Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book II/Chapter XIV

by Arnobius

14. Do you dare to laugh at us when we speak of hell,^[1] and fires^[2] which cannot be quenched, into which we have learned that souls are cast by their foes and enemies? What, does not your Plato also, in the book which he wrote on the immortality of the soul, name the rivers Acheron, Styx,^[3] Cocytus, and Pyriphlegethon, and assert that in them souls are rolled along, engulphed, and burned up? But though a man of no little wisdom,^[4] and of accurate judgment and discernment, he essays a problem which cannot be solved; so that, while he says that the soul is immortal, everlasting, and without bodily substance, he yet says that they are punished, and makes them suffer pain.^[5] But what man does not see that that which is immortal, which is simple,^[6] cannot be subject to any pain; that that, on the contrary, cannot be immortal which does suffer pain? And yet his opinion is not very far from the truth. For although the gentle and kindly disposed man thought it inhuman cruelty to condemn souls to death, he yet not unreasonably^[7] supposed that they are cast into rivers blazing with masses of flame, and loathsome from their foul abysses. For they are cast in, and being annihilated, pass away vainly in^[8] everlasting destruction. For theirs is an intermediate^[9] state, as has been learned from Christ’s teaching; and they are such that they may on the one hand perish if they have not known God, and on the other be delivered from death if they have given heed to His threats^[10] and proffered favours. And to make manifest^[11] what is unknown, this is man’s real death, this which leaves nothing behind. For that which is seen by the eyes is only a separation of soul from body, not the last end—annihilation:^[12] this, I say, is man’s real death, when souls which know not God shall^[13] be consumed in long-protracted torment with raging fire, into which certain fiercely cruel beings shall^[14] cast them, who were unknown^[15] before Christ, and brought to light only by His wisdom.

Footnotes

1. Pl. Cf. Milman’s note on Gibbon, vol. 2, c. xi. p. 7.
2. Lit., “certain fires.”
3. Plato, in the passage referred to (Phædo, st. p. 113, § 61), speaks of the Styx not as a river, but as the lake into which the Cocytus falls. The fourth river which he mentions in addition to the Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus, which he calls Stygian, is the Ocean stream.
4. So the ms., according to Hild., reading parvæ; but acc. to Rigaltius and Crusius, it gives pravæ—“of no mean.”
5. So LB., Hild., and Oehler, reading doloris afficiat sensu, by merely dropping m from the ms. sensu-m; while all the other edd. read doloribus sensuum—“affects with the pains of the senses.”
6. i.e., not compounded of soul and body.
7. Or, “not unsuitably,” absone.
8. Lit., “in the failure (or ‘disappointment’) of,” etc.
9. i.e., neither immortal nor necessarily mortal.
10. So Gelenius emended the unintelligible ms. reading se-mina by merely adding s, followed by all edd., although Ursinus in the margin suggests se mîam, i.e., mi-sericordiam—“pity;” and Heraldus conjectures munia—“gifts.”
11. So almost all edd., from a conjecture of Gelenius, supplying ut, which is wanting in the ms., first ed., and Oehler.
12. It is worth while to contrast Augustine’s words: “The death which men fear is the separation of the soul from the body. The true death, which men do not fear, is the separation of the soul from God” (Aug. in Ps. xlviii., quoted by Elmenhorst).
13. In the first ed., Gelenius, Canterus, Ursinus, and Orelli, both verbs are made present, but all other edd. follow the ms. as above.
14. In the first ed., Gelenius, Canterus, Ursinus, and Orelli, both verbs are made present, but all other edd. follow the ms. as above.
15. Lit., “and unknown.” Here Arnobius shows himself ignorant of Jewish teaching, as in iii. 12.