Wisdom, Knowledge, and the Nature of Spiritual Food

It is being accomplished. Those wandering in the streets who engage in adultery and fornication and theft take up thoughts; but those wandering outside of these things move contrary to nature, seeking the bed of a man, and taking up fantasies of certain forbidden things.

If of the thoughts some are pure and others are impure; and if of lines some are called straight and others are bent; a bent straight line is an angle; therefore an impure thought is an intellectual angle. Thus, the fact that vice sits in every angle shows that it deceives the soul through all the impure thoughts. A passion is a demonic, empassioned notion, calling the soul forth toward shameful work.

Vice seeks to disgrace the countenance of our soul through myrrh and saffron and cinnamon and various spices; which things, according to the inventors of evils, signify bad and diverse passions. If he returns to his house after many days, having strictly held to the spiritual economy, Paul writes at the end that the enemy has been defeated, death being abolished (1 Cor 15:26).

Of the erotic ones there are three kinds: the keps, the white, and the one called the asterias. Of these, the keps is difficult to breed and to lay; for it both cries out and lays blood, as they say, letting it out from the eyes, and it gives birth poorly and painfully. These things, indeed, we have set down from the histories of Aristotle concerning animals.

But the Scripture seems to have fashioned its wording from the history of the keps-bird, of a woman being keps-like, yielding to the prostitute and becoming like a bird through incontinence, as if being moved. It stings us with thoughts, but murders us with sins.

Between audacity and cowardice, courage stands. He says that wisdom is sometimes praised in exits and sometimes in entrances; that is, among those going out from vice and entering into virtue. For he names the one going out and the one entering as exit and entrance; and often we have noted this habit of his, that from the exits he names those possessing the qualities, namely the best and the worst. He has spoken of virtue here as a heart, that which coincides with the heart. The. Text cuts off....

Friendship here has received its kind from instruction and knowledge; for he brings forward both instruction and knowledge. For wisdom is better than costly stones, since instruction and knowledge are contained within wisdom, which is first the gift of the Holy Spirit, if indeed the word of wisdom is given through the Spirit. This same thing is also called the spirit of adoption.

It is to be noted that he calls the unrighteous, the oppressor, and the proud by injustice, insolence, and arrogance, naming them from their practicing habit. The same food and meat are called both bread and milk and vegetables and wine; yet the foolish are said to partake as if it were bread and as if it were wine having been mixed. If it is this, how shall we understand that man ate the Bread of angels.

Spiritual knowledge is a vessel containing discourses concerning the incorporeal and the corporeal and judgment and providence. If Paul the apostle is a servant of Christ, and Christ is wisdom, then Paul the apostle is a servant of wisdom. Likewise, let us gather the word concerning the other apostles and the prophets, having shown them to be servants of wisdom. This preaching alone is lofty, proclaiming the places of knowledge of God. He did not say 'of my own flesh,' for solid food is for the perfect. One must not rebuke the evil by sinning; rather, one should converse with them about the fear of God, which persuades them to depart from wickedness.

If knowing the law is the work of a good mind, and doing the commandment is the work of a good mind; but before that, doing the commandment is to know the law, if knowledge is found to come after purification. He who relies on falsehood is a fool. Being tossed by every wind of doctrine and shipwrecked regarding the faith. For he abandoned the way of his own vineyard. For he abandoned the vine that said: 'I am the vine, you are the branches, and my Father is the gardener' (John 15:5). He gathers unfruitfulness with his hands: unfruitfulness is wickedness and ignorance. Which does not know shame. Since shame is a teacher, it is said: 'He does not know shame.' And David says that the fear of God is a teaching: 'Come, children, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord' (Psalm 34:11). But if fear and shame are passions of the soul...