Critique of Protagoras and the nature of perception

To be freed from the fever. 'Hope in God, for I will confess to him' (Ps 34:8). Once she persuaded herself to hope in God, she was restored from dread and turmoil, which dread and which turmoil arose from the malice of evil powers and from the devil himself. 'From lions, my only-begotten one' (Ps 22:1). He named these malicious ones and lions those who wish to fight, those who attack and come like whips against him.

Since 'he has been tested in all things, yet without sin, according to the likeness' (Heb 4:15), we grant her a pre-passion. But pre-passion is not sin; for if you do not grant this, you bring something foreign into the soul, and it would have neither glory nor worthiness of praise and crowns if it were not shaken. For you have in the Gospel that: 'she began to be terrified and to be in distress' (Mk 5:38); for is not the 'beginning' something other than the pre-passion? This beginning is only the beginning itself; it has nothing with it. This alone, before the choosing of evils, chose the good. This has often been said.

The essence of the rational soul is receptive of those things it is naturally disposed to receive. It is receptive of passion, desire, grief, turmoil, and fear. When something presents itself that moves fear, the rational essence is certainly troubled. Sometimes, however, it establishes the turmoil immediately as if nothing were with it. This they call pre-passion.

You say: is it the same to say 'a man' and 'a doing man'? If I say a man has died, I do not speak of the 'doing' man, such as the righteous man. The death of the righteous is not necessarily the dissolution of the soul from the body, but the ceasing of being righteous. This is the corruption of the righteous. Often, being ignorant of the false opinions of the ungodly, we fall into them. And falling into those, we lose the right opinion. You ask: how do you say that I have not understood? I do not call him righteous. But if another understands as has been said and calls him righteous, he is the same man both righteous and unrighteous. Listen then, because...

What have I said regarding the opinion of the Protagoreans—for Protagoras was a Sophist—they say that being for those that exist is in appearing. They say: 'I appear to you now sitting; but when away, I do not appear sitting; it is unclear whether I sit or do not sit.' And they say that all existing things are in appearing; for example, I see the moon, but another does not see it; it is unclear whether it is or is not. To me, the healthy one, there comes a perception of honey that it is sweet, but to another that it is bitter, if he is feverish; it is therefore unclear whether it is bitter or sweet. And thus they wish to dogmatize incomprehensibility.

If then we also say: 'Since it does not appear to me, by what reasoning has he spoken, I consider him unjust and impious.' If it appears to another, by what reasoning has he spoken, he appears just and pious to that one. And another again does not even stand by the things said by him; neither is he pious nor impious, and we fall into the Protagorean opinion. Let us see then: it is necessary first to understand things and thus to judge or not to judge. He who does not speak of him correctly nor healthily spoken, what kind of intellect of the words does he speak of?

But how then does Job speak? (Job 3:3) If I say: 'Let the day perish in which I was born,' let the genesis perish; for I have come from better things to worse; for it is profitable for me that the evil should perish. As if Jeremiah speaks concerning the people of the Hebrews—and each of the captured Hebrews will say—'Let the day of captivity perish,' he does not say this: 'let there be no more captivity.' 'Let there be no more,' he says, 'that day, it has passed away'; for has it still stood? It had one hundred and forty-eight years when he said these things. How did that day, in which he was born, remain? For it passes away and it is not possible to turn it back. And he says: 'Let it not be a fruitful day' (Jeremiah 31:14); for does someone pray for that day, having occurred in so many years, to turn back again? He therefore curses the genesis of the flesh, the genesis...

The Greek text ends abruptly mid-sentence.