/lit/ - Literature

>>19483130
Not a quote, but a passage about the OT by St. Maximus the Confessor.

>What is the meaning of the brazen serpent that Moses hung on a high [banner] in the desert?

Anciently, having deceived man, the mental serpent through disobedience mixed into our flesh the law of sin, like a serpent crawling into us through pleasure, therefore, if one who walks through virtue that does not have passions, turns to Egypt, that is, into the darkness of sin, then thought-snakes will sting him. But if he looks at the crucified Lord, whose flesh, suspended on a high [cross], has killed and made the law of sin, which is in our flesh from the serpent, inactive, then he will be saved. The copper serpent, since neither destruction nor rust touches the nature of copper, just as the Lord was not touched by the rust of sin and His flesh did not see corruption (Acts 2:31).

Gregory the Theologian mentions this in the following words: The brazen serpent is suspended against the stinging serpents, but not as an image of the One who suffered for us, but as the image of the opposite. And again: the Believer subjugates the forces subordinated to him [that is, the devil] .This also needs to be clarified. The one who has cleansed the eyes of the soul with virtue and knowledge clearly realizes that evil is not [any] existence, that it does not exist in anything from existence, except in actions.

So, since the serpent, the originator of evil, mixed the curvature of sin to man through disobedience, Moses ordered to hang the brazen serpent, showing [at the same time] what was to be done with the Lord in the future; After all, he alone, through the passions, nailed sin to the cross and showed [it] to to be inactive and dead.

The one who looks at Him and believes that the enemy has died and has become inactive, that also mortifies the forces subordinated to him, for [the enemy] can no longer harm him through feelings or the sensory - [through all that] over which he has power. That is why the [holy] father says: not as an image, but as an image of the opposite, pointing to the mortification of the devil.