Epistola Ad Epiphanium Diaconum

Licinianus’s Second Letter, to Epiphanius the Deacon, in Which It Is Shown That Angels and Rational Souls Are Spirits, or Wholly Without a Body. (From a manuscript of the Church of Toledo.) To the holy lord brother Epiphanius the deacon, Licinianus and Severus, the lowly. Having read your letter, most dear brother, we have been moved by great astonishment, because a certain man placed in so high a priestly rank, whose name out of reverence for him we are unwilling to mention, is said to hold that there is nothing among creatures which is considered by the name of spirit, and that every nature which is not what God is is limited only in a corporeal manner; and that, except for the Trinity God, not only the spirits of irrational beasts, wild animals, or birds, or the rest, in which according to the Scriptures there is a spirit of life, but also the spirits of rational beings, angels or men, ought not to be called spirits, but bodies, as if men subsist not from spirit and body, but from two bodies, and angels are believed to be only corporeal. He also adduces this to the prejudice of souls, that if they were local, they would certainly also be corporeal.

Caught unawares, we have learned that you inserted into your writings some testimonies from the Scriptures against this, to which, however fittingly you responded, anyone who studies and believes the holy Scriptures understands. You also add that we should send you the books of the blessed Augustine, and of the others who have determined on this matter, as many as we seem to have, in order to convince the man who deigns to agree with your responses in no way; or certainly you urge us to write if anything has been divinely inspired to us. Therefore, let your holiness know that if the quality of the time did not disturb our leisure, and if it were permitted that we had those same books, which you mention, at hand, we would have wished to comply with your will. But because we cannot do what we wish, we at least wish what we can: and we will certainly take care to write to you not what we ourselves could define by following our own will, but what we have gathered and heaped up in our memory from the definitions of our elders.

But now let us see what the Psalmist says about angels: "He made his angels spirits," he says, "and his ministers a flame of fire." Therefore, let him who says that angels are corporeal take note, because he said: "He makes his angels spirits," not bodies. For "angel" in Greek is "messenger" in Latin, that is, he who makes his spirits his messengers. For this reason the apostle Paul also says to the Hebrews: "Are not all administrators of spirit sent in ministry for those who receive the inheritance of salvation?" For in "angel" he understands the name of an office, and in "spirit" the name of a nature. Similarly, in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke relates of Philip that an angel spoke to him, so that he might go to meet the Ethiopian eunuch; and a little later, omitting the name "angel," he says: "But the spirit said to Philip: 'Approach, and join yourself to that chariot.'" Let him indeed see that he whom he had earlier called an angel is later named a spirit.

But also concerning evil angels, although they have fallen away from the fellowship of the good angels, yet because they are of the same nature, Holy Scripture in many places reports that they are not bodies, but spirits. The Apostle Paul says: "That our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against princes and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world: against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places." If, therefore, they were bodies, not spirits, he would not have said: "against spiritual wickedness," but "against corporeal wickedness." And the Lord in the Gospel: "When the unclean spirit," he says, "has gone out of a man, it walks through waterless places, seeking rest, and will not find it, and then it will go and take seven spirits more wicked than itself." And in the books of Kings it is written: "Go out," he says, "and I will be a spirit, a liar in the mouth of all his prophets." And elsewhere: "The spirit of fornication deceived them." And it is the case that not only good angels, but also evil angels are called spirits.

And because we pass over many things, plucking only a few from the treasure of the Scriptures for the sake of brevity of speech, lest we generate disgust in readers, let him who does not believe that angels are spirits at least rejoice in the poverty of a single testimony. Let him produce, if it can be found anywhere in the Scriptures, that angels ought not to be called spirits. Yet because he will by no means be able to find this, let him believe that "spirit" is said in many ways and in many senses. "Spirit" is said of God, which is the whole Trinity, according to what is read in the Gospel of John: "For God is spirit." "Spirit" is also said of God, who is the third person in the Trinity, who is properly called the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle says: "But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." And again: "But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his." "Spirit" is also said of an angel: "Who makes," it says, "his angels spirits." Concerning this we have already given testimonies above.

It is also called spirit the soul of man, according to that passage of Genesis: "Therefore the Lord God formed man from the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man was made a living soul." And Solomon says: "Who knows if the spirit of the Lord ascends upward?" It is also called spirit the mind, which is like the eye of the soul; that is, the intellect, whereby it understands all intelligible things, or reasons, according to what the Apostle says: "For God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit." What he here calls spirit, elsewhere he calls mind, saying: "But I serve the law of God with my mind." And again: "But we," he says, "are the circumcision, who serve God in spirit." It is also called spirit a certain power of the soul inferior to the mind, where it imagines all likenesses of bodies, according to that saying of the Apostle: "I will pray in spirit, I will pray also with my mind." It is also called spirit of all irrational animals, according to that passage of Genesis: "And all," it says, "the beasts in their kind, and every thing that moves on the earth in its kind, and every flying thing according to its kind, all birds, and all fowls entered into Noah, into the ark, two by two, from every flesh in which was the spirit of life." And a little later: "All flesh that moved upon the earth, of fowls, of animals, of beasts, and of all reptiles that creep upon the earth, all men, and all in which there is the breath of life, died upon the earth.

Let him see, therefore, whoever says that no creature is spirit, by how many testimonies of the sacred Scriptures he is refuted; and let him cease to say that, apart from the Trinity of the Lord, everything that can exist is body. For every body is both other and broad and long; let him find and say whether the soul of man or the spirit of an angel is three feet or four feet long; let him also say from which element it has its substance: apart from the four elements, namely earth, water, air, or fire, from which other bodies are composed, let him name some fifth element from which he gives substance to an angel or to a soul. But because he cannot find one, perhaps because among the elements air or fire is more excellent, he alleges that air or fire is the nature of the human soul or the spirit of an angel, and he is not ashamed that the soul of a man or the spirit of an angel is believed to be that from which the body of a beast or of a man exists. Therefore every body that lives subsists from the four elements: for body properly pertains to earth, moisture to water, air to the lungs, which they take in and give out like bellows, fire to the eyes.

Let him not be disturbed by what we said, that every body that lives, since even trees live and do not have eyes, nor any means by which they take in and give back air. It is certain, of course, that they do not have these things; nevertheless, they themselves also appear to consist of the four elements. However great the height of a tree may be, unless it is held fast by roots fixed in the earth, it cannot be a tree; and unless water, drawn by air, is conducted through the pith of the tree all the way to the top, it cannot live at all; and unless the air is heated by fire, it cannot lift the water. Finally, for this reason leaves fall in the cold of autumn, because the air, not being heated as in spring or summer, does not have enough force to raise water to the upper parts of the tree and preserve the greenness of the leaves; but gradually, as winter weather sets in, the air grows cold, the water descends to the lower parts, and the tree dries up. Therefore we have not improbably said that every living body subsists from the four elements. Consequently, it is absurd and foreign to the rule of truth to believe that the soul subsists from any of these elements. If every sin (as the Apostle says) that a man commits is outside the body, the soul, which is capable of sinning, is certainly not a body, just as the Apostle himself says: absent in body, but present in spirit, he judges a man separated by so great a distance of lands; without doubt, the soul is not local.

If the body can be killed, the soul, according to what the Lord says in the Gospel, cannot be killed; certainly the soul, which cannot be killed, is not a body. If the soul is the image of God (for He Himself says: Let us make man in our image and likeness), and God made man in His image, and God is incorporeal; certainly the soul, which is the image of God, is not a body. Moreover, if the soul is a body, it is not the image of God. But because it is true that the soul is the image of God, and the contrary cannot be said of Holy Scripture, the soul is not a body. But in the defense of corporeal souls, that argument especially seems to be built up, that the soul is contained in a place. We ask, therefore, that he answer in what place the soul can be contained. If by its own body, then the body which contains is better than the soul which contains the body. However, because it is absurd to say that the body is better than the soul; therefore the soul is not contained by the body, but the soul contains the body. If it is ruled by the soul, if it is given life, how much more is it also contained? For it does not fill the body which it contains as a wineskin is seen to be filled with water, so that it is only inside, not outside. Therefore the whole soul is inside, the whole outside, it is as great in a smaller part of the body as in a larger. For if an extreme part of the body is touched, even by a finger, it feels entirely.

And since the senses of the body are distributed in a fivefold number, the soul is not distributed among the senses: thus it sees as a whole, hears as a whole, smells as a whole, touches as a whole, tastes as a whole; and when it moves the body through place, it itself is not moved in place. Therefore, very truly, three motions of natures are understood: one of God, which is neither in time nor in place; another of the rational spirit, which is only in time. But perhaps someone will reply: Why is it required of me to what extent the soul is extended in magnitude, when it is truly evident that it cannot be outside its own body, and that the soul is limited in quantity according to the magnitude of the body? Therefore, if the quantity of the soul is according to the quantity of the body, each person ought to be as much wiser as he is larger in body. But since we often see that smaller persons are wiser than larger ones, the quantity of the soul is not according to the quantity of the body. Moreover, if the soul had as great a magnitude as the body, how does it contain in a small body such great magnitudes of images of bodies? Do we not contain in the mind all the magnitudes of cities we know, of mountains, rivers, the sky and the earth, or of the remaining species? And what place is so great for the soul when it contains such great spaces of places? But because it itself is not a body, it contains all places in a placeless manner. If, therefore, one vessel is contained by another, that which is inside is certainly smaller, that which is outside is larger.

How, then, does the soul, which is said to be a small body, contain such great magnitudes of bodies? And therefore it is rightly believed that the soul has no quantity, but has quality; that God has neither quantity nor quality: because, therefore, it is not equal to God, it has quality; because it is not a body, it does not have quantity. Let him also consider, if he can, what a point is in the discipline of geometry, what a line is, which has no breadth, no height, but only has length; let him also remove his thought from all corporeal things, however minute, even to a spider's thread, which, relative to its own measure, is perceived to have both breadth and height. And when he has understood this line, which we have said is not corporeal, and understands an incorporeal thing, let him understand that it is not a body; let him understand that a thing which is confirmed to rule in a body cannot be a body. For the Apostle says: "Whom he foreknew, he predestined to be made conformable to the image of his Son." Let him therefore understand what the Apostle says: "He who clings to a harlot becomes one body; but he who clings to the Lord is one spirit.

Therefore, according to the truth of the right Catholic faith, we believe that the Lord made some things incorporeal and some things corporeal, and that in the class of corporeal things he set rational beings above irrational ones, intelligible beings above those that do not understand, just beings above unjust ones, right above crooked, immortal above mortal. In the class of corporeal things, therefore, sensible beings above insensible ones, living beings above non-living ones, celestial beings above terrestrial ones, the masculine above the feminine, the most powerful above the less powerful. But we say these things to show what the order of nature holds, not what our own advantage asserts. Who would not prefer to have bread rather than mice, a gem rather than a maidservant? And often a horse is valued more highly than a slave, that is, when it is valued for its usefulness, not according to the order of the creator. But now at last, dearest brother, let him who refuses to hear you at all accept the holy and distinguished preacher, Bishop Augustine; and although in nearly all his works, where the occasion demanded it, he teaches that the soul or an angel is incorporeal, nevertheless, because the constraint of time (as we have already said) presses us, and we have no leisure either to send his books to you or to read them ourselves, we have taken care to write a few things that come to mind from his books for establishing the incorporeality of the soul or of an angel.

In the book therefore which has the title *On the Highest Good*, the aforementioned bishop says: "Every nature is either spirit or body; spirit is the unchangeable God, a changeable spirit is created nature, but better than body." Also in the book *On the Virginity of Saint Mary*, which he wrote to Volusianus: "But if some demand that a reason be given how God was mixed with man, so that one person of Christ might come to be, since this had to happen at the same time, as if they themselves should give a reason for a thing which happens daily, how the soul is mixed with the body, so that one person of man comes to be. For just as in the unity of person the soul uses the body, so that man exists, so in the unity of person God uses man, so that Christ exists." And a little later he says: "The person of man is a mixture of soul and body; the person of Christ, however, is a mixture of God and man." And a little later: "Nevertheless, a mixture of two incorporeal things ought to have been believed more easily than that of one incorporeal and the other corporeal. For if the soul is not deceived in its own nature, it understands itself to be incorporeal. Much more incorporeal is the Word of God, and on this account a mixture of the Word of God and the soul ought to be more credible than that of soul and body. But we experience that in ourselves; we are ordered to believe that in Christ. But if both were commanded to be believed as things we have not experienced, which of them would we more readily believe?

How would we not admit that two incorporeal things could be mixed more easily than one incorporeal and the other corporeal? This disputation, full of true reasoning, from the great bishop, challenging the incredulous, will lead them to faith: so that, just as they believe that the incorporeal soul could be mixed with the body to form the one person of a man, they ought much more easily to believe that the incorporeal Word of God could be mixed with the incorporeal soul. Also in the book *On the Origin of the Soul*, which he wrote to the holy priest Jerome, he says that the soul is incorporeal: and although it can be difficult to persuade the slower-witted, I confess that I myself am persuaded. These words of blessed Augustine show that those who are of too small an intellect to separate corporeal from incorporeal things cannot understand the incorporeality of the soul: because, being so devoted to the senses of the body, they think that nothing exists which they do not remember having perceived through the senses of the body. Moreover, that same distinguished Doctor wrote a book *On the Quantity of the Soul*, filled with many and various disputations, in which, among other things, he argues about the incorporeality of the soul. For, he says, the soul is in no way to be suspected of being corporeal, whether long, or broad, or as if solid.

These are, as it seems to me, the things we seek concerning the soul from the custom of bodies, and therefore it is rightly commanded even in the mysteries that one despise all bodies, and renounce this whole universe, which, as we see, is corporeal, whoever desires to be rendered such as he was made by God, that is, like God. For there is no other salvation of the soul, or renewal, or reconciliation with its author. Claudianus, a most eloquent man, published three books on the Incorporality of the Soul, shining with all the splendor of eloquence; in which, among other most illustrious proofs of his talent, he says: Everything non-local is also incorporeal. Moreover, the life of the body is the soul, and it lives in the body; and the soul lives as much in a part of the body as in the whole body; therefore, there is as much life in a part of the body as in the whole body, and this life is the soul: nor is that which is as great in the whole as in a part, and as great in a small thing as in a large thing, local. Therefore, the soul is not local. And whatever is non-local is not corporeal. Therefore, the soul is not a body. Likewise, he reasons: The soul is rational, and reasoning inheres substantially in the soul, and reason is incorporeal and non-local: therefore, the soul is incorporeal. Likewise, the will of the soul is its substance, and if the whole soul wills, the whole is will, and will is not a body. Therefore, the soul is not a body.

Memory is a kind of non-local capacity, which is neither distended by a multitude of things remembered nor diminished by their scarcity, and it recollects even corporeal things in an incorporeal manner. And when the mind remembers, it remembers as a whole, and the whole is memory, and the one who remembers is the whole; and memory is not a body. Therefore the mind is not a body. Likewise, a body neither approaches God nor recedes from God; but the mind both approaches and recedes non-locally; therefore the mind is not local. And let this suffice for the present concerning the incorporeality of the soul. Let us next see whether our assertion that the nature of angels is incorporeal is strengthened by any testimony. The blessed Augustine, certainly, although in many small works he maintains that angels are an incorporeal nature, nevertheless in the book On the Trinity he asserts that they consist not only of the incorporeal but also of the corporeal, that is, of a twofold substance, so that from one they do not withdraw from the contemplation of God, according to what the Lord said in the Gospel when dealing with the non-condemnation of little children: "Because their angels always see the face of my Father, who is in heaven"; from the other they truly appear for the performance of certain actions in the sight of men.

For thus in book II of the same work: "Assuming," he says, "that angels take on a bodily form from corporeal creation for the use of their ministry, as each one would need, or their own body, to which they are not subject but which they govern as subject, changing and turning it into whatever species they wish, suited and adapted to their actions, according to the power attributed to them by the Creator." Likewise in book III of the aforementioned books: "Not only evil," he says, "but not even good angels ought to be considered creators, if, by the subtlety of their sense and body, they have known the seeds of these things that are more hidden to us." And a little later: "We do not investigate what is in the heavens," he says, "by which kind of thing, both angelic bodies according to their own dignity, and some bodily action of theirs, are contained." Likewise in book VIII, teaching that the Lord is not a body, nor as he is thought, he says: "Angels, spirits of the world, inspiring celestial bodies, and changing and turning themselves at the will by which they serve God, even if all of them, being thousands upon thousands, were gathered into one and became one, God is not such a thing, nor even if you think of those same spirits without bodies—which indeed is most difficult for carnal thought.

Mindful, brother, of the Lord’s beloved saying, that the testimony of two or three men is true, and providing for our labor in a time of constraint, we have sent these two most excellent commentators, so that he may more readily believe, insofar as we have been able to retain from their works by memory, to be made known through you in writing. But if he is unwilling to assent to these, he will not care to assent even if many witnesses are produced.