To Pammachius against John of Jerusalem 7

7. The questions relate to the passages in theΠερὶ Αρχῶν. The first is this, “for as it is unfitting to say that the Son can see the Father, so neither is it meet to think that the Holy Spirit can see the Son.” The second point is the statement that souls are tied up in the body as in a prison; and that before man was made in Paradise they dwelt amongst rational creatures in the heavens. Wherefore, afterwards to console itself, the soul says in the Psalms, “Before I was humbled, I went wrong”; and“Return, my soul, to thy rest”; and“Lead my soul out of prison”; and similarly elsewhere. Thirdly, he says that both the devil and demons will some time or other repent, and ultimately reign with the saints. Fourthly, he interprets the coats of skin, with which Adam and Eve were clothed after their fall and ejection from Paradise, to be human bodies, and we are to suppose of course that previously, in Paradise, they had neither flesh, sinews, nor bones. Fifthly, he most openly denies the resurrection of the flesh and the bodily structure, and the distinction of senses, both in his explanation of the first Psalm, and in many other of his treatises. Sixthly, he so allegorises Paradise as to destroy historical truth, understanding angels instead of trees, heavenly virtues instead of rivers, and he overthrows all that is contained in the history of Paradise by his figurative interpretation. Seventhly, he thinks that the waters which are said in Scripture to be above the heavens are holy and supernal essences, while those which are above the earth and beneath the earth are, on the contrary, demoniacal essences. The eighth is Origen’s cavil that the image and likeness of God, in which man was created, was lost, and was no longer in man after he was expelled from Paradise.