PREFACE — CHAPTER III. / ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE BOOK OF STEPS — III. ON MAN.

...by means of a magician or a sorcerer, who uses the demons like a sword and through their help inflicts damage upon men¹. The Author thinks that magicians strike a bargain with demons, and this under the condition that the magician will return "a soul for a soul," which the demons, when God demands it from them on the day of judgment, will offer in place of that which they lost². By this pact, magicians accomplish certain wondrous things: they heal diseases³, control the possessed, or even kill them outright⁴, kill a rabid person/dog with sprinkled water⁵, find a lost object⁶, and other things of this kind. Hence the Author warns that physicians are to be adjured not to wish to cure a patient by the help of sorceries, but to invoke only the name of the Lord⁷. As is evident from the text of the Sermon itself—the Author is speaking not of Gentiles, but of Christians—at that time, without a doubt, many of the Christians were given to necromancy, divination, fortune-telling, and other superstitions of this kind, which, incidentally, Saint Ephrem also reproves⁸. The whole Sermon shows the Author's mind, which was prone to combat superstitions, his contemporaries were cruel, unbridled, in sad, agitated, and insecure times, in which it seems that no one was very concerned about what was right and what was wrong.

III

9. Parts of man and free will. — 10. The nature of Adam, charisms, and the law of perfection laid upon him. — 11. The spiritual paradise of the protoparents. — 12. Relation of this doctrine to the tenets: of the Neoplatonists, further — 13. of Athanasius, — 14. of Gregory of Nyssa, — 15. of Philoxenus, the opinions of Moses bar Kepha, Išo'dad, and Solomon of Basra. — 16. The fall of the protoparents; their marriage contracted at the instigation of a demon. — 17. Similar opinions of Cassian and Tatian.

9. In Sermon XXVIII the Author deals quite extensively with the parts of man and, having rejected the opinion⁹ of those who, adhering to trichotomism the view that man is composed of three parts: body, soul, and spirit, posit three parts of man—namely, body, soul (which they think is blood), and an immortal spirit—and contend that the soul, as a material part of the body, dies together with the body: he strives to demonstrate from Scripture that soul and spirit are one and the same thing and that man consists of only two essential parts, to which, after perfection is attained, a third is added: the Spirit Paraclete, upon the obtaining of which man is constituted in the trinity. There will be talk of this below, and therefore it is enough to have mentioned these things.

The Author teaches in open words that man's free will exists both before and after the fall: that Adam sinned freely, even though God could have recalled him to obedience by a single nod¹⁰, and that men of their own accord become servants of the Devil¹¹. Indeed, nothing at all happens without the will of God, yet murderers, whom God uses as an instrument to lead out the souls of men, are judged and punished by God, since He gave everyone the freedom to act¹. However, the Author omitted to explain by what reason the efficacy of divine providence, which the Author describes primarily in Sermon VII, is harmonized with man's free will.

10. The Author discusses the state of original nature in Sermons XV and XXI. However, it is extremely difficult to explore his true mind on this matter. For the doctrine that he hands down concerning the primordial state of the protoparents seems to lack a sense of unity and to consist of two very disparate elements: namely, the doctrine of the canonical Scriptures and some philosophical speculation that bears the character of Gnostic and Encratite ascetic/abstinent tendencies.

Let us now see the individual pronouncements of the Author.

Adam, he says, was perfect before the fall, he looked constantly upon heaven, he rejoiced with the heavenly angels, devoid of pains and cares, he was nourished in a marvelous way by God, having his body set on earth and his mind in heaven. Labor and bodily pains did not exist until the fall; the animals themselves obeyed Adam².

The protoparents were immune from concupiscence, for, as Scripture witnesses, "their nakedness did not appear," but walking on the earth with their minds in heaven, in the supernal Jerusalem, in the spiritual Eden—that is, in the heavenly paradise, in the city of God—they lived³.

Until the fall, Adam inhabited heaven; having turned his mind toward the earth, he became on earth; that is, he fell from the heavenly paradise into the earthly paradise, an image of the heavenly paradise⁴.

Before the fall, Adam was heavenly ܪܘܚܢܐ? spiritual; after the fall, he became lower ܐܪܥܢܝܐ? earthly, but the breath of life that he had became "the taste of death"⁵.

The protoparents were immune from concupiscence, like newborn infants, who, even though they are naked, do not blush, for as Christ teaches⁶, in the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; but since the resurrection is nothing other than the restoration of the primordial order, it is also necessary that the protoparents were created in the same "holy," i.e., chaste, state. It does not stand in the way that they had genital members, fit for generating; for these were destined only for passing urine⁷. For if all men had pursued perfection, God would have nourished everyone miraculously and multiplied them without carnal copulation—perhaps from nails and hair—just as He produced Eve herself from the body of Adam⁸.

In creation, God breathed into Adam the "breath of life," i.e., the Spirit Paraclete, by which reason Adam was made as the Apostles were on the day of Pentecost, having received the Paraclete⁹.

¹ Sermon VII, 8. Cf. XXII, 6; XXVIII, 7. — ² Sermon XXI, 7.
³ Sermon XXI, 8. — ⁴ Sermon XXI, 10. — ⁵ Sermon XXI, 17. — ⁶ Luke 20:35.
⁷ Sermon XV, 3, 7. — ⁸ Sermon XXV, 8. — ⁹ Sermon XXVIII, 1.