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Stephen Gobar's Fascinating Collection of Early Patristic Disagreements
From Roger Pearse's internet publication of the English translation of Photius's Bibliotheca. It is rarely mentioned but some nuggets include - Irenaeus denying that Paul wrote the Letter to the Hebrews (I noticed that the work is never cited by Irenaeus), the identification of John the evangelist as the 'least' in the kingdom of heaven presumably because he was a child, two opinions regarding the order of Passion week, Thomas not Peter cut the ear of the high priest, whether Jesus was ransomed to Satan or the Father, the list goes on and on. This is a real treasure trove of neglected or lost information.
Quote:
[Stephen Gobar, Miscellany]
Read the book of a certain Stephen, a tritheist, surnamed Gobar 1. The work seems to have involved a lot of work without procuring a profit proportional to the great pain expended; it exhibits in fact more futile vanity than utility. The chapters which the author has written relating to questions of general order which concern the church are up to about 52; some chapters on more limited subjects are mingled in there. These chapters are divided into expositions of two contradictory opinions. And these opinions are not advanced either by logic or from the holy scriptures but uniquely, according to the author, from the citation of various Fathers of whom some advance the point of view of the church and others who reject it. The latter point of view is defended by ancient testimonies and ancient authors who had not made an exact study of all the problems, and certain of these citations don't defend the point of view supposed anyway, but only seem to do so, at least to the eyes that collected them. As for the point of view of the church, it is confirmed by the testimonies of authors who have defined the truth with the greatest exactitude. The subjects on which this double and contradictory demonstration is made are the following.
It is the propriety 2, the distinctive mark and the form which constitutes the hypostasis, and not the union of the substance and the propriety, and this is no more that which exists of itself. There are first citations which confirm this point of view and then others confirming the adverse opinion, to think that the propriety and the form and the distinctive mark are not the hypostatis but the distinctive mark of it. And in the other chapters, not to weary with repetition every time, the diverse citations rehearse the antithetical proposition and seem to support the two aspects.
John the Baptist was conceived in the month of October. The opposing opinion is that not then, but in November. The Mother of God received the Annunciation in the month of New Things 3, that is April, called Nisan by the Hebrews; she brought our Lord Jesus Christ into the world after 9 months, that is 5 January, in the middle of the night of the eighth day of the Ides of January. The opposing opinion is that not in the month [usually thought] of the Annunciation, but on the twenty-fifth of March, and that our Saviour 4 came into the world not on the fifth of January but the eighth day before the Kalends of January.
At the moment of the resurrection, it will be exactly the same body as that which we wear now which we will put on again without any modification and which will acquire incorruptibility; the thesis opposed is that we won't put on the same body because our actual body is perishable. We will resurrect with the same appearance and we won't resurrect with the same appearance, but another. We will be the same age at which we died; the opposing opinion is that it will not be so, but that even infants will resurrect with a body of an adult and that we won't all be resurrected at once but in turn. It will be a light, aerial, ethereal and spiritual body that we take on at the moment of resurrection; and it will not be thus, but a terrestrial body, thick and consistent.
God is of human form and has a soul, the icon reveals his corporeal form, and that man was created in imitation of his model, and that angels have bodies similar to human bodies, and that the human soul is an emanation of the divine substance 5; and the opposing opinions, that God is not of human form nor of any form at all, and by nature isn't any of the things just stated; even the angels have no bodies, but are bodiless, and the human soul does not emanate from the divine substance.
Before the fall, the body of man was different, it was what we call a glorious body; and that which we have had since the fall is different: it is of flesh and a tunic of skin and we abandon it at the moment of resurrection. The contrary opinion is that these tunics of skin are not our flesh.
First of all the just will be resurrected and with them all those alive and they will live a good life for a thousand years, eating and drinking, procreating, and that it is after this time that there will be the universal resurrection. The contrary opinion is that there is no first resurrection of the just, no more than the good life for a thousand years nor marriages. After the resurrection, the just will live in Paradise; and they won't live in Paradise by in the heavens and the Paradise is neither in heaven nor on earth, but in an intermediate place. Paradis is the New Jerusalem and is in the third heaven; the tree that grow there are endowed with sensation, intelligence and speech and it is from there that man after his fall was thrown down to earth. And the opposing thesis is that Paradise is not in the third heaven but on earth.
The good things prepared for the just, the eye has not seen, the ears have not heard and they are not found in the heart of man.6 However Hegesippus, one of the ancients, a contemporary of the apostles, in the third book of his Commentaries, in I do not know what context, says that these are empty words and that those who say them are liars since the Holy Scriptures say, "Blessed are your eyes because they see and happy your ears because they hear," etc.7
Those sinners who are delivered to chastisement are thereby purified of their malice and, after their purification, are free of chastisement. According to the other point of view, those delivered to chastisement are not purified and freed, but only some are, and, according to the true point of view of the church, no-one is freed of chastisement.
It is to burn and not be consumed that means being destroyed in a destruction that does not destroy itself. Titus, bishop of Bostra, who wrote against the Manichaeans, says in his first book,8 "How can the destruction be its own destruction? Because it is always some other object that it destroys, not itself. And if it destroys itself, it would not even have any beginning, because it would have destroyed itself instead of existing. An indestructible destruction is impossible to conceive of, at least according to common sense." And it is evident that it's in another sense that this holy author has said that indestructible destruction is impossible, and St. John said it in still another sense 9. The last-named in fact said that the destruction is indestructible instead of saying it prolongs itself and lasts forever, and the other intended to say that there is no indestructible destruction, i.e. that destruction cannot be a state exempt from suffering, an absence of destruction susceptible to save those whom it encounters. But the two interpretations are such that Gobar, the author of the present essay, without understanding the difference of interpretations has juxtaposed them as contradictory propositions.
The age to come is the eighth 10, the opposing proposition being that it isn't the eighth but the ninth.
The body of our Saviour Jesus Christ after the resurrection became subtle, spiritual, heavenly, light and impossible to touch; this is why he could even pass through closed doors.11 His tangible and solid body is another body to the subtle one: it is consistant and of another essence. And the contrary opinion to this, is that our Lord Jesus Christ after his resurrection did not have an intangible or subtle or spiritual body, and that it was by miracle and not in virtue of the nature of his body that he still entered when the doors were shut.
The Christ did not abandon his flesh after his resurrection, but with it He is seated at the right hand of the Father 12. In the opposed thesis, He will come to judge the living and the dead in a divine body, not one of flesh. It is not with his flesh but purely in his divinity that the master will come for the second time. In introducing this data in his chapter, Gobar produces citations by Titus, Bishop of Bostra 13, when he could have assembled innumerable numbers who establish that it isn't only in his divinity that the Christ our Master will return; he passes on without mentioning one, thus showing the impiety throughout his soul, and hasn't the honesty to profess the monophysitism by the denial of the flesh. The impassible body, invulnerable and immortal, is of one substance and of a type different to ours and the corruptible and mortal bodies which pass into a state of incorruptibility and immortality undergo a modification in their substance.
Every definition preserves the nature of the things it defines. If it is lessened, or elements added to it, the object defined is destroyed. These last two chapters, like those a little earlier, welcome witnesses in one sense only and not in favour of two opposed theses.
The Word of God is complete in every way and under all and is complete in the body to which it is hypostatically attached. And in a word, the substance of the divinity, by its nature, by its power and operation, fills everything and passes into every part and mixes itself throughout the universe. On the contrary, it is not so, but God is separate from the universe in his substance and is in everything through the effect of his own virtues.
It is before the creation of the world that God likewise created the angels. He is thus not one of them, but created them on the first day of the creation of the world. The angels and demons are united to bodies. Neither the one nor the other are united to bodies.14 The angels and the souls endowed with reason and all the creatures provided with intelligence are by nature and according to nature incorruptible 15; in the opposing thesis, it is not by nature but by grace that they are immortal. God alone is immortal by nature. The angels who descended from heaven to earth had bodies and organs of generation; they united themselves to women and engendered the giants and taught them the arts, good and bad. The giants themselves in uniting themselves to beasts engendered monstrous men and demons, male and female; these anges undergo punishment in places where fire and hot water stream from the earth. The souls of sinners become demons. According to the contrary thesis, the rebel angels remained incorporeal beings; and not themselves but by means of men were they united to women, or even that neither directly nor indirectly did they do this, and the souls of sinners are not changed into demons.
The sky is spherical and has a circular movement; it is not spherical and does not have a circular movement. In the verse, "The Spirit of God was moving over the waters," the Holy Spirit is referred to; it does not refer to the Holy Spirit but to one of the four elements. The day of the Lord is both the eighth day and the first; and it is not so.
The souls of men are bodies endowed with intelligence and are fashioned according to the exterior appearance of the body. According to the opposite opinion, the soul is incorporeal and doesn't take on corporeal form. Souls existed before the creation of the world and descended from the heavens into bodies like those of Moses, and the prophets, of Socrates, of Plato, of John the Baptist and the apostles, and that of the Lord himself. According to the opposite opinion, souls did not exist in heaven before bodies, but are born at the moment of the generation of the body; however, the body comes into existence first, and then the soul; or even, souls do not come into existence before or after the body, but, better still, body and soul come into existence together.16
The body of Adam was fashioned with some earth by God; it was not from earth, but from water and spirit. The breath that God breathed in the face of Adam was a temporal breath and not the eternal Spirit; it was not temporal but an immortal soul 17. It was neither a temporal breath nor a soul but a spirit, since man is composed of three elements: spirit, soul and body. And the breath breathed into Adam was none of the three elements just mentioned but the Holy Spirit, and it is neither soul nor spirit but the breath that created the soul.
Earth, water and the other elements are transformed to give fruit and planys; nourishment is transformed to give flesh, nerves and the other elements of the body. According to the opposed thesis, earth is not transformed into plants and fruit nor nourishment into our body.
After death, the soul does not leave either the body or the tomb; on the contrary, it does not stay with the body nor in the tomb. On this question Gobar, who disposed of witnesses in abundance, only produced that of Severian of Gabala and that of Irenaeus.
All that is created is corruptible and mortal and it is by the will of God that it remains indissoluble and incorruptible. According to the opposed thesis, that which is corruptible by nature cannot be made incorruptible by the will of God, because to speak thus is self-contradictory and attributes the impossible to the creator. For this proposition the author has produced a citation borrowed from Justin Martyr; the latter had undertaken to combat the opinions of the pagans and refutes Plato who said, "Since you were born, you are neither immortal nor quite indestructible and yet, you won't suffer dissolution and you won't undergo a mortal destiny because you have obtained a stronger link which is my will." 18 And the martyr refutes the Platonic sophism and shows that Plato propounds a self-contradictory creator and doesn't include any logical reasoning; because by necessity, whether indeed that which is created is corruptible according to the definition above, or that in fact he lies in saying that everything that is born is corruptible.19 And Gobar hijacks the argument destined to confound the pagan in such a way that it serves the refute the position of the church.
The chapters in question are elaborated by the author by means of pairs of contradictory citations as usual; he then returns to chapters from a single point of view. He first says ---- and this is the thirty-eighth chapter of the whole work ---- what the teaching was concerning the incarnation of our Lord according to St. Eustathius,20 who occupied the episcopal chair of Antioch, then what was the teaching of the very holy Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, and how the doctors of the church understood the verse, "Of the day and the hour, no-one is told, not the angels nor the Son but only the Father," 21 and how Severus understood it.
After these subjects treated in a single sense, he returns to producing citations in two senses, and makes a forty-second chapter22 where it is said that our Lord Jesus Christ was nourished with milk by Mary, the mother of God, and that he was not so nourished.
The verse, "The least in the kingdom of Heaven is greater than John the Baptist," was spoken by the Saviour of himself; it was not of himself that he said this, but of John the Evangelist.
Our Lord Jesus the Christ was crucified aged thirty. He was not thirty, but thirty-three; and not thirty-three but forty; nor thirty-three or forty but much older, so that he wasn't far short of fifty.
At the moment when the Lord transmitted the mystery of the New Covenant to his disciples, he was eating the passover; and he was not eating the passover at that moment.
The brass serpent that Moses made in the desert was a "type" of the Master; and it was not his "type" but an "anti-type." He that cut off the ear of the High Priest was Thomas; it wasn't Thomas but Peter.
At the moment of the Passion, the divinity was separated from the body of Christ; the divinity was not separated from either body or soul.
In exchange for the man who was possessed, the Lord gave his own blood to the enemy as a ransom since the enemy extorted it; in the opposing thesis, it was not the enemy but to God his father that the Christ made this offering.
The Christ was resurrected in most great and marvellous glory that he only manifested in his Transfiguration on the mountain, and after the resurrection he did not change his body to give himself the glory due to him, but made visible what he had been [already] before his death. Thus says Cyril; the opposing opinion is that of Dionysius of Alexandria.
It was on the twelfth day of the first month that Mary annointed the Lord with myrrh in the house of Simon the leper; it was the thirteenth day when the Lord gave the mystic supper to the disciples; the fourteenth when the passion of the Saviour took place, the fifteenth when he rose from the dead and the sixteenth when he rose into heaven; or, indeed, it was not so but it was the fourteenth day when he ate the mystic supper, the fifteenth when he was crucified, the sixteenth when he was resurrected. Or again it was not so either, but it was the thirteenth day, the Sunday, when the resurrection of the Lord took place, and he ascended into Heaven forty days later.
It was on the fifth evening at the moment when the Lord gave the mystic supper to his disciples that the sacrifice of his body began.
So far, therefore, it is the doctrines of the church and questions of a general kind that the author discusses in almost all his chapters, and most of the time he offers two opposing opinions with some contradictory witnesses and, in some cases, he can only establish a view by witnesses favourable only to a single thesis. From here on, he deals with some special questions, eighteen in number. For example, the opinion of Severus on the holy conductors of the churches and of the arrangements where he reflects on the words of Cyril and John in their message to Thomas, Bishop of Germanica; he does not approve of what St. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, said on the restoration of man, nor Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis and martyr, nor Irenaeus, the holy Bishop of Lyons, when they say that the kingdom of Heaven consists of the coming of certain material foods.23
St. Basil does not follow St. Dionysius of Alexandria on many points, above all those where the Arian heresy found an opportunity. The author says in defense ofArius that this was not from an impious intention, but in combatting Sabellius; that he had been carried away in his remarks against the opposite heresy. More still, concerning the Holy Spirit, he held improper opinions. But the great Athanasius himself defends Dionysius; "Because," he says, "Dionysius never shared the opinions of Arius, nor ignored the truth; in fact he was never condemned for heresy by other bishops and never included the ideas of Arius in his teaching." 24 Theodoret also uses the same language on the subject of the said Dionysius.
The author also cites some witnesses on the attitude of Theophilus and his synod in regard to St. John Chrysostom and the opinions of Atticus and Cyril on the subject of the same very holy John of Constantinople and the reticence of the very prudent Isidore of Pelusium with regard to Theophilus and Cyril, the bishops of Alexandria, concerning St. John Chrysostom; he blames the first for their hostility towards Chrysostom, while he praises and admires him.
Severus, who undertook to criticise St. Isidore without good reason, imagines as his subject an accusation of origenism,25 and yet, conquered by the truth, spontaneously admits his error.
The author reports some suspicions that Hippolytus and Epiphanius encouraged concerning Nicholas, one of the seven deacons, whom they condemn energetically. On the other hand the divine Ignatius and Clement, the author of the Stromateis, and Eusebius Pamphilus and Theodoret of Cyr condemn the heresy of the Nicolaitans but deny that Nocholas was connected with it. Hippolytus and Irenaeus claim that the Letter to the Hebrews is not by Paul 26, but Clement and Eusebius and a numerous company of the other fathers count this letter among the others and say that Clement named above translated it from Hebrew.
Origen and Theognostus received the approbation of the great Athanasius of Alexandria in many of their works; Titus of Bostra and Gregory the Theologian in their letters call him the friend of virtue while Gregory of Nyssa speaks of him in favourable terms. St. Dionysius, writing to this personage, then after his death to Theotechnus Bishop of Caesarea, praises Origen. And Alexander, Bishop of the Holy Towns 27 and martyr, in a letter to the same Origen treats him in a very friendly manner. Theophilus and Epiphanius reject Origen with vigour. The author reports the suspicions of most holy Hippolytus in regard to the heresy of the Montanists as well as those of Gregory of Nyssa.
Such are the chapters concerning questions of detail. He then returns again to more general ideas and presents some citations which attest that the soul of someone dead derives great advantage from prayers, offerings and alms given in its name; and the opposed opinion that it is not so.28
These are all the chapters that we have found assembled in the work of Gobar.
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11-14-2012, 12:28 AM
