De Ecclesiasticis Dogmatibus [Incertus 'Gennadius Massiliensis']

On the Ecclesiastical Dogmas, a Book Attributed to Gennadius. Chapter One. — We believe that there is one God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Father, because He has a Son: Son, because He has a Father: and Holy Spirit, because He is from the Father and the Son. The Father, therefore, is the principle of divinity: who, just as He was never not God, so He was never not Father: from whom the Son is born: from whom the Holy Spirit is not born, because He is not the Son; nor unbegotten, because He is not the Father; nor made, because He is not from nothing, but proceeding as God from God the Father and God the Son. The Father is eternal because He has an eternal Son, of whom He is the eternal Father: the Son is eternal, because He is coeternal with the Father: the Holy Spirit is eternal, because He is coeternal with the Father and the Son. The Trinity is not confused in one person, as Sabellius says: nor is the divinity separated or divided in nature, as Arius blasphemes: but one is the person of the Father, another the person of the Son, another the person of the Holy Spirit; one in nature in the holy Trinity, God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Chapter Two. — The Father did not assume flesh, nor the Holy Spirit, but only the Son: so that he who was in divinity the Son of God might himself become in humanity the son of man: lest the name of son should pass to another who would be Son of God by birth. Therefore the Son of God became the son of man, born according to the truth of nature from God as Son of God, and according to the truth of nature from man as son of man: so that he might more truly have the name of son by being born, not by adoption, not by title, but in each nativity, and be true God and true man, one Son. Therefore not two Christs, nor two sons, but God and man, one Son; whom for that reason we also call only-begotten, remaining in two substances, as the truth of nature conferred upon him, with the natures not confused nor mixed, as the Timotheans wish, but united by association. Therefore God assumed man, man passed into God; not by a change of nature, as the Apollinarists say, but by the condescension of God: so that neither was God changed into human substance by assuming man, nor man changed into God when glorified into God: because change or reversibility of nature brings about diminution and abolition of substance. Therefore the Son of God was born from a woman, not through a man, that is, not from sexual intercourse, as Ebion says: but drawing flesh from the Virgin’s body, and not bringing it with him from heaven, as Marcion, Origen, and Eutyches affirm.

Chapter Three. — He was not born of the Virgin in such a way that the man, by being born, received the beginning of his divinity, as if before he was born of the Virgin he was not God, as Artemon, Berillus, and Marcellus taught; but he is eternal God, and man born of the Virgin. Chapter Four.

Nothing erroneous or servile is to be believed in the Trinity, as Dionysius, the source of Arius, would have it: nothing unequal, as Eunomius: nothing equal by grace, as Aetius would have it: nothing earlier or later or less, as Arius: nothing foreign or official to another, as Macedonius: nothing inserted by invasion or surreption, as Manichaeus: nothing corporeal, as Melito and Tertullian: nothing corporeally figured, as the Anthropomorphites and Vadianus: nothing invisible to itself, as Origen: nothing visible to creatures, as Fortunatus: nothing diverse in character or will, as Marcion: nothing drawn from the essence of the Trinity into the nature of creatures, as Plato and Tertullian: nothing singular in office nor communicable to another, as Origen: nothing confused, as Sabellius: but everything perfect; because everything is from one and one: yet not solitary, as Praxeas and Sylvanus, that damnable doctrine of the Pentapolitans, presume.

CHAPTER V. — Therefore, *homousios*, that is, coessential in divinity with the Father, is the Son; *homousios* with the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit; *homousios* with God and with man is the one Son, remaining God in his own man, in the glory of the Father, desirable to be seen by the Angels: just as the Father and the Holy Spirit are adored by the Angels and by every creature: not a man apart from God, nor Christ with God, as Nestorius blasphemes; but man in God, and God in man. CHAPTER VI. — There will be a resurrection of all the dead, but one and at the same time and once: not a first resurrection of the just, and a second of sinners, as is the fable of dreamers; but one resurrection of all. And if that which falls is said to rise again, then our flesh will truly rise again, just as it truly falls. And not according to Origen will there be a change of bodies, that is, another new body in place of the flesh: but the same corruptible flesh which falls, of both the just and the unjust, will rise again incorruptible, able either to suffer punishment for sins, or to remain in eternal glory for merits.

CHAPTER VII. — There will be a resurrection of all men: if of all, then all die, so that death introduced by Adam is concluded for all his sons, and that privilege remains in the Lord, which is said of him specially: "You will not let your Holy One see corruption" (Ps. 15:10). For his flesh did not see corruption. We have received this reasoning as handed down by the greatest multitude of the Fathers. But since there are also other equally Catholic and learned men who believe that, with the soul remaining in the body, those who are found alive at the coming of the Lord are to be changed to incorruption and immortality, and that this is reckoned to them as resurrection from the dead, because they lay aside mortality by change, not by death: whichever way one acquiesces, he is not a heretic, unless he becomes a heretic from contentiousness. For it is sufficient in the law of the Church to believe in a future resurrection of the flesh from death. CHAPTER VIII. — But what we say in the Creed, that at the coming of the Lord the living and the dead are to be judged, we believe that not only the just and sinners are signified, as Diodorus thinks, but also the living, those who are to be found in the flesh, who are believed to be still to die; or are to be changed, as others wish, so that, raised immediately or reformed, we are judged together with those who died before.

CHAPTER IX. — After the resurrection and judgment, we should not believe in a future restoration, as Origen deliriously imagines; that demons or impious men, after torments, as if purified by punishments, either return to the angelic dignity in which they were created, or are granted the fellowship of the just; because this would befit divine mercy, that nothing should perish from rational creatures, but that they should be saved in some way. But we believe the judge and just rewarder of all, who said, "The impious will go into eternal punishment, the just into eternal life" (Matthew 25:46), that they may receive the fruit of their works. CHAPTER X. — In the beginning, God created heaven and earth and water out of nothing. And when darkness still concealed the water itself, and the water hid the earth, Angels and all the celestial Virtues were made, so that God's goodness would not be idle, but would have those in whom to show its goodness over many spaces of time; and thus this visible world was made and adorned from those things which had been created.

CHAPTER XI. — Nothing incorporeal and invisible is to be believed in nature except God alone, that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He is believed to be incorporeal because He is everywhere, and fills and contains all things; and therefore He is invisible to all creatures, because He is incorporeal. CHAPTER XII. — Every creature is corporeal: Angels and all the heavenly Powers are corporeal, although they do not subsist in flesh. However, we believe these intellectual natures to be corporeal because they are circumscribed by locality; just as the human soul, which is enclosed in flesh, and demons, who are of angelic nature in substance. CHAPTER XIII. — We believe intellectual natures to be immortal, because they lack flesh, nor do they have anything by which they might fall so as to need resurrection after ruin. CHAPTER XIV. — The souls of men are not from the beginning among the other intellectual natures, nor created simultaneously, as Origen imagines; nor are they sown with bodies through coition, as the Luciferians, and Cyril, and some Latin presumptuous men affirm, as if preserving a consequence of nature. But we say that the creation of the soul is known only to the Creator of all, and that only the body is sown through the union of marriage, but by God's judgment it is coagulated in the womb and compacted and formed, and when the body is already formed, the soul is created and infused, so that a man lives in the womb consisting of soul and body, and emerges alive from the womb full of human substance.

CHAPTER XV. — We do not say that there are two souls in one man, as James and other Syrians write, one animal soul which animates the body and is mixed with the blood, and another spiritual soul which administers reason: we say that there is one and the same soul in man, which both gives life to the body by its association and disposes itself by its reason, having in itself freedom of choice, so that in its own substance it may choose by thought what it wills. CHAPTER XVI. — We believe that only man has a substantive soul, which lives apart from the body, and retains its senses and faculties vigorously. It does not die with the body, as Aratus asserts, nor after a short interval, as Zeno says, because it lives substantially. CHAPTER XVII. — The souls of animals, however, are not substantive, but are born with the flesh by the vitality of the flesh itself, and end with the death of the flesh: and therefore they are not governed by reason, as Plato and Alexander think, but are led to all things by the impulse of nature.

CHAPTER XVIII. — The human soul does not die with the body, because it is not sown with the body, as we said above; but when the body has been formed in the mother’s womb, by God’s decree it is created and infused, so that the human being lives within the womb, and thus proceeds by birth into the world. CHAPTER XIX. — Man consists of only two substances: soul and flesh; the soul with its reason, and the flesh with its senses. Yet the flesh does not move those senses without the soul’s partnership. The soul, however, even without the flesh, retains its rational nature. CHAPTER XX. — There is not a third substance in man, the spirit, as Didymus contends; but the spirit is itself the soul, called spirit either because of its spiritual nature, or because it breathes in the body. The soul, on the other hand, is so called because it animates the body for living or for giving life. As for the third thing which the Apostle introduces along with soul and body, we are to understand it as the grace of the Holy Spirit, which the Apostle prays may remain whole in us, and not be diminished or put to flight from us by our own fault (1 Thess. 5:23); because the Holy Spirit flees from a feigned heart (Wis. 1:5).

CHAPTER XXI. — Man was entrusted to his own free will from the very first moment of his creation, so that, with the watchfulness of the mind striving, he might also persevere in the observance of the commandment, if he wished to remain in the state in which he was created. But after he fell through the seduction of the serpent by Eve, he lost the goodness of his nature and likewise the vigor of his will; yet he did not lose the power of choice, lest there be no sin of his own to amend, nor would pardon be merited for what he had not washed away by his own will. Therefore, the freedom of the will remains for seeking salvation, that is, a rational will, but only after God has first admonished and invited him to salvation, so that he may either choose, or follow, or act upon the occasion of salvation, that is, by the inspiration of God. However, that he may obtain what he chooses, or what he follows, or what he acts upon by occasion, we freely confess to be of God. Thus, we have the beginning of our salvation from God’s mercy; that we acquiesce to the saving inspiration is within our power; that we attain what we desire by acquiescing to the admonition is a divine gift; that we do not fall from the gift of salvation once obtained is a matter of our own diligence and equally of heavenly assistance; that we do fall is a matter of our own power and negligence.

CHAPTER XXII (otherwise 52). — Baptism is one, but in the Church, where there is one faith, where it is given in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And therefore if any who have been baptized among those heretics who baptize in the confession of the holy Trinity come to us, they are to be received indeed as baptized, lest the invocation or confession of the holy Trinity be annulled; but they are to be taught and instructed beforehand as to the sense in which the mystery of the holy Trinity is held in the Church; and if they consent to believe, or acquiesce to confess, already purified by the integrity of the faith, they are to be confirmed by the imposition of hands. But if they are little children or those of dull mind who cannot grasp the teaching, those who offer them are to answer for them according to the custom of baptizing; and thus, fortified by the imposition of hands and chrism, they are to be admitted to the mysteries of the Eucharist. But those who have been baptized among heretics not in the invocation of the holy Trinity, and come to us, we pronounce that they ought to be baptized, not rebaptized. For it is not to be believed that those have been baptized who have not been immersed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit according to the rule laid down by the Lord, as are the Paulianists.

CHAPTER XXIII (otherwise 53). — I neither praise nor blame daily reception of the communion of the Eucharist. Nevertheless, I advise and exhort that all should communicate on every Lord's day, provided that the intention to sin is not present in the mind. For one who still has the will to sin, I say that he is more burdened than purified by the reception of the Eucharist. And therefore, although someone may be stung by sin, if he no longer has the will to sin thereafter, and, about to communicate, makes satisfaction with tears and prayers, and, trusting in the mercy of the Lord, who is accustomed to grant forgiveness of sins to pious confession, let him approach the Eucharist intrepid and secure.

But I say this concerning one who is not burdened by capital or mortal sins: for those whom mortal crimes committed after Baptism oppress, let us hope that after a thousand years the kingdom of Christ will be on earth, and the saints will reign with him in delights, as Nepos taught: the first resurrection of the just, and the second of the impious; and between these, two resurrections of the dead, with nations ignorant of God being preserved in flesh in the corners of the earth; which after a thousand years of the reign of the just on earth, stirred up by the devil, are to be moved to battle against the reigning just; and with the Lord fighting for the just, they are to be restrained by a fiery rain; and thus dead, together with others who died before in impiety, they are to be revived to eternal punishments in incorruptible flesh. CHAPTER XXIV (otherwise 56). — We believe that no one comes to salvation unless invited by God. No one invited works out his salvation unless aided by God. No one merits aid unless praying. No one perishes by the will of God, but by permission, according to the choice of free will, lest the freedom of power once granted to men be forced into servile necessity.

CHAPTER XXVII (alt. 57). — Evil or malice was not created by God, but was invented by the devil, who himself was created good by God. But because he was entrusted with free will, as a rational creature, and had received the faculty of thinking, he turned the knowledge of good to evil; and by thinking much, he became the inventor of evil; and what he had lost in himself, he begrudged in others, and not content to perish alone, he persuaded others, so that he who was the inventor of his own malice might also become the author of others’ malice; and from that, evil or malice spread into the other rational creatures. CHAPTER XXVIII (alt. 58). — From this we know that nothing is by nature immutable except God alone, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who cannot be changed from good, because by nature he possesses good, nor can he be anything other than good. CHAPTER XXIX (alt. 59). — The angels, however, who persevere in that blessedness in which they were created, do not possess good by nature, so that they would not change along with the rest, but by preserving good will through their choice, and the good of their condition, and they kept faith with their Lord. Whence also they are called holy angels by the Lord himself, because they held to the sanctity of their choice, and did not deviate from good by the example of their companions.

CHAPTER XXX (alt. 63). — Marriages are good, but for the sake of children and for the purpose of restraining fornication. CHAPTER XXXI (alt. 64). — Continence is better; but it does not suffice for blessedness if it is retained solely for the love of chastity, but only if this is chosen together with the intention of being free to serve the Lord; otherwise it will seem to be more a divorce from marriage than chastity. CHAPTER XXXII (alt. 65). — Virginity is more excellent than both goods, because it overcomes both nature and struggle: nature, by bodily integrity; struggle, by the peace of chastity. CHAPTER XXXIII (alt. 66). — It is good to take in food with thanksgiving whatever God has commanded to be eaten. To abstain from some things, however, not as if they were evil, but as unnecessary, is not evil. To moderate their use according to need and time is properly Christian. CHAPTER XXXIV (alt. 67). — To speak ill of marriage, or to compare it to fornication or debauchery; and to believe that foods are evil, or the cause of evil to those who partake of them, is not Christian, but properly of the Encratites and Manichaeans.

CHAPTER XXXV (alt. 68). — To equate marriages with virginity consecrated to God, or to believe that those abstaining from wine or meat for the sake of chastening the body gain no increase of merit, is not Christian but Jovinianist. CHAPTER XXXVI (alt. 69). — It must be believed with complete faith that the blessed Mary, the mother of God, conceived as a virgin, gave birth as a virgin, and remained a virgin after childbirth. Nor should one acquiesce in the blasphemy of Helvidius, who said: "Virgin before birth, not virgin after birth." CHAPTER XXXVII (alt. 70). — We do not believe that the elements, that is, the sky and the earth, are to be destroyed by fire, but changed for the better: also that the figure of the world, that is, its form, will pass away, not its substance. CHAPTER XXXVIII (alt. 71). — It is good to distribute one's goods to the poor with discretion. It is better, with the intention of following the Lord, to give once and for all and, freed from care, to be in need with Christ.

CHAPTER XXXIX (alt. 72). — A man who has had two wives after Baptism is not to be ordained a cleric. Nor is he who has had one wife indeed, but a concubine, not a matron. Nor he who has taken a widow, or a divorced woman, or a prostitute in marriage. Nor he who has mutilated himself in any part of his body, overcome by some indignation or by a just or unjust fear. Nor he who is convicted of having taken usury, or is known to have performed on the stage. Nor he who laments mortal crimes through public penance. Nor he who has at some time fallen into madness or been troubled by the afflation of the devil. Nor he who through ambition, in imitation of Simon Magus, offers money. CHAPTER XL (alt. 73). — The bodies of the saints, and especially the relics of the blessed martyrs, are to be honored most sincerely as if they were members of Christ, and the basilicas called by their names, as places devoted to divine worship, are to be approached with the most pious affection and the most faithful devotion. If anyone comes against this opinion, he is believed not to be a Christian, but a Eunomian and a Vigilantian.

CHAPTER XLI (alt. 1). — We believe that for the baptized alone is there a way of salvation. We do not believe that any catechumen, however excellent his good works, who has died, possesses eternal life, except in the case of martyrdom, where the whole sacrament of Baptism is completed. The candidate for baptism confesses his faith before the priest, and when questioned, he answers: this also the martyr does before the persecutor, who both confesses his faith and, when questioned, answers. After the confession, the one is either sprinkled with water or immersed; the other is either sprinkled with blood or touched by fire. The one receives the Holy Spirit through the imposition of the bishop’s hand; the other becomes a dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit, since it is not he himself who speaks, but the Spirit of the Father who speaks in him. The one communicates in the Eucharist in commemoration of the Lord’s death; the other dies together with Christ himself. The one confesses that he will renounce worldly deeds; the other renounces life itself. For the one, all sins are remitted; in the other, they are extinguished.

CHAPTER XLII (alt. 75). — In the Eucharist, pure water ought not to be offered, as some are deceived by the image of sobriety; but wine mixed with water: because wine was present in the mystery of our redemption, when He said, “I will drink no more of this fruit of the vine” (Matt. 26:29); and water was mixed, as was given after the meal. But also from His side, which was pierced by a lance, water came forth with blood, showing that the wine from the true vine of His flesh was pressed out with water. CHAPTER XLIII (alt. 76). — Our flesh is good and very good, inasmuch as it was created by a good God and the only God; and it is not evil, as the Sethians, Ophians, and Patricians wish; nor is it the cause of evil, as Florinus taught; nor is it composed of evil and good, as Manichaeus blasphemes. But since it is good by creation, it becomes for us either good or evil by the will of the soul, not by a change of substance, but by the reward of its conduct. It is this flesh that will stand before the tribunal of Christ, in which the soul will render account for the body’s own deeds, whether good or evil.

CHAPTER XLIV (alt. 77). — In the resurrection from the dead, the form of sex will not be changed: but a dead man will rise in the form of a man, and a woman in the form of a woman, yet lacking the condition of sex of this life only, not the natural species; lest it not be a true resurrection, if that which falls does not rise. CHAPTER XLV (alt. 78). — Before the passion of the Lord, all the souls of the saints were held in hell under the debt of Adam's transgression, until they were freed from servile condition by the authority of the Lord through his undeserved death. CHAPTER XLVI (alt. 79). — After the ascension of the Lord into heaven, all the souls of the saints are with Christ, and departing from the body go to Christ, awaiting the resurrection of their body, so that they may be changed together with him into complete and perpetual blessedness: just as the souls of sinners placed in hell under fear await the resurrection of their body, so that together with it they may be thrust down into eternal punishment.

CHAPTER XLVII (alt. 80). — We believe without doubt that penance wipes away sins, even if a person repents in the very last moment of life, and sins are disclosed by public lamentation: because the purpose of God, by which he decreed to save what had perished, stands immovable: and therefore, because his will does not change, whether by amendment of life, if time is granted, or by suppliant confession, if life is immediately ended, pardon for sins is faithfully presumed from him who does not desire the death of the sinner, but that he be converted from perdition by repenting (Ezek. 18:32, and 33:11), and, saved by the mercy of the Lord, live. If anyone thinks otherwise concerning the most just piety of God, he is not a Christian, but a Novatian. CHAPTER XLVIII (alt. 81). — We are certain that the devil does not see the internal thoughts of the soul: but we have learned by experience that they are gathered by him from external signs of the body and indications of the affections. However, the secrets of the heart only he knows to whom it is said, "You alone know the hearts of the sons of men" (1 Kings 8:39).

CHAPTER XLIX (alt. 82). — Not all our evil thoughts are always aroused by the devil’s instigation, but sometimes they emerge from the motion of our own free will. Good thoughts, however, are always from God. CHAPTER L (alt. 83). — We do not believe that demons, through energetic operation, substantially insinuate themselves into the soul; but that they are united by application and oppression. However, to insinuate oneself into the mind is possible only for the one who created it, who, being a subsisting incorporeal nature, is capable of his own creation. CHAPTER LI (alt. 84). — We have learned that even sinners perform signs and prodigies and healings in the name of the Lord, from God Himself: and while they help others by this presumption, they harm themselves through ambition for human glory; because they glory in a false gift, that is, one not owed to their merits. CHAPTER LII (alt. 85). — We believe that a man can become a Christian by means of signs and prodigies, yet not a saint, if he acts with intemperate and harsh motions: but with temperate and calm motions, even without the efficacy of signs, we rightly believe that a man becomes both a saint and perfect and a man of God.

CHAPTER LIII (alt. 84). — No saint and just person is without sin; yet for this reason he does not cease to be just and saintly, as long as he holds to sanctity in his intention. For we acquire sanctity not by the powers of nature, but by the aid of resolve through the grace of God. And therefore all saints truly declare themselves sinners, because in truth they have something to lament, and if not from the reproach of conscience, certainly from the instability of a transgressing nature. CHAPTER LIV (alt. 87). — Easter, that is, the solemnity of the Lord’s resurrection, cannot be celebrated before the passing of the vernal equinox and the completion of the fourteenth day of the moon, yet in the same month. CHAPTER LV (alt. 88). — On account of recent legislators, who claim that the soul alone is created in the image of God, so that, because God is rightly believed to be incorporeal, the soul is also believed to be incorporeal, we freely confess that the image is found in eternity, the likeness in character.