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The Seed and the Body
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You sow what is about to become, but if you should happen to find a naked grain of wheat or of something else; but God gives it a body, just as He willed. It has also been demonstrated concerning the seeds, how it dies and is made alive (1 Cor 15:36 ), and that God gives it a body.
Greek τὸ γενησόμενον σπείρεις, ἀλλὰ γυμνὸν κόκκον εἰ τύχοι σίτου ἤ τινος τῶν λοιπῶν· ὁ δὲ θεὸς δίδωσιν αὐτῷ σῶμα, καθὼς ἠθέλησεν. Ἀποδέδεικται καὶ περὶ τῶν σπερμάτων, πῶς ἀποθνῄσκει καὶ ζωοποιεῖται καὶ ὅτι ὁ θεὸς δίδωσιν αὐτῷ σῶμα,
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About this text A fierce defense of Christian truth against deceptive heresies and their harmful influence on believers.
This treatise is attributed to Amphilochius of Iconium (c. 340–c. 395), a bishop in central Asia Minor and a first cousin of Gregory of Nazianzus. The work survives in a single damaged thirteenth-century manuscript, and its beginning and end are missing, so the original title and author are not certain. Gerhard Ficker argued for Amphilochius as the author in 1906, and Cornelius Datema published an updated Greek edition under the title Contra Haereticos in 1978. The treatise was written in the second half of the 370s.
The work is directed against the beliefs and practices of the Encratites and Apotactites of rural Lycaonia, groups that rejected marriage, meat, wine, and material possessions as incompatible with Christian holiness. Amphilochius argues that their strict separation from ordinary life is a deception and an apostasy from the faith of the church. He addresses the heretic directly, arguing against the rejection of the mysteries and against the idea that created things are evil.
The argument moves through biblical examples, including Abraham's hospitality, the eating of meat by holy people, the abundance of fishes at the Lord's command, and the physical reality of Christ's body after the resurrection. The author uses the analogy of a seed dying and rising to explain the resurrection of the body, and he appeals to Old Testament sacrifices and holy meals to show that material things are not evil in themselves. Because the manuscript is damaged, some passages have been restored by editors, and a reader should expect occasional gaps or conjectural readings.
We have not yet re-checked this work against its source. We made this study translation with AI help. No scholar has yet certified it as faithful and complete. Open Greek on any section to see the source text. It is not a critical edition.
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