Hymns and Sermons of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Volume 1

His exegetical sermons have a great similarity to the homilies of St. John Chrysostom, nor are they inferior in eloquence or doctrine. Below, there will be discourse concerning the sermons on the Lord, on the sinful woman, and on Holy Week, from which it will be more evident what the style of the Deacon of Edessa is. Attached to these exegetical writings are Hymns on Paradise. fifteen hymns on the earthly Paradise, of which twelve were edited in the Roman edition in Syriac and Latin, while the three remaining ones were recently produced by Overbeek only in Syriac. The entire collection is transcribed from two codices, one of which was written in the year 519 and the other in the year 522. In these hymns, the Holy Doctor poetically describes the paradise of Eden, under various images, according to the capacity of the people, in such a way that he simultaneously treats of the heavenly paradise. He does not contradict his necrosima original: "hymns for the dead" when he affirms here that the souls of the faithful will not enjoy the delights of Paradise before the day of judgment; for his meaning is that blessed souls now lack the fullness of bliss, in which even the body becomes a companion and participant. That this is his opinion is evident from the fact that, in the aforementioned necrosima as well as in the Nisibene collection and elsewhere in six hundred places, he acknowledges and preaches the present beatitude of the just in heaven. See Steph. Evod. Assemanus, Opp. Syr. III, pref. XXI; Bickell, Carmina Nisibena, Carm. 47, 5, 13; 61, 6; 69, 19; 71, 1.

However, in the fifty-six hymns against false doctrines or Hymns against heresies and on faith. heresies, and in the eighty-seven hymns on faith or against the scrutinizers, he becomes a most sharp defender of Christian dogmas, and he attacks Marcion, Bardesanes, Manes, Aëtius, the Anomoeans, the Jews, and the Chaldeans everywhere, using metaphors, similitudes, and arguments drawn both from the Scriptures of both Testaments and from human reason and created things.

And indeed, in the hymns or odes against false doctrines, he attacks the Chaldeans throughout the first fifteen hymns: “If,” he says, “the Chaldean learns and reveals from the stars what I have done and am about to do, if free will is ruled by fate, he ought to know likewise what I have said and am about to say; for if fate moderates all things, these things also ought not to be hidden from it. But if the human will is the master of itself and its words do not fall under fate, why could it not do other things that it wishes in the same way? Furthermore, if children are born blind by the disposition of fate, why are kings not born likewise adorned with their insignia?” He proceeds to criticize the mathematicians with various arguments, and he shows from the miracles of Joshua and Isaiah that God commands the sun and the stars, and that the stars, like other creatures, are subject to the will of God, to which nothing resists. “If all things are ruled by fate,” he says, “why are laws brought forth, why are decrees made? Why are crimes punished? Why is virtue rewarded? Why are prayers poured forth?”