De vitae termino

Theophylactus Simocatta, former prefect, a prosopopoeial inquiry, that limits of life are allotted to men, by Theognostus against Theophrastus. Theophrastus ought, having put on a reverent piety and wearing the robe of justice and clothed in the modesty of seemly gravity, to guard his tongue within the boundaries and to anchor himself in the harbors of doctrines, and to run somewhere within the turning-post and not to shoot far off the mark, nor to sound discordant notes, nor to bark most unmusically, nor to draw the circle apart from the center, or to construct absurdities outside the line and rule, lest, legislating the unaccustomed for the church and committing some great and enormous offense by the diffuseness of his undertaking, he become "excommunicated" from the greatest of the sacred ordinances. But since he chooses to reject the highways and royal roads and is dragged down to the more disreputable of the paths, where the thorn flourishes and the bramble is bold, and a thicket grows and a dry-stone wall is spread beneath, and nothing smooth or straight prevails, I will lay hold of him with the staff of my argument and, as a bad money-changer, I will send him away from the sacred precincts, having procured an evangelical whip, so that he may not, by trading wickedly in the word, profane the holy sanctuary of the church. But do not, on this account, O judges and guardians of the laws, pass a verdict of blame against me, who have measured the magnitudes of his audacity by the goad of my words; for our struggle is not about a small matter.

We have chosen today to approach the precinct of the arbiter directly, since our character is neither fond of litigation nor of Athens, but rather gospel-loving, unvariegated, and intolerant of courts—indeed, it even enjoins those wronged by insolence not to resist, but to be compliant even to those who strike. For unless we had truly taken up the Pharaonic disobedience of resistance against what is beneficial, having an unpleasant exhortation, we would not have descended into this contest and engaged with the dust of the wrestling ground. For the fear is no ordinary one, lest somewhere the proper things be obelized, and visions of newer proclamations appear to us, bringing with them a spectacle like some bogeyman enterprises. Who taught you that limits of life are not established? Where in the sacred writings has he ever heard that the wandering indeterminacy of life has been allotted to men? For if the vault of heaven has been prophetically measured by the divine hand, and the number of "angels of God" has been discerned by creative wisdom—to weave in for you also the saying of Moses, that "boundaries" of nations and portions of peoples have been allotted to angels, and "hairs of the head" have been counted by God—how have not also limits of life been fixed for men, having come into existence by some creative care? Or did not the one who created us, according to scripture, "weigh everything by measure and weight"? Away with this absurdity, my friend.

The sun, he says, "stood in its order" and the moon recognized its own setting, and "from one end of the heaven the going out" of them "and the descent as far as" the ends of heaven, and "they were fixed for signs and for seasons and for years" by the one who brought them forth. Thus the great-working majesty of the all-producing God adorned the whole with a certain order of supreme craftsmanship. He who "calls the stars by name" and discerns "all things before generation" and places seasons and times "in his own authority"—did he bring forth our life bereft of limits? Far from it. For where will you place the saying, "The time of every man comes before me," or "The days of your death have drawn near," or "My spirit will not remain among the sons of men, but their days shall be a hundred and twenty years"? You who champion the unnatural indeterminacy and introduce monstrous novelties of doctrine, like some Platonic ideas, phantoms of the mind and playthings of a frivolous intellect, having improvised a wicked Academy for the churches in a more pagan manner? Or was not the descent of Israel into Egypt fixed at four hundred years, O lover of indefiniteness and falsifier of the unwritten doctrines of the faith? And where will the saying championed by the Psalmist go: "The days of our years are seventy years or eighty years" [of distinction and power]? And if a spiritual law did not restrain us from embracing hasty laughter, I would have burst out in violent guffaws, compelled to laugh at your endeavors as at something ridiculous.

Have you never heard David leading the chorus and singing, "Reveal to me my end, Lord, and what is the number of my days, that I may know what I lack"? Do not, by the Church, O man, "but come now, change," as the poet says, and depart to our side, having cast off a certain orphaned and unguided error. Having contended in vain, you have been deprived of truth; but by contending in knowledge, you will surely possess what you have been lacking. Have not the patriarchs, old and full of days, fallen asleep? And what do you think this signifies in the Scripture? For my part, I think "the limits of life having been fulfilled," according to that divine and great Basil. For truly, not even a sparrow "will fall without our Father" in the heavens, O noble one in inquiry and most ready in verbal turns. How will "What is it to me and to you, woman? My hour has not yet come" and the flight of Christ from the Jews because the hour of the cross had not yet come not contradict your doctrines, and like some catapults stone your words, and like chaff "which the wind scatters from the face of the earth" winnow them away? Who handed over to you these mythical nonsense, being intoxicated? What burden of empty trifles have you taken up in trade, that you raise your eyebrows so high? What benefit has come to you, weaving "a spider's web" according to the prophet, and fabricating small and insubstantial notions against great doctrines?

Why have you thrust aside the tunic of contemplation, woven from above, and clothed yourself in the "leathern" and coarser "tunics" of the mind, which it befits those who have gone astray and are banished from the divine delight of the intellect to put on, because of the emptiness of the enterprise forbidden to them? "Be ashamed of the grey hair" of right words; it is of the same age as the Church. Revere its ancient lineage. The newer is always the more dishonored; evil is the new, as even the tragedians on the stage legislate and ordain. Therefore do not say, "I am younger"; you know that poetry also dishonors the newer. For this reason, the sages of external wisdom and education also revile time, as always yearning for novelties and sickening for the latest things. "Ask" your fathers, and they will tell you, and "your elders, and they will tell you" that deaths are brought on when the limits of life are fulfilled. Sufficiently, O men, judges and arbiters of peoples and guardians of the laws, have I pleaded on behalf of the words just spoken; now it is time for me to carry off the victory and to obtain the better portion, and, having bound on the crown of words, to dance in the inner sanctuaries of the Church and to sing with you a victory hymn to the Lord, because a mouth speaking unjustly has been stopped, a sea of error has parted, and we have somehow escaped from it.

the surge and the battling billow are drowned, and both rider and bold horse have vanished, and every opposing argument has perished. But we, singing the victory hymn spiritually, do not conceal the triumph nor hide the trophy, but cry out with the angels, "Let us sing to the Lord, for he has been gloriously glorified." 2 Of the same author, through personification, that boundaries of life are not fixed for men, Theophrastus against Theognostus. Since "the throat has become an open grave" for Theognostus, and he has armed his tongue "like a whetted razor," and "anger in the likeness of a serpent" has inflamed his words, and he swells with insults, boasts in wickedness, and exalts himself in reproach, and says, "Our lips are our own; who is our master?" and with the prophet he has not disdained "a boastful tongue," but is arrogant "beyond what one ought to think," not becoming obedient to the divine Paul, "I will examine his words with a rod and his utterances with whips." For truly his heart has been raised higher than "the cedars of Lebanon," and he has forgotten "David and all his meekness," and has lifted the eyes of his mind, proceeding "in great matters" and not being humble-minded according to what is written, but exalting his soul, having stripped off the dignity of evangelical gentleness; for we know that the divine law commands to treat the foolish man according to the arrogance of his folly, so that, taking pride in the breadth of indulgence, they might not depart into a greater abyss of sins through the lack of reproof in admonitions.

Therefore, "Behold, I am against you, the insolent one" [and discipline and understanding], that we may begin from scripture and adorn the forecourts of our discourse with some theological tablet. If there are limits of life for men, O mouth fond of elegance and honor, —"I will ask you, and you answer me," as the one who communicates the mysteries to the passionate says— how does it happen that in populous cities calamities occur when the air above is corrupted and some pestilential decay is transmitted to those who associate? Is there, then, for them an annual limit of life, according to which countless races of men are immediately swept into death? And how do merchant ships carrying thousands, often spreading their sails, so to speak, and venturing into the greatest seas, perish with all hands, sunk by a violent onset of winds, so that youths with maidens and elders with younger ones are drowned in the water by some single concord? Is there, then, some one immovable limit for those who sail? But also when the foundations of the earth leap, it is possible to see, as "in the twinkling of an eye" according to the divine apostle, countless multitudes destroyed and every age, in some single misfortune, allotting one common tomb of destruction to the epidemic. And why should I philosophize to you about similar things concerning chasms of the earth? And where will you place in your mind, noble and most penetrating one, the failures in the arrangements of battles, where we see that not even "one urinating against a wall" is often preserved, so that I may also bring forward for you a small saying from sacred history?

How must you understand the saying, "Men of blood and deceit shall not halve their days"? Answer: "Because the limits are curtailed through desire for evils and inattention to the better." Therefore, deaths are not brought on when the limits of life are fulfilled, O excellent and most philosophical of monks; for an intrusion of a cut-off of a limit somewhere has utterly destroyed it. Or does not Paul also proclaim something of this sort loudly to the Corinthians, declaring, "For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a good number are asleep," as if sin cuts off its lovers prematurely and sends them off to obscurity? For indeed, according to that sacred saying, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down, thrown into the fire, and burned." I also know of a people destroyed by a census. For when David handed over the Jewish people by number and entrusted the governed to a census and the "chosen people" was measured, he vexed the God over all, and this became a transgression for David; and for this reason a threefold calamity was imposed on the king, and he was compelled to proceed to a choice of disaster. But since the misfortune was inexorable and the evil was taken as a matter of choice, death was appointed to rule the people, and the affairs of the populace were entrusted to the oversight of the calamity. For it says, "David chose death for himself," rejecting famine and war, declaring, "I will fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercies are very many; I will not be ensnared into the hands of enemies." Did the incense of Aaron and the raised serpent not break the power of death?

Did not the hands of Moses, when upraised, preserve Israel when it was entangled? And was it not that, when Job was tested, his sons and daughters, by some sudden assault, brought his human life to an end? Therefore, it was not because the limits of life were fulfilled, but because of the athlete's firmness of soul, that the trial of childlessness came upon him. Was not the daughter of Jephthah slaughtered because of the harshness of his vow? And how, O inspired one, was Abel killed by his brother, if the murdered man had been allotted the limits of life? And if, when the limits of life were fulfilled, he had been handed over to death somewhere, why then is Cain condemned to groan and tremble, and was preserved for the same suffering? And how will the one who draws a sword be destroyed by a sword, if indeed limits of life are fixed for men? And how has fasting and prayer been able to rescue the suppliant from the hand of death, when the limits of life have arrived and do not admit of a sophism? And how will encounters with wild beasts and the things that happen to men from the unforeseen be able to preserve limits? Have you not heard David, when he was singing hymns, crying out to the God over all and saying, "You have rescued my soul from death"? Was there, then, was there one limit of life for the men who were the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, or for the Pharaonic people who perished at the Red Sea as if by a signal? And if one can find in scripture both one who "asks for" and "receives" "life" and "length of days," and the "seed of the impious" being utterly destroyed, and the lawbreaker being sent off like grass and "the greens of the blade" to withering, where, for you, do the limits of life have any standing?

Have you not heard, "The righteous man will flourish like a palm tree" and "He will multiply like a cedar in Lebanon," and "Yet a little while and the sinner will no longer exist, and you will seek his place and not find it," and "They passed by, and behold, he was not"? Or how shall we pass over the saying, "If not through the wrath of enemies, that they may not live long," which prattles about the limits of life and rejects the teachings of Moses? Is it not, "The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to destroy their memory from the earth"? Does not the Lord, while disciplining the righteous man, discipline him without delivering him to death? Of whom is it said, "Their days ended in vanity and their years in haste"? Is it not of those who cast aside piety? And of whom does scripture say, "Let his days be few," if not of those who do not fear the Lord, through whom the prophet, with bare head, cried out for the wickedness of sinners to be accomplished? For whom did he appoint "the days as handbreadths"? And how is it possible to interpret the scripture as legislating the sayings, "Bring my soul out of prison" and "Do not lead me up in the middle of my days," if the limits of life, possessing stability, have the approval?

It is inherent to human nature that they have been cast down together? And how has a supplement been honorably contrived for Hezekiah because of his tear? Or who will endure to accept a limit that can be diminished or increased, O noble lawgiver, whose power extends even to insolence? Truly these empty marvels of your unearnest earnestness are imitations of Greek mythology and phantoms of insubstantial and meteorological fate. But you, for your part, leap and dance and, singing the paean, display the rites of Pan. For you have gathered winds into your bosom with your sophistries. You take pride in images of empty dreams, and the sea has parted for you in your visions, and you work wonders more Mosaic, and your chariots and triarii have perished, and you beat the drum, puffing yourself up in your ways, and you imitate David in your ecstatic dances, uttering solemn words, not parading a holy stage, and you are all but like those who rave in Corybantic frenzy and have become akin to the melancholic, having learned no mastery of letters nor read the principles of theory. But if, O judges, we have won the prize of the contest, we do not ask to be crowned by you with celery or wild olive, but to be honored with the "weapon of good repute," to be illuminated by the vote of confirmation, and to be glorified by the applause of ratification, so that we too may cry out today with the prophet: "Truth has arisen from the earth, and justice has peeped forth from the heavens into our court.

Of the same author, a pronouncement on the same question through personification: the arbiters Euangelus and Theopemptus. Of the God who loves judgment and justice and who gives utterance "in the opening of the mouth," pouring grace upon lips and fashioning the tongue like a scribe's reed and adorning it, guiding the movements of the heart and steering the mind toward straight purposes, giving "a form of knowledge" to everyone who asks and knocks at the door of higher contemplation and leading them into the innermost thoughts, filling a cup of wisdom and inebriating as with the mightiest stream of education those who thirst—now each of us will be required to bring forth an enigma and "a dark saying" "as light" and to shape it with utmost clarity, and to belch forth "a good saying" traveling a royal road, evangelical and smooth, bearing nothing crooked toward uneven error. We, then, philosophizing about the doctrine before you for examination, say neither that the limits of life are for everyone and all and necessarily possess immobility—for this is Greek and proper to tyrannical fate and alien to ecclesiastical law—nor do we advocate for the poured-out indeterminacy, seeing it as utterly discordant with nature, looking toward an abyss of infinity (for the infinite is to be attributed to God alone on account of the transcendence of incomprehensibility). Therefore, both the length of life and its curtailment by death follow for us by choice.

For just as virtue and vice have been established as within our power, and the kingdom of heaven and eternal darkness and the sleepless "worm" and the unquenchable "fire" and all that the unbribable and evil-hating judgment of God has prepared for punishment or delight, so also the extension of life and the onset of death have been attached to virtue or vice for the human race. Or was not the divinely molded living being, "the first man from earth," made "of clay," a midpoint between death and immortality? For it was possible for him, if he had not at all transgressed the command, not to taste death, or conversely, if he had erred through neglect of virtue and inattention to the better, to turn back to dissolution of corruption and, having sinned, to make the return journey to the bosom of the earth. There are, then, limits of life in that, being born from earth, we shall all depart to earth, but extension and curtailment accrue to the life of humans either through virtue or through vice of the soul. Whose "limbs" fell "in the desert"? Was it not those who sought flesh-eating? Was it not through prayer

Was not the poison of the faster blunted when, with the ball of thread taken up as well, the banqueters were about to be in danger? Did not "Phinehas stand and appease, and the plague cease"? Were not Abraham and Moses and David added "in a good old age with their fathers"? Is it not that "each will die by his own sin" and "the death of sinners is evil"? Does not the scripture say, "The impious will be destroyed 'quickly,'" and again, "He will add 'day by day to the king's years'"? Did not the divine oracle teach, "If you 'turn and listen to the Lord your God and perform all the commandments, the Lord your God will honor you among the offspring of your womb and among the produce of your land and among the offspring of your cattle'"? Does not the scripture say, "Behold, I have placed before you today 'life and death'"? Did not the commandment of Moses legislate, "If you 'listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, you will live and be many, and the Lord your God will bless you'"? Did not the sacred writing somewhere declare, "If 'your heart turns away and you do not listen, you will be utterly destroyed and you will not be long-lived upon the earth'"? Does not the Lord say to Moses, "You will 'see the land opposite and not enter,' because 'you did not bless me on the water of contradiction'"? And why should we go through similar matters at greater length and thicken the discourse with a burden of many words? We know that through the prayer of righteous men both life and death are often brought about. Did not the one who commanded the heavens and reined in the rain with his tongue and rode a "chariot of fire" restore the dead child alive?

Did not the Shunammite woman receive her dead son alive, the corruption of death being somehow undone through the rekindling of life in him? For indeed "women received their dead back from resurrection." Did not Elisha condemn children to death for their mocking address? And did not Ananias with his wife expire "at the feet of the apostles," Peter having condemned them for the baseness of their words? We also know of children being destroyed because of the impiety of their parents; for the destroying angel would not have slain the firstborn in Egypt. There is also a case where a father's piety protects erring children; for because of David, in the days of Solomon the kingdom is not torn asunder, nor are the scepters split, nor is it enveloped in the punishments of idolatry. We know that through the conversion of a king, both city and people are spared destruction. Let Nineveh tell how much repentance can accomplish, even though God proclaimed through the prophet: "Yet three days and Nineveh will be destroyed." "So they believed in God and proclaimed a fast," as Scripture says, "and they put on sackcloth, and the king of Nineveh rose from his throne and removed his robe and put on sackcloth and sat in ashes." "And God repented," it says, "of the evils he had spoken of doing to them, and he did not do them." And to the wisest of kings, did not the divine voice declare: "If you walk in my way and keep my commandments and my ordinances, as David your father walked, I will multiply your days"?

The saying, "I will kill and make alive," does it not present to us the recompense of our past lives? Did not he who does not desire the death of sinners but their life and repentance for their sins threaten to "bend the bow" and "flash the sword" "if we do not" turn back? Yet it has become customary for the human race to despise "the wealth of his goodness, his forbearance, and his long-suffering." Nor should we overlook the saying, "The fear of the Lord adds days, but the years of the impious will be shortened." The matter concerning the children slain in Bethlehem and the chorus of martyrs stands as a different cause, about which it is not the present time for the discourse to expound. It is not, however, beyond the most knowledgeable wisdom of the Creator when, how, or where the end of each of our lives is terminated; nor has the foreknowledge of the God over all, which pervades all things, become a cause for us to sin or not to sin, concerning which many before us have labored excellently in many places on not a few points. And these things we both philosophize and will again philosophize; but do you henceforth not become "children of wrath," but take on a spirit of gentleness, enter into your consciences, cease "from wrath," and leave behind your anger as an orphan with David, mortify the pride of arrogance, cut off the limbs of haughtiness, calm the inflammation of nature, humble the thought and elevation of pride, appropriate humility, appropriate nothing vaunting or centaur-like, and anticipate one another "in honor" according to the divine apostle.

The one who seeks to take the first place is placed last according to the Gospel. Let no one be puffed up by the wealth of knowledge; "we know in part" and "we see through a mirror" and through a riddle, according to the divine Apostle, and we shall bear with the saying from outside, "We know nothing clearly, but we wander," which has been ordained for men as is fitting. Let us rather more simply and more piously flee from the splinters of doctrines and the contrivances of questions and inquiries, having grown dizzy at the abysses not entrusted to us, so that "the one who catches the wise in their own cunning" may not spread a "stumbling stone" under the rashness of the tongue, and that, having stumbled upon it, we may be winnowed, and then hear from Paul, "Where is the wise man, where is the scribe, where is the disputant of this age?" and what follows. Having therefore exchanged the doctrines along with the manners and the words, let each of you go away having succeeded in the purpose.