Letter 233

233. To Amphilochius, who had asked a question.

I too have heard of this, and I recognize the contrivance of these men. What, then, shall we say to it? That the mind is a good thing, and in it we have that which is according to the image of the Creator; and that the activity of the mind is a good thing; and that, being ever in motion, it often forms impressions of things that do not exist as though they did, and often is borne straight to the truth. But since, in our understanding—we who have believed in God—two powers have grown up alongside it, the one evil, the power of the demons, drawing us along into its own apostasy, the other more divine and good, leading us up to the likeness of God: when the mind abides by itself, it perceives little, and only things proportioned to itself; but when it gives itself over to those that deceive it, it obliterates its own faculty of judgement and consorts with monstrous impressions. Then it considers wood to be not wood but God, and judges gold to be not money but an object of worship. But if it inclines toward the more divine portion and receives the graces of the Spirit, then it becomes able to apprehend the more divine things, so far as is proportioned to its nature.

There are, then, three conditions of life, as it were, and the activities of our mind are equal in number to these. For either our pursuits are evil, and evil accordingly are the motions of our mind—such as adulteries, thefts, idolatries, slanders, quarrels, fits of anger, factions, self-conceit, and all that the apostle Paul enumerated among the works of the flesh; or they are good; or the activity of the soul is some middle thing, having in it nothing either to be condemned or to be praised—as is the practice of those mechanical arts, which we call middle arts, since by their own account they incline neither to virtue nor to vice. For what vice is there in piloting a ship or in medicine? Yet these are not themselves virtues either, in and of themselves, but they incline toward one or other of the opposing portions according to the moral choice of those who use them. But the mind that has been mingled with the deity of the Spirit—this is at last able to contemplate the great visions, and beholds the divine beauties, yet only so far as grace bestows and its own constitution can receive.

So, leaving aside those dialectical questions, let them examine the truth not maliciously but with reverence. The faculty of judgement of the mind has been given us for the understanding of the truth. And our God is the very Truth itself. So that it is the primary task of the mind to recognize our God—to recognize him, however, in such a way as the infinitely great can be made known by the very smallest. For not even because the eyes are appointed for the perception of visible things does it follow that all visible things are brought under sight. For not even the hemisphere of the heaven is perceived at a single glance; rather an impression of sight surrounds us, while in truth many things in it—not to say all—are unknown to us: the nature of the stars, their magnitudes, their distances, their motions, their conjunctions, their separations, and all their other relations, the very substance of the firmament, the depth from the hollow circumference to the convex surface. And yet we would not say that the heaven is invisible because of the things unknown, but visible by reason of our moderate perception of it. So it is also with God. If the mind has been harmed by demons, it will fall into idolatry, or be turned aside to some other form of impiety; but if it has given itself to the help of the Spirit, it will recognize the truth and will know God. And it will know him, as the apostle said, in part, and in the life after this more perfectly; for when that which is perfect comes, that which is in part shall be done away. So that the faculty of judgement of the mind is both good and given for a useful end—the perception of God—working, however, only so much as it is able to contain.