The Origin of Sin: An English Translation of the "Hamartigenia"

The Origin of Sin

Where does your madness hurl you, treacherous Cain,22 blasphemer, you who split our God in two? Isn’t the one creator clear to you? Is your divided vision darkened by mist?23 Your keen gaze, spoiled, pursues two different paths,24 5 its sight deceived by double phantom figures. The twofold shape of earthly things makes sport of you and makes you stupidly believe a God divided reigns above the heavens. But though this sordid world confuses two 10 opposing elements of good and evil, Heaven itself submits to a single God. Because there are two different sorts of works that stir anxieties in human hearts, it does not therefore follow that the heavens 15 retain two rulers. It is the outer man 22. Cain, whom we have seen in the preface making an improper division of his sacrifice, is identified with Marcion and by extension with other heretical thinkers who fail to comprehend the unity of God. The divisiveness that characterizes heretical thought is compounded by the social effect of heresy, which destroys the unity of the church. 23. The first appearance of one of the key thematic elements in the poem, vision. Man’s imperfect vision leads him to incorrect perception of the true nature of the universe. 24. “Two paths”: The Latin is divortia, from divortium, “a separation, a place where the road divides, a fork.” The word is part of a network of imagery of being lost, or going astray, related to the poem’s central concept, sin. The Greek word hamartia, from which the title of the poem is formed, means “error, failure, sin,” and is derived from the verb hamartano, “to miss the mark, go astray, err.” Rather than following the single true path, Cain/Marcion’s gaze is tricked into following two paths. The image of the fork in the road is developed more fully at H. 1051–67 (Lat. 789–801) in a parable illustrating Adam’s dilemma at the moment of choosing to sin. THE ORIGIN OF SIN 8 ] THE ORIGIN OF SIN: AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION born of the earth, who, when he apprehends that things are so, is led to the conclusion that two powers exist for different realms. Because he thinks there is a God who once 20 created evil and likewise one who shaped all good things and brought them into being, he then concludes a pair of Gods exists, both supreme but having different natures. What twofold nature can maintain itself 25 or rule for long if a divided source separates it from the throne and checks it by constant change of ruler? Either God is one and holds the highest power, or the two that now exist are both diminished: 30 both cannot have supremacy. It’s clear that nothing is supreme if it’s not one, omnipotent, since separate things claim power each for itself, rejecting the other’s rule, and so are not supreme and not almighty. 35 Dispersed authority is not complete: one cannot have a thing another has. If you divide the pile, it grows smaller. We testify that God is whole and One and indivisible; in Him is Christ 40 who, like Him, is whole and One, who lives now, has lived before all things, and will live, and brook no partner, as agreed. The Father is the summit of all powers, the ruler who holds sway over everything, 45 the source sublime of virtue, nature’s crown, the universal single fountainhead, the author of beginning and of birth, from whom all things, light and time and years and number flow; who willed that after One 50 another thing will follow: numbers start with One and One alone cannot be counted. And since there is no other God and Father, and Christ cannot be second to the Father, the One who has a single Son exists 55 before all number, God, and rightly God, for He is first and one: first in power and first in whom He sired. But how does pure LINES 12–64 [ 9 generation make a difference?25 Both begetter and the One begot from One 60 before the darkness of primeval chaos, free of number and time, will always be One. What man has dared to say the power that governs in one majesty, belongs to itself alone, and was eternal 65 before the world began, is two? Who dares to rip apart...