to the God and so made people even more perfect beings, although being as such had already been granted to them by the God.

In addition to Spirit, a number of lesser entities or angels helped people to find the proper life. Angels, just like demons, Origen supposed, had material, gaseous or starlike bodies. Just like all other things below Logos and spirit, Origen suggested, angels were not without their faults, although they had managed to retain a position higher than humans. Angels and their evil counterparts - the demons - tried to entice humans to follow one of the forces inherent to human personality, angels guiding humans toward perfection and demons toward imperfection.

Origen took it for granted that human beings and indeed all living entities had a power to direct themselves and were not just moved by mere external forces, like mere material, non-living objects. As rational entities humans also have, according to Origen, a power to decide what they would do. Thus, he said, rational entities are accountable for their actions. He was also sure that this capacity for free choice did not contradict God’s power to know all events beforehand - God just has used his pre-knowledge to fashion the events so that free entities will get their just deserts for all their choices. For instance, Origen noted, God knew from the beginning of the world that a certain person would pray for him and organised the events so that this prayer was to be heard. Of course, a precondition for this was that the person in question should pray for the right things, for example, for a salvation from the imperfect, earthly realm or for a help in finding true wisdom.

Somewhat revolutionary in Christian teachers was their willingness to share their teachings with anyone, even if they were not learned or had not lived a perfect life, because, as Origen noted, Logos became flesh for everyone’s sake. Yet, Origen also defended Christianity that it was not meant merely for sinners or weak-minded, but that its teachings should also be heard by wise and virtuous. Indeed, Origen was of the opinion that all believers were not on the same level, but that there were distinctions in their understanding of the truths shared by Logos. Some could only consume easily graspable statements from the Bible, just like some could only eat milk and vegetables. The proper meat or the mysteries hidden behind the allegories were to be revealed only to those with the capacity to handle them. Even these wise people should not brag about their skills of understanding, since in comparison with Logos, Origen noted, all reason was wanting.

Origen even suggested that the truths now shared by Logos were not the most important ones, but only those that were useful for the fallen state of human. Once a human being had completed the proverbial Passover - transition from the earthly state of sin to the perfect state - she was instructed to burn away the means by which she had carried herself over to the other side.

Although the persons in the immaterial or heavenly realm were thus wiser than persons in the material or earthly realm, they still retained the capacity of free choice and might choose to turn away from the God and fall again - this relapse was something that could happen even to angels. This meant, Origen noted, that after this material world had fulfilled its purpose of serving rational entities during their fallen state, another material world might have to be created. Indeed, Origen speculated, a whole series of material worlds might have existed before this one, because God certainly had not been idle before the creation of this world. Origen wasn’t sure whether this cycle of new worlds would continue indefinitely long or whether after uncountable ages a state would be reached, in which all rational entities would follow God’s plan perfectly. Yet, this state of God being found in everything was the ultimate goal of all creation - the end towards which everyone strove.

Does Christianity mix with philosophy?

We will probably never have a chance to find out what Jesus was truly attempting to do – at least not before the fabled Second Coming. What we do know is that he most likely was a charismatic speaker who gathered a group of followers – and who was then promptly executed for some reason.

This might have been the end of story, if it weren't for a fact that people were having visions of Jesus, which spurred the idea of him somehow surviving his death. This series of visions led to an organisation of a religious movement, which would later be called Christianity. The first task of this fledgling new religion was to determine what they actually believed in. A significant figure at this stage was apostle Paul, who first persecuted Christians, but later turned into one of them because of his own visions.

The main idea instigated by Paul was that the death of Jesus was somehow an atonement for the state of mankind – an execution of a perfectly innocent victim could blot out all sins and would eventually lead to cancellation of death, which had been a punishment imposed on the human beings. What humans had to do now was to follow the example of Jesus and spend their lives in serving one another and throwing away their selfish desires. This new command to love one another was in Paul's eyes much more important than the old Jewish law with its strict ritualistic regulations. Thus, he concluded, even people who did not follow Jewish practices could be salvaged.

Like all religions before it, Christianity was open to reinterpretation, and imposition of new layers of tradition begun instantly. Paul had seen a vision of Jesus, but then a story arose that he had been seen in flesh and blood by his earlier followers. Paul had suggested that Jesus had been born of a family line leading directly to ancient Jewish royalty, and then genealogies were drafted and stories of his birth began to circulate. Stories of miracles by Jesus, supposed speeches of him – layers upon layers of new material, which provided building blocks for the evangelists.

A most interesting part of this reinterpretation concerned the status of Jesus himself. Quite early on, Jesus was designated as the Son of God. This was an epithet that could be given to holy men, but it suggested also that there was something more than human in Jesus. Then, the final evangelist, whom we only know by name “John”, made the daring leap and identified Jesus with Logos, the Stoic concept for the guiding spirit of the world. Jesus was not just a human being, John appeared to say, but a force that had helped God create and rule the world and that had somehow taken a mortal form. Christians were still receiving visions, and since God himself was a too distant figure, who had not directly spoken to anyone since the time of legends, and Logos was rumored to come back only at final end of the world, a somewhat nebulous third entity, Paraclete or Prophetic Spirit, was added to the Christian pantheon, as the source of prophetic and charismatic experiences.

The first task of Christian writers was to justify the new faith, on the one hand, by showing its connection to Jewish tradition, and on the other hand, by making it more credible in the eyes of learned scholars. The first task began at the very beginning of the new faith. The Jewish tradition existed in the form of sacred writings, which just waited for another layer of interpretation. Individual sentences were taken out of their original context and regarded as signs and symbols of Jesus and his fate. The task of Christians was not as hopeless as it may sound, since some Jewish writers – the so-called twelve prophets – had already anticipated some important tenets of the new faith, such as the emphasis on good deeds instead of strict abidance of Mosaic laws.

A more difficult question was how to justify the introduction of a seemingly new divinity in the strictly monotheistic Jewish religion. The first suggestion of the new Christians was, firstly, that although Christ/Logos was an entity separate from the Creator, his powers were all derived from the Creator, just like a spark has no power of its own, distinct from the fire that spurned it. Furthermore, Christians also argued that Christ had already appeared in the Jewish writings – surely Creator of the whole world could not appear within the confines of that world or be bothered to speak to single individuals, which would mean that every time Torah spoke of God conversing with someone, it had to be some other God than Creator.

If convincing Jewish with these newfangled readings of old texts was difficult, this line of defense was even less effective with scholars who were not Jewish. The Christians did suggest that as the ultimate truth, their faith required no explanation, but they also felt the need to somehow argue for this truth. Of course, Christians could try to point out the prestige of Jewish religious texts, brought by their old age.

Yet, it was especially the novelties Christians introduced to Jewish texts, such as the virgin birth of Jesus, which were hard to swallow. A dedicated pagan scholar could remark that many of these new elements resembled old Greek myths and were probably just borrowed from these sources. Justin Martyr, the so-called first Christian philosopher, had an answer: these myths were just lies spread by evil beings willing to confuse the followers of Christ. In addition, he could point out, like many philosophers before him, that these myths were morally unacceptable, when they showed supposed divinities acting in a manner that would be reprehensible in human beings.

Another philosophical problem that early Christians had to account for was the question of evil: why did God had to devise such a complex scheme for saving humans, when he could have just destroyed the source of evil or Lucifer, before humans had been corrupted? Answer was what it would still be after couple of millennia: this complex scheme resulted in a better ending than a simpler plan. Furthermore, Justin Martyr also emphasised that this complex plan did not take responsibility of killing Christ from the killers – God has just foreseen people committing crime, but he hadn't actually made them criminals.

The main line of offence with these first Christian philosophers was reminiscent of Philo: Greek philosophers had found their wisdom in the Old Testament. A particularly fruitful source here was Plato's Timaios, which was interpreted as originally as the Jewish writings. In this dialogue, one could find an idea of God designing the world – and also of God assigning another divine being to take care of the world. Logos, Christian thinkers were quick to add.

Yet, Christian philosophers were also happy to point out places where Plato had made errors. For instance, Plato's idea of souls reincarnating into different forms according to their past lives was ridiculed by Justin Martyr – souls in bodies of beasts couldn't know anything of their past lives, so the punishment would be completely pointless. A bit later, St. Iraenaeus pointed out that transmigration of souls was disproved by the lack of any memories of past lives – and this lack could not be just forgetfulness brought out by the combination of soul with matter, because then matter would interfere even with memorising the events in the material world.

The adherents of the new faith were especially keen to show that their notion of bodily resurrection was believable. They pointed out that all philosophers accepted that something remains identical throughout all material changes – thus, God just had to bring these very same bodily elements together in the same or improved form to raise up a body from death. Christians were also eager to point out that resurrection was not unworthy for the future existence of humans – surely nothing created by God could be truly corrupted? Some of them did accept that some bodily functions, such as those involving sexuality, would probably vanish in the resurrection, but still, material bodies as such would still be required even in the perfect state of humanity.

The defense of the body was an answer to various gnostic sects, which often thought that the bodily world was a creation of a lower, imperfect or even insane divinity. Above this creator god, gnostics suggested a whole hierarchy of pairs of divinities, with such high sounding names like Wisdom, Truth and Unity and forming an intricate numerological scheme. Reminiscent of the later cult of Spaghetti Monster, St. Irenaeus suggested ironically that gnostics might well have named their divinities Gourd, Cucumber and Pumpkin. In a somewhat more serious tone, Irenaeus suggested that gnostics had merely borrowed these supernatural principles from philosophers and especially from Pythagorean mystics.

Irenaeus was also quick to point out all the beauty and regularity in the world as a proof that the creation cannot be completely wicked or work of insanity. In fact, he ridiculed the gnostic idea of a highest divinity, which had nothing to do with the material world – surely such an entity that could have nothing to do with matter would not be the most powerful being.

In addition to metaphysical arguments, Irenaeus also relied on common morality. Some gnostic sects thought that people who had a spark from the immaterial realms could not do anything wrong. Indeed, they apparently even encouraged people to do all sorts of assumed depravities, so that the material world would burn itself quicker – or this was the light in which Irenaeus wanted to paint his gnostic opponents.

Iraenaeus, on the other hand, took seriously the idea that a divine entity had taken a fleshly form and suffered all the same hardships as an ordinary mortal – in this manner the material world had been made holier than it normally was and even mortal humans could then become immortal through God's power. This was part of God's plan to develop humans, which as created beings would always be somewhat imperfect, to a more perfect level of existence – humans were then free either to follow God into this state of perfection or then to turn away from God and thus be destined to a life of misery.

The basic fault that Iranaeus found in gnostic ideas concerning the supernatural world was their attempt to hold their own notions above the tradition derived from the earlier Christians – gnostics think that they know and can read Bible better than ordinary Christians. Iranaeus, on the other hand, emphasised the limitedness of human faculties – no one could really know by one's own devices such mysterious truths as gnostics state.

Christian stance on the philosophical traditions was then ambivalent and could be developed either positively or negatively. Clement of Alexandria emphasised the positive relationship. Although he condemned all forms of materialism and polytheism, he did point out that some philosophers and poets had had an inkling of truths expressed in Christianity. Jewish tradition was still far more older in eyes of Clement, and he believed that Greeks had merely stolen scraps of truth from Oriental traditions.

Still, philosophical teaching at its best was for Clement like a fainter image of the instruction given to human beings by divine Logos. Even this fainter image was in a sense a gift of God. Astronomy shows the greatness of God's creation, while mathematics – or Pythagorean numerology – could be used for seeing deeper truths in the Bible. Logos Clement saw as the only source for knowing the otherwise ineffable God – God is something that human mind can grasp only negatively, by describing what it is not. This divine instruction of divinity or faith gives to human beings, Clement said, an image of things that one will clearly understand in a state beyond death. Faith was thus connected with the hope of an afterlife.

No matter what the source, this instruction and divine wisdom was meant for all humans, no matter what their position in life or gender, and people should listen to it like children ready to be filled with knowledge. Indeed, without a trust of such divinely given wisdom, nothing could be known, Clement assumed, since the principles of all knowledge must be accepted without demonstration. The divine instruction revealed the future of humankind, but it sometimes also used symbolic images to reveal deeper truths, both in Bible and in Greek philosophy, just like the commandment to respect one's parents also implies that one should respect the creator of the universe.

Clement thought that divine instruction consisted not just of learning, but also of a more concrete guidance toward good life, in form of rewards and punishments. Thus, he also gave direct guidance on how a good Christian should live. Clement's basic idea was that anything that hindered connection with Logos was detrimental to humans. He based his instructions on a roughly Platonic idea of human beings, in which bodies were mere outer garments for the soul or the inner core of human beings. The end of all action should be, Clement said, being assimilated to God in the sense of imitating his perfection as much as one could.

Like many ancient philosophers, Clement disparaged pleasure seeking and all sort of luxury as a distraction from the proper way of life, and again like many philosophers, he emphasised that humans should try to live as naturally as possible. For instance, Clement thought that sexuality was by nature just a means for procreation and therefore all sexuality that could not lead to conception, such as sex in time of pregnancy, was to be avoided. Furthermore, such practices like shaving beard and using make-up were also condemned due to unnaturality. Then again, a complete ignorance of body was equally unnatural in Clement's eyes, and for instance, a complete celibacy would break God's command of filling Earth with human beings.

A perfect person, which is just an ideal for mere mortals, Clement suggested, would be completely free of the influence of body, but would still use body as a tool. This perfect person might as well be a woman or a man, free person or slave. Such distinctions would be indifferent for her soul or true essence, although as a woman, she would follow what Clement thinks is the natural order, accepting her husband as a leader. She would be, like a Stoic sage, unaffected by either pleasure or pain, but in a much more perfect sense – while a mere philosopher can merely endure lack, a perfect Christian would be happy because of her contact with God. She wouldn't specifically go on looking for martyrdom, but she wouldn't be scared of that fate either because death would be for her only a release to God's presence. Nor would she do good deeds just because of a hope for a reward. Instead, she would be motivated by a love, which is no carnal desire, but a rational choice to do good to others.

A more negative attitude towards Greek culture we can see in the works of Tertullian. Like many philosophers before him, Tertullian ridiculed the poetic divinities of Rome, because they acted like humans. Furthermore, he was shocked to find that certain cities had just chosen their own divinities and thus made them arbitrarily. Philosophers themselves were not perfect in these questions either, Tertullian continued, because they could not agree on what divinities were and even raised such imperfect and fleeting things as elements in place of God. Indeed, Tertullian saw philosophical tradition as a source of heresies, which tried to usurp the true Christian tradition, handed over by apostles to their disciples. In Tertullian's eyes, philosophy was just a watered-down version of Christianity, and while philosophers had just endeavoured to find rules of proper behaviour, Christians were already acting according to them.

Tertullian thought even that pagans couldn't repent properly, because they often regretted doing good deeds, if no reward followed. Tertullian, on the other hand, was of the opinion that the only proper reason for repentance was doing or willing to do something against God's commands. It was an emotion proper for a person who was becoming a Christian, but a proper Christian shouldn't feel the need to repent, because he should follow God's decrees perfectly. Tertullian did allow for a one chance of further repentance even for Christians, but this was the maximum which the mercy of God couldn't exceed.

Tertullian was also highly critical of Jewish tradition, and like so many Christians of his time, he thought that it had been replaced by Christianity. Tertullian argued that the annunciation of law to Moses was not a momentous occasion Jews thought it was. The core of Jewish law, or Ten Commandments, were already implicit in God's judgement of Adam and Eve. For instance, they had disobeyed their parent or God, coveted his divine position, stolen from him and in a sense killed themselves by doing a deed leading to an abolition of their immortality – and then they had given a false testimony of the proceedings. Such examples showed that Ten Commandments formed a sort of natural law, which did not have to be revealed. Still, Tertullian did not want to go as far as to throw away all the Jewish tradition, because he endorsed the idea that this tradition contained important information about Christianity itself.

Instead of Greek and Jewish culture, Tertullian was dedicated to the cause of a third race of humans, that is, the Christian culture. Like his predecessors, he was keen to purge Christianity from all dogmas he considered forgeries. For instance, he denied that God would have required any independent matter in creation of the world – that would have been against the supposed infinite might of divinity. Instead, all things helping God in creations, especially the Logos, had already been produced by God. This did not mean that God would have been immaterial. Influenced by Stoics, Tertullian was convinced that even God was material, although his matter was not of the ordinary, earthly sort, but something that we humans could never see.

Tertullian was also certain that there could be no god higher than the creator of the world. Firstly, Tertullian insisted, the concept of god already implied that there could be only god. Furthermore, if such a higher god existed, it wouldn't have shown its existence, unlike creator, who had done something worthy of divinity, that is, the world itself. Instead of a passive perfection, Tertullian thought God must be active and do things.

Even more suspect in Tertullian's eyes was the suggestion that creator and world he had made were evil, because he punished human beings, while the supposed higher god would have been completely good and thus purely merciful – true goodness, Tertullian said, could not exist without the capacity to judge and condemn evil persons. Indeed, Tertullian endorsed the notion that God would have emotions, such as anger, although in a much more perfect manner than humans. By having such human sounding emotions God raised the worth of humanity to the level of divine.

Because of this need to raise up humanity, Tertullian thought it was important that Logos who took the form of a human being had truly had a material form and not just an appearance of a body, as some sects were saying – Logos had went through a seemingly shameful birth just to sanctify such bodily processes. It was also important to him that Logos was in a sense something closely attached to creator and not a completely independent entity. Logos was literally the reason of God, with which God had a sort of internal dialogue, just like human beings could be said to speak with themselves when they consulted their reason. Thus, one could say that God himself had become human and so divinised humanity.

Yet, Tertullian was also not willing to completely identify Logos and creator. Creator had, as it were, released its reason and separated it from himself. Because even God was material in Tertullian's eyes, he could easily say that this separated reason still had the same substance as God, just like a beam of light still was made of the substance of the sun, even if Logos now was a distinct personage. Thus, while Logos had brought something of divinity to Earth, creator could still remain outside the world.

Just like Tertullian thought that God had matter, he also didn't want to admit the immateriality of human soul. Instead, soul was for Tertullian a special sort of material object, existing within certain body and taking on its shape. In fact, he insisted, soul had not existed before the generation of human body, but was born at the same time as the human body was produced by combination of a male seed with matter from a female. Death, or separation of soul and its body, was then also unnatural, unlike sleeping, which meant just cessation of some of the activities of soul. After death human souls waited in the recesses of Earth for the eventual return to their bodies. After this resurrection God would make human flesh incorruptible, so that it would never again be separated from the soul.

Just like Tertullian attacked the notion of soul's immateriality, he was also critical of the idea that a human being would have a part distinct from the soul, which would connect it with a realm beyond the world. All the higher faculties of a human being were just more developed faculties of human soul, Tertullian said. Indeed, he was certain that all these higher faculties depended essentially on senses. Because senses are the basis of all human knowledge, Tertullian was convinced that senses must be on the whole reliable and give us a direct contact with the world around us. In cases where they seem to deceive us, it is according to Tertullian always a question of some external influence interrupting this direct contact.

Tertullian insisted that certain central tenets of Christianity were ingrained in the soul of every human being. Thus, everyone could feel the existence of a beneficent creator and also the existence of an evil entity rebelling against the creator. Similarly, Tertullian continued, all humans were afraid of death, because they instinctively knew that they would be judged according to their deeds in the afterlife. Still, Tertullian continued, this natural connection to God was shadowed in birth by the original sin inherited from the first human being. Further disruption was caused by evil spirits, which gave human souls all sort of unnatural desires concerning their bodies. In fact, Tertullian said, the only natural bodily desire was that of sustaining it with food and drink. Even that desire could control person too much and regular fasting was to be commended, because one should make spirit and not flesh strong. Finally, Tertullian acknowledged also the existence of cultural disturbances, since pagan rituals practically invited demons to torment the soul.

The aim of human life was then to cleanse the soul from these disturbances and find anew the original connection with divinity. The task of Logos was to help in renewing this connection. Furthermore, Tertullian became enamoured of the idea that just like creator had separated Logos from itself, a third entity, Paraclete, had been distinguished in a similar manner from Logos and was even now spreading new visions about divinity to us. This idea – main tenet of the Montanist sect – was not liked by the official church, because it appeared to suggest that established truths of Christian faith might still be changed.

One of Tertullian's tasks was to argue for the rationality of Christian ceremonies. He went through Lord's prayer line by line, suggesting that it is actually a concise rendering of certain key tenets in Christianity. Furthermore, he insisted that baptism is more than just a ceremony. Water, said Tertullian, may assume the powers of divine spirit, just like human flesh is following the desires of soul. Thus, a sprinkle of water has the power to cleanse a human soul, if the person washed with the water truly wanted to establish a connection with God.

In Tertullian's eyes, the life of a Christian should always be oriented towards her true source of happiness, that is, divinity. In comparison with the promised afterlife in connection with God, Tertullian thought the earthly life is a jail, in which we just wait for the final judgement. Tertullian encouraged every Christian to patiently endure all the sufferings inflicted on them and not to avoid even death of a martyr. Thus, they would follow the example of God, who waited for millenia before punishing the wicked, and of Christ, who gladly went through all kinds of torments, although he could have just willed to avoid them. Indeed, Tertullian said, such hardships were just God's way of testing our resilience and faith.

The prime source of information on good behaviour was for Tertullian, of course, the Bible. For instance, because worshiping other gods was forbidden in the Bible, a true Christian should avoid taking any part in such customs and even shun festivities held for the sake of some divinity, Tertullian said. This didn't mean that he wouldn't endorse any rules of good behaviour, which couldn't be literally found in the scriptures. Instead, he admitted that rules of conduct should be accepted, if they were clear consequences of rules in the Bible. For instance, Tertullian was of the opinion that gladiator fights and theatrical performances should be avoided, because they had their origin in the worship of the supposed pagan gods and because they encouraged brutal and frivolous way of life. Even such a seemingly innocent thing as wearing a garland as a decoration was frowned upon by Tertullian, because it was a pagan ritual, which used plants and flowers for unnecessary frivolities.

All earthly desires leading one away from the heavenly goal were in Tertullian's eyes at least partially mere obstacles. One should avoid luxury and clothe oneself modestly, like a true philosopher was supposed to do. Gold, silver and jewelry were in Tertullian's eyes in no way special compared with other stones and valued only for their rarity. In general, all attempts to make something more beautiful than they were by nature was, according to Tertullian, an attempt to improve God's own work and thus mere folly. And although Tertullian thought it was folly for anyone, in quite a gendered fashion he said it was even more of a folly for a male, who was supposed to have more dignity according to Tertullian's worldview. In an equally gendered fashion, Tertullian was of the opinion that all females who had reached puberty were by their very nature defined by their relationship to their potential husband and should thus follow the dress code that Bible had declared for married women. It is better if females see, but are not seen, Tertullian stated – a statement quite extraordinary even among ancient Christians.

Even marriage, although partially sanctioned by the divine commandment to fill the world with humans, was in Tertullian's eyes not as perfect mode of life as an unmarried life dedicated to the worship of God. Becoming a widow can then be regarded, Tertullian said, a great boon allowing a person to concentrate on the one truly important relation, that is, relation to God. Especially to be avoided in Tertullian's opinion was a marriage with a non-Christian person, who would constantly tempt the spouse from a proper way of life. With advancing age, Tertullian's views on marriage became more and more extreme. He became convinced that world had already been filled with human beings and that further population would just increase the misery of everyone. Thus, even the last reason for accepting marriages was rooted out and especially marriage after the death of one's original spouse was to be completely eradicated, according to Tertullian. If a supposed Christian could not follow the rule of not marrying twice – or heaven forbid, committed even worse fornication – such a person should be excommunicated from the Church, Tertullian said, because forgiveness of such great sins was given only to pagans converting to Christianity, and a second digression could be forgiven only by God after the death of the person.

Although Tertullian wanted Christians to turn their gaze toward heaven, he did not suggest that they should completely remove themselves from mundane concerns. In fact, he even congratulated Christians as being of major assistance to the Roman Empire, because of their honesty and diligence. Christians even cared for the welfare of the Empire, which Tertullian thought as the last line of defense against the end of the world. The Roman emperor had been chosen by God, and Christians were thus bound by duty to pray for his good health. Much more critical, especially in his later life, Tertullian was of the official church. No wonder then that many of Tertullian's ideas were not sanctioned and that the future development of church dogma followed a completely different route.