I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel

It is with good reason that I shout out these words with Paul and now in admiration I quote him, “O depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!” For no one has known the mind of the Lord, nor has anyone been His counselor. How could the creature look upon the mind of the Creator or be able to comprehend His thinking? Or how could the thing made ever give counsel to the Maker, as if the Maker were in want of its counsel or needed the imperfect for His perfection. For this reason, the Gospel is foolishness in the eyes of the unwise, since the wisdom of men has been turned into foolishness. For this reason, the Academy has ceased activity, the Stoa has fallen silent, the Peripatos lies idle, the Lyceum slumbers, and Athens has been humbled, namely, in order that these places, having rejected God the Creator, not turn God’s creations into gods. For they waged war against God and the wisdom of God, judging visible things to be greater than God and not wishing to contemplate God, the Maker of those things. This is why they have been rendered foolish, this is why they have been made silent, this is why they have been hurled to the depths of oblivion.

Hence Nazareth is prophesied, where the Gospel of God is announced; hence Bethlehem is proclaimed in advance, where God is born in the flesh; hence Jerusalem is foretold where God is active and performs His miracles; hence Golgotha is predicted, where God accepts the cross; hence the place of the Resurrection is celebrated, where God arises after His burial; hence Sion is foretold and the northern side is predicted, where Christ appears after His resurrection from the dead; hence the Mount of Olives is glorified, from where God in the form of a man ascends to heaven. The former places have been discarded, the latter have been introduced instead; the former rendered foolish, the latter endowed with wisdom; the former are covered in ashes, the latter are covered in glory; the former have been justly deprived of honor, since they did not honor God, the latter are fittingly glorified, since they rendered glory to God in a fitting way. For the former places became stumbling blocks for men, leading them to perdition and dispatching them to the depths of Hades; the latter are places of salvation for men, bringing them back from death to life and leading them from earth to heaven. Having consigned the former to oblivion, we rejoice over the latter now, we celebrate these today. We are rightly initiated into these; for they represent the rites and mysteries of God, being celebrated in human fashion, but in a mystical way bringing the initiated to perfection.

Perhaps someone, either in the grips of unbelief or feigning ignorance of the rite, might ask us what is the present mystery of Christ (that is, the one we now celebrate), or what the mighty work of Christ is (that is, the one for which we hold our liturgical display and procession). To the children of the Church and the initiates of the Spirit, on the other hand, all the mysteries of Christ are clear and known and none of the mystical rites is unknown. Nevertheless, I will cry out and proclaim aloud and herald the special marks of this feast day. “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel” of Christ, as Paul before us loudly proclaimed, but with his help I put to shame the conceits of the pagan sages, for it is the incomprehensible “power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” How could I be ashamed to speak of the ineffable power of God? Let not the likes of Aristagoras, Anaxagoras, and Anaximander or the likes of Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Plato, the wisest champions of wisdom turned to folly, vainly find fault with our mysteries, sages who do not have the ability to “understand either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.” It was only fair that a fisherman’s reed marked these men and that a leather-worker’s knife cut them up and left them inert and lifeless refuse of the earth. But barring these from our wise feast, as men who expelled themselves from God’s wisdom and gorged themselves on empty folly, let us praise as with the voices of theologians and celebrate with pure souls the wonderful accomplishments of God; for this is most fitting for God’s divine feasts and it is what God demands from those who celebrate His feasts.

*From Soprhonios of Jerusalem, Homilies, translated by John M. Duffy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020), 105-109. Available for purchase from Eighth Day Books.