Annotatio LVIII

”He placed before Paradise a Cherub.” — Genesis 3:24

Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, in the book of Questions on Genesis, question 40, inquiring what Τὰ Χερουβίμ [ta Cheroubim] — that is, the Cherubim — placed to guard the tree of life, are, answers two things. The first: that it must not be believed that the Cherubim, the guardians of Paradise, are spiritual and invisible powers, as some think, but [rather] certain powerful and terrible visions, and forms of animals, which would keep Adam from the entrance of Paradise. The second is: that the Cherubim, of which frequent mention is made in the divine Scriptures, are neither animals, nor any substance of invisible nature;¹ but divine Scripture calls “Cherubim” everything that is endowed with great power. Thus David says in the Psalm, “Thou who sittest upon the Cherubim”² — that is, who reignest powerfully; and in another Psalm, “He ascended upon the Cherubim, and flew,”³ etc. — that is, he came with much and great power and virtue. These things Theodoret [says]; before whom Theodore, Bishop of Heraclea, and after whom Procopius of Gaza, explaining this same passage of Genesis, wrote the same opinion, and in almost the same words. At last, in our own times, there came forth out of Greece a certain new heresiarch, James Chyus, who, among many heresies of the ancient heretics recalled by himself, brought this error back into the light.⁴ He, when in an exposition of the Creed published by him he was making a discourse about the angels, wrote among other things these things about the Cherubim: “Cherubim, in the sacred letters, does not signify any spiritual substance, or some incorporeal animal, but a statue formed to the likeness of a boy: such as were those boyish golden statues placed upon the ark, and that statue with the fiery sword placed for the guarding of Paradise, which Moses called ‘Cherubim.’ For this was not an angelic spirit, but a certain manly image, of horrible form and covered about with a mask, which God had placed before the doors of Paradise to strike terror into the first parents — after the manner of farmers, who fix in their crops and gardens wooden stakes clothed with the torn rags of human garments, so that by that kind of scarecrow they may frighten off the birds from feeding on the seeds and crops. Whence, lest anyone should think the Cherubim to be living and spiritual substances, it was provided by the synodal laws of the Greeks that it should not be sung, in the Trisagion of the angels, ‘Thou who sittest upon the Cherubim.’”⁵ Thus far James.

Against this error is the authority of all the Fathers,⁶ and especially of the Greeks, but chiefly of Dionysius the Areopagite: who, in chapter 7 of the Celestial Hierarchy, enumerates the Cherubim immediately after the Seraphim, in the second rank of the first and supreme hierarchy of the celestial spirits; and ascribes to these, according to the interpretation of the Hebrew name, [an] excel- [ascribes to these, according to the interpretation of the Hebrew name, an] most excellent fullness of surpassing knowledge, drawn from the fount of divine wisdom. Consenting to whom, Athanasius, in the sermon upon that [text], “All things are delivered to me by my Father,”⁷ says that the Cherubim are most ample living beings, than which nothing is nearer to God, who extol the majesty of God with lips never ceasing. Chrysostom, in the third sermon On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, says the Cherubim are powers superior to the seraphic spirits, and nearer to God — whose appellation signifies a full and heaped-up nature. And the same [Chrysostom], in his Liturgy, addresses God in these words: “To thee indeed stand by thousands of Archangels, and many thousands of Angels, Cherubim and Seraphim with six wings, with many eyes, sublime, feathered, singing the hymn of victory, crying aloud, clamoring and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”⁸ But even Theodoret himself, perhaps repenting of his error, in the book of the Divine Decrees placed the Cherubim among the angels by the testimony of divine Scripture, thus writing in chapter 7: “The ministry of the Angels is the praise of God and the chanting of hymns. For of the Seraphim blessed Isaiah said that they cry out, saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth’; but of the Cherubim divine Ezekiel said that he heard from them, ‘Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place.’”⁹ Finally, in the Second Council of Nicaea, in the fourth session, the opinion of Athanasius is approved, expounding that saying from the Psalm, “Thou who sittest upon the Cherubim,”¹⁰ in these words: “The Cherubim, unknown by nature to all men, are spirit and fire, alien from all figuration of bodies and [bodily] nature; and the things which are said of them by the prophet as of corporeal beings have a symbolic sense.”

But that the Cherubim, whom Moses reports in this place, are celestial powers, not only Ambrose, Augustine, and all the Latin doctors, but also very many of the Greek doctors testify — among whom Chrysostom, expounding this passage, openly confesses it, saying: “God commanded that those powers, the Cherubim, should guard the way.” And in the sermon On the Ascension, explaining this same thing more clearly, he says: “The Angels and Archangels grieved at our punishments; and when we were punished, they too were held by excessive sadness. And the Cherubim, although they guarded Paradise, yet were saddened at our punishments; and just as a good fellow-servant, when he has undertaken from his lord a fellow-servant to be guarded, satisfies indeed the lord’s command, yet is worn down with excessive grief at the fellow-servant’s penalty: so also the Cherubim deserved indeed to guard paradise, but grieved at the honor of the guardianship.” Gennadius, expounding these same words of Moses, says, “Τὰ δὲ Χερουβίμ” — that is, [they] are invisible powers — “these he said received the guardianship of Paradise”; that is, the Cherubim are invisible powers, and he said that these same [powers] undertook the guardianship of Paradise.

But as to that which [James Chyus] adds about synods forbidding that there be sung in the Trisagion, “Thou who sittest upon the Cherubim,” I confess that I have nowhere read [it] in the volumes of the councils which now exist.¹¹ If, beyond their number, there be some other synod of received authority in which this is found prohibited, we shall say that it was not simply prohibited by that synod that “Thou who sittest upon the Cherubim” should be uttered, but that there should not be sung “Thou who sittest upon the Cherubim” with the particle added, “And [upon] the Seraphim” — just as of old certain unskilled persons used to sing in the public prayers, whom Jerome, in the commentaries on the sixth chapter of Isaiah, condemns in these words: “The Lord is plainly shown to sit upon the Cherubim after the manner of a charioteer; but [that he sits] upon the Seraphim, I know not that I have read in the Canonical Scriptures. Therefore they err who are wont to say in [their] prayers, ‘Thou who sittest upon the Cherubim and Seraphim,’ which Scripture has not taught.” Or it must be said that that synod sanctioned this not for the reason that the Cherubim should be believed to be inanimate things, lacking reason and life, but that every occasion of corrupting that angelic Trisagion might be taken away from the heretics: for also, in the fifth Council of Constantinople, for the same cause it was decreed that there should not be sung in the same Trisagion, “Thou who wast crucified for us,” which Peter, Bishop of Antioch, had deceitfully added for the confirmation of his heresy.

But the Trisagion — that you may also know this, kind reader — is a Greek Canticle so named because it contains “Hagion” [Holy] three times, to designate the three persons of the divine nature;¹² which the Greeks express in these words: ἅγιος ὁ Θεός, ἅγιος ἰσχυρός, ἅγιος ἀθάνατος, ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς — that is, “Holy God, Holy Strong [One], Holy Immortal [One], have mercy on us.” Pope Felix, in the Epistle to the Emperor Zeno, relates that the origin of the song was of this kind.¹³ When the city of Constantinople was shaken by frequent earthquakes, and the people, praying in a field, cried out “Lord, have mercy”: a little child, while the whole people, together with Proclus, Bishop of the city, looked on, was caught up into heaven for one hour; and there he learned a hymn of this kind, which, descending from heaven, he made known to the people; and the people, resounding that same thing with public voice, freed the city from danger; and the Church reckoned the hymn among the celebrated songs, and the Council of Chalcedon approved it. This hymn, therefore, when divers heretics had rashly tampered with it by adding various acclamations,¹⁴ it was provided by the synods that suspect sentences should not be added to it. Of the number of which I suspect that saying, “Thou who sittest upon the Cherubim,” was then [reckoned]. Nor is it abhorrent from this suspicion, that John of Damascus writes, in the epistle on the Trisagion, indicating that there were certain followers of the aforesaid Peter who, from the testimony of St. Epiphanius wrongly expounded, asserted that this Trisagion hymn pertains to the Son of God alone, because he alone sits upon the Cherubim, and whom alone those four-formed animals glorified, saying, “Holy, holy, holy,” etc. Which dogma seemed indeed to distinguish Christ from the Trinity, and to introduce a certain quaternity.