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THE COMPLETE WORKS OF MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR * Volume 2, To Thalassius; Volume 3, To Thalassius; 100... continued... To Thalassius, Volume 2, To Thalassius * THE FOLLOWING ARE CONTAINED IN THE FIRST BOOK OF THE DIFFICULTIES OF DIVINE SCRIPTURE BY MAXIMUS THE MONK: A PREFACE TO THE SCHOLIA PLACED IN THE MARGINS Reason is by nature the beauty of rational beings; and the beauty of reason is the accurate understanding of rational beings according to reason; and the beauty of understanding is the fruitful habit of rational beings in accordance with virtue together with reason; and the beauty of this habit is the unerring contemplation concerning true knowledge, whose end is wisdom, being the most manifest completion of understanding, inasmuch as it is a reason perfected according to nature—which is a pure intellect, having taken on a relation beyond thought through its union with the Cause; by which, having ceased its manifold natural motion and relation toward the things after the Cause, it cleaves unknowably to that alone, having come to be in the unutterable lot of the all-blessed silence beyond thought, which neither reason nor thought is wholly able to make manifest, but only, through participation, the experience of those deemed worthy of the enjoyment beyond thought, of which the clear and to all evident sign is the soul's complete insensibility toward and separation from this present age in disposition.

From this, knowing that nothing according to reason is more akin to rational beings, nor indeed is the practice and understanding concerning it more conducive to good repute for the lovers of God. The work of Saint Maximus has been divided into volumes, and the pages are recorded according to the order of the "GREGORY PALAMAS" editions of "TO BYZANTION," Thessaloniki 1992, PHILOKALIA OF THE NEPTIC AND ASCETIC FATHERS, so that the reader may easily consult a translation. The text comes from three sources: 1) from the electronic library of Greek texts, ( :// ), 2) texts not included in the [edition] from the Patrologia of [Migne], volumes 90 and 91 (typed by the mother of Fr. Arsenios Meskos), and 3) the scholia on the works of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite from the BYZANTION editions; the text was passed through a scanner, followed by optical character recognition and proofreading. The volume and page for the BYZANTION editions are recorded in the following manner: , that is, the tenth page of volume B follows. There is also an indication of the page of the Patrologia when the text comes from there.

I call more fitting reason, not the reason that comes from craft in utterance, cleverly bewitched by eloquence for the pleasure of hearing, which even wicked men could practice if they pursued it, but the reason that nature possesses substantially and without learning, hidden in disposition, for the unerring examination of things that exist and the discernment of the truth in all things—the reason that the Holy Spirit of God, when it has been well formed by the virtues, is naturally led to dwell with and to fashion into a divine ornament of beauty according to His likeness, lacking in nothing of the qualities that naturally belong to the Godhead, according to grace (for it is an instrument that knowledgeably gathers the whole impression of divine goodness that shines forth intelligibly in things that exist, through which, entering into the mighty works of things that exist, it brings and is brought to the generating cause of things that exist—those who have made their whole impulse of the natural desire within them entirely directed toward it, being utterly mastered by nothing of the things that come after the cause)—this reason we cultivate, and we become tamers of all evil passions, enslaved to nothing contrary to nature, and we are shown forth as doers of all the divine virtues, clearly scraping away, by every good means, the ugliness of the soul that comes from matter into spiritual beauty.

For where reason prevails, the power that belongs to sense naturally passes away, in which the strength of sin is in some way mingled, dragging the soul through pleasure toward pity for the kindred flesh according to subsistence; and by this, having entrusted to it as its natural work the passionate care of the flesh according to pleasure, it leads it away from the life according to nature and persuades it to become the maker of non-subsistent evil. For evil is the forgetfulness of the soul endowed with intellect regarding the good things according to nature, which arises from the passionate attachment to the flesh and the world, an attachment which reason, taking command, makes to vanish, and by spiritual knowledge searches out both the origin and the nature of the world and of the flesh, and drives the soul toward the kindred region of intelligible things, to which the law of sin makes no crossing, since it no longer has, as a bridge to carry it across to the mind, the sense that has already been dissolved in relation to the soul according to attachment and has been cast down among sensible spectacles, whose attachment and nature the mind, having crossed over, does not perceive at all.

Knowing this, as I said, I thought it necessary to give this present discourse another kind of assistance—namely, the writing of the scholia set out in the margins, which both completes the discourse itself toward beauty and renders the intellectual feasting sweeter for those who encounter it, and simply becomes a clarification of the whole meaning contained in the work. For after the publication, having read through the entire treatise, and having found some passages needing clarification, others needing an addition of thought, and still others needing some moderate reflection upon the text as published, I made this writing of the scholia, as I said, fitting the appropriate reflection to each passage. Therefore I exhort all who will encounter it, or even copy it, to read and set alongside the writing of the scholia from outside, according to each one's marking, so that the discourse may be complete in every way, not maimed by any part being entirely neglected. SCHOLIA 1. Scholia are so called because they are taken from the Scripture and found in some manner outside the book, as it were frontispieces, whose exposition has an inner coherence. But scholia is also used in a particular sense for the hymnody, that is, the notable discourses.

2. He calls "distinguished rhetoric" that which is produced more by art than by nature. 3. Since the reason is corrupted by the senses, it draws the soul away from the flesh that is akin to it, with all its power, and makes it belong to God. The soul is said to be akin to the flesh in two ways: either because the soul, together with the flesh, completes one hypostasis, or because it shows disobedience to the reason and is bound together with the flesh through the senses. 4. He calls "power" the divine illumination itself, which is always present to the reason, as light is to the eyes, teaching the soul the natural virtues and calling it back from fleshly desire. 5. The law of sin is the passionate disposition of the soul toward matter, that is, toward bodily things. 6. The bridge of the soul is the sense separated from the sensible objects, through which the soul ascends by the reason, and through the reason to the intellect, and through the intellect to God. 7. He calls those who are devoted to the pursuits of spiritual philosophy "those who will engage.

8. He calls "treatise" all the questions of Thalassius, to which, responding in order, he set beside each one of the answers—that is, the scholia—for each exposition, which he showed to all the readers and copyists, that this book does this. 9. He calls "clearness," as I think, the interpretive manner of the exposition; "addition" not only the things that Thalassius puts forward from the Scripture, but also whatever the same man further adds and interprets; there is a "reminder" where, with exceptional clearness and in the manner of the exposition, he introduces the most lofty thoughts. PROLOGUE TO THE ONE WHO COMMANDED THE WRITING, TO THALASSIUS, MOST HOLY PRESBYTER AND HEGUMEN, CONCERNING VARIOUS DIFFICULTIES OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. To the most holy servant of God, the lord Thalassius, presbyter and hegumen, Maximus, humble monk, greeting. Having reasonably separated the soul from the flesh according to relation, and having wholly drawn the mind out of the senses through the Spirit, O man of God, you have established the mother of virtues, fruitful in many offspring, and you have shown the ever-flowing fountain of divine knowledge, making the soul's union with the flesh only for the use of the economy of better things, and possessing the senses as an instrument for the understanding of the great workmanship of things seen; the one, practically through character being formed toward the form of virtue, receiving the glory of the soul according to virtue and displaying it to those outside, so that we may have an image of virtue, set forth for imitation, your life; the other, by the shapes of things seen, the principles of things intelligible—

symbolically imprinting and through them raising the mind up to the simplicity of the intelligible visions, once it has been cleanly released from all the variety and composition found in things seen, so that we may have as an unerring road of truth your own knowledge of the passage to things intelligible. From there, after the complete setting aside of the relational attachment to sense and flesh, sailing vigorously with understanding through the boundless sea of the oracles of the Spirit, you search out with the Spirit the depths of the Spirit; from whom having received the manifestation of the hidden mysteries, through great humility, as it seems, you filled a sheet of paper with many perplexing chapters of Holy Scripture and sent it, seeking also from me, who am destitute of every virtue and of knowledge, the written answer to each chapter according to the anagogical contemplation. Having received and read it, I was struck in mind and hearing and thought, and I kept begging you, entreating pardon for declining this, saying that the things sought are barely accessible even to those who have advanced very far in contemplation and have somehow reached the end of the highest knowledge, which is unattainable to others—let alone to me, who am cast down to the earth and, like the serpent, according to the ancient curse, have no other food after the earth but the eating of the passions, and crawl like a worm in the rottenness of pleasures.

And having done this often and at length, when I found that you did not accept my entreaty concerning this matter, fearing lest the bond of love suffer some harm—the love by which, having been fused together with one another, we have one soul, even if we bear two bodies—lest my refusal, reasonably supposed by you as a pretext for disobedience, should be taken as such, I dared, even unwillingly, to attempt things beyond my strength, judging it better to be accused of rashness and to be laughed at by those who wish it than that love should receive any disturbance and diminution, than which nothing, after God, is more honorable to those who have understanding—or rather, more dear to God, since it is able to gather those who are divided into one and to create in the many, or in all, a single identity of mind free from faction. And forgive me first yourself, honored father, for this undertaking, and ask the others to pardon me for my rashness, and by your prayers establish God as propitious to me and as a helper in what is said—or rather, as the provider of the whole and correct answer concerning each chapter. For from him is every good gift and every perfect bestowal, as from the source and Father of all illuminating knowledges and powers that are granted proportionately to those who are worthy. For trusting in you, I have accepted your command, expecting as the reward of my obedience the divine favor that comes through you.

Having set forth each of the chapters in sequence and order, just as it was written by you, I will make my reply to the point, as brief and definitive as possible, insofar as I am able and am granted from God the grace and power to understand and to speak piously, so that we may not weigh down the hearing of those who will read it with a multitude of words—especially since I am addressing you, who are truly gnostic and accurate beholders of divine things, who have passed beyond the disturbance of the passions and transcended the whole condition of nature, and who possess reason as your guide and most just judge of what is fitting, and who through ignorance of what is better have brought your mind into the innermost place of divine utterance, where it is possible to grasp divine gladness in an unknowing way alone, since the experience of those deemed worthy of it is its only teacher of its own greatness, and for this reason you need only a small prefatory indication concerning the matters under inquiry, of the all-radiant beauty of the

...who have been borne along by the divine oracles with mystical visions and the spiritual greatness of mind that accompanies them—if indeed it is lawful for me to say this to you—who have already become the salt of the earth and the light of the world, according to the Lord's word, through the wealth of your virtue and the abundant outpouring of your knowledge, and who cleanse by the ways of the virtues the putrefaction of the passions that is in others, and illumine with the light of knowledge the ignorance that is a blindness of the soul. But I exhort your most holy selves, and all who will, as is likely, come upon this writing, not to make what is said by me the limit of the spiritual interpretation of the chapters; for I fall far short of the mind of the divine oracles and I need the teaching of others for this. But if you are able to contribute or learn anything either from yourselves or from others, rather approve that with justice and become of the higher and true understanding, whose work is the full assurance of the heart of those who desire the spiritual discernment of the matters that have been raised.

For the divine Word is like water, appearing to humans who are watered by that Word himself—as to plants of every kind and shoots and diverse living things—in a manner analogous to them, both cognitively and practically through the virtues, displayed beforehand as fruit according to the quality of virtue and knowledge in each person, and becoming manifest to different people through different means. For he is never circumscribed by one person, nor does he endure to be confined within a single mind because of the natural boundlessness.

Since you first commanded me to speak about the passions that trouble us—how many they are and of what kind, and from what origin and to what end each arrives through its own mean, and from what power of the soul or member of the body each, implanted, invisibly shapes the mind to itself and makes the body such, dyeing, as it were, the wretched soul wholly through its thoughts toward sin—and about the meaning and activity of each one's name, and the seasons and forms and the deceits of the unclean demons through them, and their invisible entanglements and pretenses, and how through some they secretly thrust forward others and by others plausibly draw us on to other things, and their subtlety and smallness and greatness and bulk, their yieldings and impulses, their seductive attractions and assaults, and their retreats and contractions, their persistences and sieges, faster or slower, and, as it were, their pleadings against the soul as in a court of law and the votes that supposedly take place in the mind, and the apparent defeats or victories, and what is the disposition in each case and for what cause one or many passions are permitted to assail the soul, and this either by themselves or together with one another, and by what principle they bring their own materials along with them timelessly, through which they secretly weave their bitter war against us, so that we laboriously struggle against things that in no way exist as though they were present, and as it were rush at the materials or flee from them, suffering the one through pleasure and the other through pain—and the manner of their existence in us and of their manifold and varied [activity] during sleep in dreams

of fantasies, and whether they are confined in some part of the soul or of the body, or in the whole soul and the whole body; and whether, being within, they persuade the soul through the natural passions to draw in the things outside through the medium of the body, and deceive it into becoming wholly of sense alone, having let go of the things proper to it according to nature; or, being outside, through the external contact of the body they shape the invisible soul toward material things, imposing upon it a composite form, molding the species of the matter taken up in the fantasy; and whether there is in them an order and a connection wickedly devised, so that through these passions they first make an attempt upon the soul, and thus through the others in succession

to fight against it, and which of these precede which, and which again follow or attend upon which, or whether they confuse the soul in a jumbled and disorderly way, as it happens, through passions of any kind whatsoever; and whether the soul is permitted to suffer such things from them without providence or according to providence; and what is the rationale of providence in each passion regarding the abandonment of the soul; and what is the manner of the removal of each of the passions enumerated; and by what works or words or thoughts the soul is freed from these and shakes off the defilement of conscience; and by opposing which virtue to which passion it will conquer, putting the evil demon to flight and utterly destroying along with him the very motion of the passion; and how, after release from the passions, it will be able to discern well its own affairs; and through what principles or modes, having appropriated the dispassionate relations of sensible things to the senses through the principle according to nature, it will form them toward virtues, as through the passions it was itself previously formed toward sin; and how it will rightly make the noble reversal, using the very things through which it formerly erred for the generation and subsistence of virtues; and how, once again released from these relations, it will scientifically gather up the principles of created things, which through natural contemplation in the Spirit have become free of the sensible symbols attached to them; and how again, after these, applying itself to intelligible things, with the mind become pure of the discursive reason directed at sense perceptions, it will receive the simple thoughts and take up the simple knowledge that binds all things to one another according to the archetypal principle of wisdom, after which, as having passed beyond all beings together with the

cleaving to them with thoughts, clearly freed from every power, even that which is proper to itself for thinking, it may attain to that union with God himself which is beyond understanding, in which, ineffably receiving from him the learning of the truth that truly is, like a seed, it will no longer turn toward sin, since there is no longer any place for the devil to drag it persuasively toward evil through ignorance of the good that is by nature and that adorns all things able to partake of it. Since you have sought the reasons and the modes and the causes of these things and of such things as these, to set them down for you in writing, at your command, let the discourse concerning these things wait a little for now, if God grants it, to be examined at another, more favorable time and more diligently tested, if indeed I perceive at all that I have a power of understanding capable of swimming through and of enduring to venture upon this great and deep sea. For I am not ashamed to say that I have not yet known the hard-to-escape methods and arts of the unclean demons, since I have the dust of matter obscuring the eyes of my soul and not allowing me to contemplate clearly the nature of things that have come to be and to distinguish with reason, among beings, the things that seem to be and that deceive only irrational perception, because it belongs truly to those alone to investigate and to speak of such things who are exceedingly contemplative and lofty in understanding and who have received through much experience both the discernment of things good and not such, and—what is better and more honorable than all other things—the grace and power from God for thinking well and speaking clearly the things thought.

However, so that the discourse concerning these things may not be left entirely without consolation in the present matter, having said a few things about the origin of the passions, and enough to show to the learned among you the end from the beginning, I proceed in order to the exposition of the chapters that follow. Evil neither was nor is nor will be subsisting in its own nature; for it has in no way any substance or nature or subsistence or power or activity among the things that exist, nor is it a quality or a quantity or a relation or a place or a time or a position or an action or a motion or a state or a passion, naturally contemplated in any of the things that exist; nor indeed in all these things does it subsist at all by natural appropriation, nor is it a beginning or a middle or an end; but, to speak of it as encompassed in a definition, evil is the lack of the activity of the natural powers inherent in nature toward the end, and nothing else at all. Or again, evil is the irrational motion of the natural powers, according to an erroneous judgment, toward something other than the end. And I call the end the cause of beings, which all things naturally desire, even if the evil one, having covered envy with a fabrication of goodwill, by deceit persuaded man to move his desire toward something else among beings besides the cause, and thus contrived the ignorance of the cause. The first man, then, having fallen short of the activity of the natural powers toward the end in his motion, fell sick with ignorance of his own cause, thinking that to be God, through the counsel of the serpent, which the word of the divine commandment ordained was forbidden to possess.

Having thus become a transgressor and having become ignorant of God, he mixed his entire noetic power with the whole of sensation, and drew upon himself the composite and destructive knowledge of sensible things, energized toward passion; and he was compared to the senseless beasts and was made like them, doing and seeking and willing the same things as they in every way, and having more of irrationality than of the natural reason, through his change into what is contrary to nature. For to the extent that man devoted himself to the knowledge of visible things by sensation alone, to that extent he tightened his own ignorance of God; and to the extent that he drew tight the bond of this ignorance, to that extent he clung to the experience of the material and sensory enjoyment of things known; and to the extent that he was filled with this, to that extent he kindled the love of self-love born from it; and to the extent that he carefully cultivated the love of self-love, to that extent he devised many ways of constituting pleasure, since self-love is both its offspring and its end; and since all evil is by nature destroyed together with the ways that constitute it, finding through experience itself that pain is in every way the successor of every pleasure, he held his whole impulse toward pleasure and his whole flight toward pain, fighting for the one with all his power and struggling against the other with all his zeal, supposing—which was impossible—that by such a method he could separate them from each other and have self-love joined to pleasure alone, entirely without experience of pain, having been made ignorant by passion, as it seems, that pleasure can never be without pain.

Pain is mingled with the pleasure of pain, even if it seems to escape the notice of those who possess it because of the dominance of the pleasure of the passion, since that which dominates is always naturally inclined to show itself, while it covers the perception of what lies at hand. From this the great and countless multitude of the passions was poured into the life of men; from this our life has become full of groaning, honoring the occasions of its own destruction and, through ignorance, both devising and cherishing for itself the pretexts of corruption; from this the one nature was divided into countless parts, and we who are of the same nature are, like reptiles and beasts, mutual prey to one another. For grasping at pleasure through self-love and again hastening to flee pain for the same cause, we devise the unspeakable generations of corrupting passions. For example, if through the pleasure of self-love we take thought, we beget gluttony, pride, vainglory, self-inflation, love of money, greed, tyranny, arrogance, boastfulness, recklessness, madness, conceit, vanity, contempt, insolence, buffoonery, flippancy, prodigality, licentiousness, ostentation, the

exaltation, silliness, affectation, mockery, loquacity, untimely speech, foul speech, and whatever else is of this kind. But if the mode of self-love is tormented rather through pain, we give birth to anger, envy, hatred, enmity, remembrance of wrongs, abuse, slander, false accusation, grief, hopelessness, despair, the slander of providence, listlessness, negligence, despondency, faintheartedness, faint-heartedness, untimely mourning, weeping, dejection, lamentation, zeal, jealousy, rivalry, and whatever else belongs to the disposition that is deprived of the occasions of pleasure. And from the mixture of pleasure and pain that comes about through certain other causes—that is, wickedness (for some call the composition of vice from opposite parts by this name)—we give birth to hypocrisy, irony, deceit, pretense, flattery, people-pleasing, and whatever else are inventions of mixed cunning. For to enumerate and speak of all these now, together with their proper forms and modes and causes and occasions, is unbearable; the examination of them, God granting the power, will be investigated under a separate heading.

The evil, then, as I said before, is ignorance of the good cause of beings; which, having blinded the human mind but opened the senses wide, estranged him completely from divine knowledge and filled him with the passionate knowledge of sensible things. Partaking of this without restraint for the sake of sense alone, like irrational beasts, man—having found through experience that the partaking of sensible things is constitutive of his apparent bodily nature—naturally, since he had already fallen short of the intelligible beauty, that is, of the divine comeliness, mistook the apparent creation for God, deifying it because of its necessity for the constitution of the body; and he loved his own body, which is naturally related to the creation that was thought to be God, as was likely, serving the creation rather than the Creator with all zeal through care and attention to the body alone. For one cannot otherwise serve the creation than by tending the body, just as one cannot serve God without purifying the soul with virtues. Accordingly, man, performing the destructive service through the body and becoming self-loving in this very respect, had pleasure and pain constantly at work in him, always eating the tree of disobedience, possessing through experience the knowledge of good and evil mixed together in the same thing according to sense. And perhaps one who called the apparent creation the tree known of good and evil would not miss the truth; for it naturally has the partaking that produces pleasure and pain.

Or again: since creation has spiritual reasons of the things seen, which nourish the mind, and again a natural power, which delights the senses but perverts the mind, it was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: having knowledge of the good when contemplated spiritually, but knowledge of evil when taken bodily. For it becomes a teacher of passions to those who partake of it bodily, bringing upon them forgetfulness of divine things. Therefore God, perhaps, even forbade man to partake of it, deferring for a time its participation, so that first, as was most just, through participation in grace he might recognize his own cause and, having sharpened the immortality given by grace through such participation toward impassibility and immutability, having already become a god by deification, he might without harm and with freedom examine with God the creatures of God and receive the knowledge of them as a god and not a man, having the same knowledge of beings with God according to grace, together with wisdom, through the transformation of the mind and the senses toward deification.

Thus, then, here one must understand the matter of the tree according to the anagogical interpretation capable of fitting all, while the more mystical and superior reason is kept for those who are mystical in understanding and is honored by us through silence. But I have now mentioned the tree of disobedience in passing, wishing to show that ignorance of God deified creation, whose manifest worship is the self-love of the human race according to the body, in which there is, as it were, a mixed knowledge—the experience of pleasure and of pain—through which the whole mire of evils was introduced into the life of human beings, constituted in various and manifold ways and, as no account could reach, in many forms, inasmuch as each of those who have partaken of human nature, according to quantity and quality, has within himself the love of his visible part—I mean the body—living and active, which compels him, in slavish fashion, through both the desire of pleasure and the fear of pain, to devise many forms of passions, according as the occasions coincide and the circumstances, and the manner of such things admits, so that he may be able to capture pleasure always for the sake of living together with it, and to remain wholly untouched by pain—teaching him to pursue the impossible, which cannot attain its end according to its aim.

For since the whole nature of bodies is corruptible and dispersible, by whatever means one endeavors to consolidate it, he makes its corruption all the stronger, always dreading and not willing what he cherishes, and against his will unwittingly embracing the non-cherished through the cherished, being dependent on things that cannot by nature stand, and for this reason altering along with the dispersible things the disposition of his soul, which drifts unstably along with the flowing things and does not perceive its own destruction because of the soul's complete blindness toward the truth. But from all these evils there is a release and a short road to salvation: the true love of God according to knowledge, and the total renunciation of the soul's affection for the body and this world, through which, casting off the desire of pleasure and the fear of pain, we are freed from evil self-love, having been raised up to the knowledge of the Creator, and, having received in place of the evil a good and spiritual self-love, separated from bodily affection, we do not cease to serve God through this noble self-love, always seeking from God the constitution of the soul. For this is true worship and truly pleasing to God: the soul's exact care through the virtues.

He, then, who does not desire bodily pleasure and does not at all fear pain has become free from passion in regard to these things, and together with the self-love that gave birth to them he has slain in one accord all the passions that come through them and from them, along with the most ruling ignorance of evils, and has become wholly devoted to the beautiful that is by nature steadfast and abiding and always in the same state, dwelling together with it altogether unmoved and, with unveiled face, mirroring the glory of God, beholding from the light-like radiance within himself the divine and unapproachable glory. Since, therefore, the word has shown us the straight and easy way of those who are saved, let us deny, with all our power, the pleasure of the present life and its pain, and let us teach those subject to us to do this with much exhortation, and let us have been wholly released and have released others from every device of the passions and every demonic mischief; and let us lay claim to divine love alone, and no one will be able to separate us from God—not tribulation, not distress, not famine, not danger, not sword, nor whatever else has been enumerated by the holy apostle in that passage—since, through knowledge according to activity, love remains unmoved within us, while from it the soul is supplied with everlasting and ineffable gladness and stability; and having been deemed worthy of this, toward the

We shall have this world as a saving ignorance, no longer without prudent reasoning, as formerly, seeing with the unveiled face of sense perception the appearance of sensible things as glory, around which the passions plainly have their origin, but rather with the unveiled face of the mind, freed from every sensible covering, mirroring the glory of God in virtues and spiritual knowledge, according to which the union with God that comes by grace naturally takes place, awakening the mind from all ignorance and fall. For just as, having been ignorant of God, we made the creation known pleasurably through sense perception into a god because of the body's constitution from it, so, receiving the knowledge of God attainable by the intellect in actual operation, because of the soul's constitution from him toward both being and well-being and always being, we shall be ignorant of every experience of every sense perception. SCHOLIA. 1. He says that the flesh, through the manifest dispositions, is receptive of the soul's disposition in virtue, an instrument joined to the soul itself for its expression. 2. He calls sense perception that which transmits to the mind the phantasy of visible things, for the understanding of the principles in existing things, as an instrument of the mind's passage toward intelligible things.

3. He says it is proper to love that those who live according to it show one mind. 4. That when the intellect has passed beyond the essence of beings, it becomes unknowing in its contact with God, who is beyond all essence, knowledge, and thought. 5. That the Word of God, in those who receive him, makes the difference of gifts according to the dispositions of souls. 6. That the demons, in the mind, as though the materials were present, weave the invisible wars within us. 7. That he says we love the passions because of pleasure, and we flee virtue because of pain. 8. That just as reason, mastering the passions, makes the senses an instrument of virtue, so too the passions, mastering reason, shape the senses toward sin. 9. That the soul, united to God by habit after release from its natural relation to beings, receives immovable stability concerning the beautiful. 10. He calls "beings" the essences of things that are; and "things that seem to be," the flows and effluences according to quality and quantity, around which the molding of the senses has arisen, creating sin.

11. Since man is midway between God and matter, and did not move toward God as the cause and end of his own coming-into-being, but toward matter, he reasonably remained ignorant of God, having made his intellect earth-bound by his inclination toward matter. 12. He called knowledge composite—the experience of sensible things through perception—as having pleasure by nature because of generation, and pain because of corruption. 13. The creation of visible things, he says, contains both spiritual principles directed toward the intellect and a natural power directed toward perception; and their meanings are like wood in the midst of the heart, paradise being understood figuratively. 14. A person is ignorant of the experience of perception in pleasure and pain whenever he binds his intellect to God, having become free of bodily attachment. Since God has graciously commanded me to write and send to you what I had noted down of the chapters that perplexed me, I have set first the matters that seemed to me most necessary. A (1). ON GRIEF AND PLEASURE, AND DESIRE AND FEAR. 1. QUESTION 1: Are the passions themselves evil in themselves, or evil in their use? I mean pleasure and grief, desire and fear, and the things that follow them. Answer.

These passions, like the others, were not created together with human nature from the beginning, since otherwise they would have contributed to the definition of nature. I say this having learned it from the great Gregory of Nyssa, that because of the fall from perfection these things were introduced, having grown onto the more irrational part of nature; through them, instead of the divine and blessed image, immediately with the transgression the likeness of irrational animals became clear and evident in man. For it was necessary that, when the worth of reason had been covered over, human nature should be justly punished by those marks of irrationality which it had drawn upon itself by choice, God wisely arranging that man come to a sense of his rational greatness. Yet the passions also become good in the earnest, whenever they wisely withdraw them from bodily things and employ them for the acquisition of heavenly things; for example, they will make desire a faculty of longing for the intelligible pursuit of divine things, and pleasure a harmless joy of the mind's attractive activity in the divine gifts, and fear a precautionary care against the future punishment for transgressions, and grief a corrective repentance over present evil, and, to speak briefly, like wise physicians who remove the existing or threatened injury of the viper, a destructive beast, from the body, they use these passions for the removal of present or expected evil, and for the acquisition and guarding of virtue and knowledge. These things, then, as I said, are good because of their use in those who take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

But if Scripture has said any of these things also of God or of the saints—of God, for our sake, as when he reveals his saving and beneficent advances of providence to us in a manner suited to us, through our own passions; and of the saints, as being unable otherwise to express in spoken words their intelligible relations and dispositions toward God, except through bodily passions known to nature. SCHOLIA. 1. That Scripture shapes the various modes of providence toward us by means of the passions known to us. 2. That Scripture signifies the particular relation of the saints toward God by these names. B (2). ON WHAT "MY FATHER WORKS UNTIL NOW" MEANS. 2. QUESTION 2: If the Creator made all the forms that fill the world in the six days, what does the Father work after these things? For the Savior says, "My Father works until now, and I work." Does he perhaps mean the preservation of the forms that have once come to be? Answer.

God, having once for all, as he himself knows, brought to completion the first principles of things that have come to be and the universal essences of beings, still works not only for the preservation of these things themselves in being, but also for the creation, procession, and constitution in actuality of the parts that exist potentially within them, and further for the assimilation of the particular through providence to the universal, until, by uniting the voluntary impulse of the particulars through their movement toward well-being to the more generic natural principle of rational essence, he may make them concordant with one another and with the whole and self-moved, no longer having the difference of inclination of the particulars in relation to the universals, but one and the same principle will be contemplated in all, not divided by the modes of the things of which it is perhaps predicated, and thus he may display the deifying grace of all things in operation; for the sake of which God and the Word became man, and the Father says, My Father works even until now, and I work—the one approving, the other working directly, and the Holy Spirit substantially completing both the Father's good pleasure over all things and the direct working of the Son, so that through all things and in all things there may become one God in Trinity, wholly present to each proportionately according to the grace of those deemed worthy, and contemplated in all, as the soul is naturally present whole in each member of the body without diminution.

SCHOLIA. 1. "In matter": that is, in the universal essence of beings which exists potentially, the particular things that come to be from matter are particular, whose generation God says he manifestly works. 2. He means the assimilation of particular things to universals, the union of all men, by one motion of the will, to the principle of nature, which God works through providence, so that there may be, as it were, one nature of all, and so also one will, all being joined to God and to one another through the Spirit. 3. CONCERNING THE ONE IN THE GOSPEL WHO CARRIES THE JAR OF WATER. QUESTION 3: Who is the one in the Gospel who carries the jar of water in the city, and why of water, whom the disciples sent by Christ meet and are commanded to follow? And who is the householder? And why is his name passed over in silence by the evangelists? And what is the great upper room, furnished, in which the awesome mystery of the divine supper is accomplished? ANSWER. Not only has the Scripture passed over in silence the name of the man to whom the Savior sent the two disciples for the preparation of the Passover, but also that of the city to which they were sent.

Hence, at first glance, I surmise that by the city is signified the sensible world, and by the man the universal nature of human beings, to whom they are sent as disciples of God and the Word, and as forerunners preparing his mystical banquet for the nature of human beings—the law of the first covenant and that of the new: the one cleansing the nature from every defilement through practical philosophy, the other raising the mind up in a knowing way from bodily things to the kindred visions of intelligible things through contemplative initiation. And the proof of this is that the disciples sent are Peter and John; for Peter is a symbol of action, and John of contemplation. Therefore fittingly the one carrying the jar of water meets them first, signifying by himself all those who, in accordance with practical philosophy, carry on the shoulders of the virtues, as in a jar, the grace of the Spirit guarded by the mortification of the members of the body that are upon the earth, which cleanses them from defilements through faith; and then after him, second, the master of the house showing the furnished upper room, teaching likewise by himself all those who, in accordance with contemplation, have furnished the height of their own pure and noble-minded understanding, as an upper room, in a God-befitting manner with knowing thoughts and doctrines for the reception of the great Word.

The house is the disposition according to piety, toward which the practical mind walks, administering virtue, and it rules over this house, having now acquired it as its own by nature—the mind illumined by the divine light of mystical knowledge, and for this reason, together with the practical mind, deemed worthy of the supernatural presence and banquet of the Savior Word. Now the man has been called both one and two, since the one is written as carrying a jar, and the other is proclaimed as the master of the house; one, as I said, perhaps because of the one nature, but two because this nature is divided into the practical and the contemplative according to piety; and these again the Word, mingling them through the Spirit, calls and makes one. But if someone wishes to contemplate what has been said in relation to each individual human being, he has not departed from the truth. For the city is the soul of each individual, into which are always sent, as disciples of the Word and God, the principles concerning virtue and knowledge. And the one carrying the jar of water is the patient manner and reasoning that bears on the shoulders of self-control the grace of faith given in baptism, undestroyed. And the house is the condition and disposition of the virtues, built from many and various, as it were, stones—firm and manly characters and thoughts. And the upper room is the broad and spacious understanding and aptitude of knowledge, adorned with divine visions of mystical and secret doctrines. And the master of the house is the mind, widened by the brightness of the house according to virtue and by the height, beauty, and greatness of knowledge.

To whom the Word, dwelling together with his own disciples—that is, with the first and spiritual thoughts concerning nature and time—gives himself in participation. For truly the Passover is the passage of the Word to the human mind, through which he grants the fullness to all who are worthy, coming to be mystically present through participation in his own good things, the Word of God. 4. CONCERNING NOT ACQUIRING TWO TUNICS. Question 4: How did the Lord command the disciples not to acquire two tunics, when he himself had five according to the holy evangelist John, as is clear from those who divided them? And what are these garments? Answer. The Savior did not have five tunics but one upon the body and the outer garment, of which the inner one upon the body they call the tunic, and the outer garment they name the cloak. But mystically, the great evangelist John, through the Spirit, delivered the ineffable meaning of contemplation to the literal statement of the history, so that through the things narrated he might guide our mind to the truth of the things understood. The tunic of the Savior, then, woven from above throughout, which those who crucified him did not tear, though they were permitted to strip it off, is the indivisible interconnection and intertwining of the virtues, and, in our account, fitting and

The fitting covering, or the grace of the new man woven from above in accordance with him through the Spirit. The outer garment is the sensible world, divided into four elements, which those who spiritually crucify the Lord in us divide as four garments. Therefore the demons divide the apparent creation of the four elements, preparing us to look upon it with passion through sense perception, since we have ignored the divine principles within it. And though they lift away from us the tunic of the virtues through our neglect of good deeds, they cannot persuade us that virtue is vice. Let us not, then, make the five garments of the Savior an occasion for greed, but let us understand what the will of the Scripture is, and how, when we neglect good things, the Lord is crucified in us and stripped bare through our idleness in good things, and the demons divide his creation, as it were garments, through us for the service of passions. And let us become safe guardians of the good things graced to us by God, and let us look upon creation rightly for his glory alone, and let us keep the tunic of the word of knowledge—I mean the virtues—irremovable through our zeal for good works.

But if you wish, in addition to what has been said, to understand the garment woven from above as the world of incorporeal and intelligible essences, and the outer covering, which the account divided into four parts as elements, to understand as bodily nature, you will not miss the truth. Of these, they dissolved the body by corruption, having taken strength against us through the transgression of the law of the commandment, but the soul, since it is of the kinship from above, they did not tear asunder. E (5). On the earth cursed in the works of Adam. Question 5: What is the earth cursed in the works of Adam according to the anagogical sense? And what is it to eat it in sorrows? And what is it, after thorns and thistles have sprung up, to eat the grass? And what is it, finally, to eat bread in the sweat of his face? And yet no man was ever seen eating earth or grass; nor do those who eat bread according to the declaration of the history eat in the sweat of their face. Answer. The earth cursed in the works of Adam is the flesh of Adam, always becoming through the works of Adam—I mean the passions of the mind that has become earthy—cursed by the barrenness of the virtues, which are the works of God; which he eats with much pain and sorrow, enjoying the little pleasure that is according to it.

This flesh, for the sake of that corruptible enjoyment, raises up for him cares and anxieties like thorns, and great temptations and dangers like thistles, grievously pricking him on every side in reason, in temper, and in desire, so that he can scarcely procure and eat its health and well-being, which withers like grass—that is, obtain it—and then, after many a recurrence of troubles, in the sweat of his face—that is, in the labor and toil, perceptible to the senses, of the meddlesome scrutiny of sensible things—he may have, like bread, a means of support for the present life, either through craft or through some other method devised for life. Or rather, the earth of Adam is the heart, which received a curse through the transgression—the removal of heavenly goods. This earth, in the practical philosophy, he eats through many afflictions, once it has been purified in conscience from the curse of shameful deeds. And again, those that spring up in it like

Cleansing by reason the thoughts of thorns concerning the generation of bodies, and, as it were, the tough thistle-like thoughts concerning the providence and judgment of incorporeal things, he spiritually reaps the natural contemplation like grass. And thus, as in the sweat of his face, by the scientific mode of the intellect in knowledge, he eats the incorruptible bread of theology, the only truly life-giving bread, which preserves those who eat it unto incorruption in their generation. Therefore the earth, rightly eaten, is the purification of the heart through practice; the grass is the knowledge of created things according to natural contemplation; and the bread is the true mystical initiation according to theology. Scholion 1. He calls the works of Adam the passions of dishonor; for God alone works the virtues in those who will it, taking their intention as an instrument, as it were, for the manifestation of the virtues. (6). CONCERNING "HE WHO IS BEGOTTEN OF GOD DOES NOT SIN." 6. QUESTION: If, according to the holy John, he who is begotten of God does not sin, because his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin, and he who is begotten of water and the Spirit is begotten of God, how can we who are begotten of God through baptism sin? ANSWER.

The mode of the birth from God within us is twofold: the one gives to those being born the grace of adoption that is present wholly in potential, while the other brings in the grace that is present wholly in actuality and that wholly transforms, by deliberate choice, the whole disposition of the one being born toward God who begets him. And the one has the grace present in potential through faith alone, while the other, in addition to faith, also produces in the one who has known the most divine likeness of the known object, working through knowledge. Therefore, for those in whom the first mode of birth is observed, because their disposition has not yet been purely purified from fleshly attachment and wholly molded by the Spirit, so as to partake through actuality of the divine mysteries that have been known, the tendency to slip toward sin is not absent for those who at some time wish it. For the Spirit does not beget a disposition that is unwilling, but transforms the willing one toward deification. Having partaken of this through knowledge by experience, one cannot fall away from that which has once been truly and properly known by deed to something else, even something pretending to be that. Just as an eye that has once beheld the sun cannot mistake the moon or certain other of the stars in heaven for it.

But those whose whole purpose the Holy Spirit has taken hold of at their birth, and has transferred altogether from earth to heavens, and through the true knowledge that is in actuality has transformed their mind by the blessed rays of God and the Father, so that they are reckoned to be another god, having suffered in their state, through grace, what God is not by suffering but by essence—of these, clearly, the purpose has become sinless in the state of virtue and knowledge, since they are unable to deny what has been known by them in actuality through experience. Even if, then, we have the spirit of adoption, which is a seed that forms those who are born into the likeness of the one who sowed it, yet we do not give it the inclination of our judgment pure from any inclination and disposition toward something else, and for this reason even after being born through water and Spirit we willingly sin. But if we prepared our judgment to receive the activity of these—I mean water and Spirit—in a knowing way, then through the practical life the mystical water would accomplish the purification of conscience, and the

the life-giving Spirit was effecting in us the immutable perfection of the good through experiential knowledge. Therefore, each of us who are still able to sin lacks the willing desire to offer ourselves wholly and purely in our disposition to the Spirit. SCHOLIA 1. Through the one mode, he says, the grace of adoption is given only in potential, since to all who have been baptized the possibility of becoming sons of God is given; for he said, "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." And again: "But to all who received him, he gave the authority to become children of God." But through the other mode, through the fulfillment of the commandments and the knowledge of the truth, the perfection of the same adoption is given, that is, the inability to sin, through deification, which is not present in the first mode. For because of man's free will, the possibility of sinning is not removed in him, since his whole desire is not yet turned wholly toward God according to grace.

2. "Dead faith," he says, "possesses in potential the grace of adoption, since those who have it are not moved through the commandments." Z (7). CONCERNING "FOR THIS CAUSE THE GOSPEL WAS PREACHED ALSO TO THE DEAD." 7. QUESTION 7: What is the meaning of "For this cause the gospel was preached also to the dead, that they might be judged indeed according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit"? How are the dead judged in the flesh? Answer. It is a custom of Scripture to change the tenses and to transfer them into one another, and to speak of the future as past and the past as future, and to utter the present as the time before it and after it, as is clear to those who have experience of it. Some, then, say that Scripture here calls "dead" those men who reached their end before the coming of Christ—for example, those in the flood, those in the time of the building of the tower, those in Sodom, those in Egypt, and the others who at various times and in various ways received the manifold penalty and the extraordinary visitations of the divine judgments; who paid the penalty not so much for ignorance of God as for their drunken violence against one another. To these, it says, the great proclamation of salvation was preached, since they had already been judged in the flesh according to men—that is, having received in the life in the flesh the penalty for their offenses against one another—in order that they might live according to God in the spirit, that is, receiving in their soul, while they were in Hades, the proclamation of the knowledge of God, having believed because the Savior descended into Hades and saved even the dead. And in order that this passage may be understood, let us take it thus:

For to this end the gospel was preached also to the dead, who are judged according to men in the flesh, so that they might live according to God in the spirit. Or again, he calls "dead," perhaps covertly, those who carry about in their body the mortification of Jesus, to whom in truth, by reason of their very works, the divine Gospel has fittingly been given, since the Gospel introduces the denial of the life of the flesh and the confession of the spiritual life—those who are always dying according to man, I mean the human life in the flesh during this present age, but living according to God by the spirit alone, according to the divine Apostle and those with him, who live not at all their own life but have Christ living in themselves, according to the soul alone. Thus those who for God's sake in this age are dead in the flesh are judged, having tribulations and many torments and distresses, and enduring persecutions and countless kinds of temptations with joy. H (8). CONCERNING "GOD IS LIGHT." 8. QUESTION 8: Since again the holy John says that God is light, and again a little later, "if we walk in the light, as he is in the light," how is the same one said to be both light and to be in the light, as one thing in another? Answer.

God, who truly is light in essence, is in those who walk in him through the virtues, having become truly light. Just as, then, the light by participation—as all the saints through love of God become in the light that is by essence—so the light that is by essence becomes, through love for humanity, in the light that is by participation. If, then, we are according to virtue and knowledge as in God who is light, then he himself, God, as light, is in light in us. For God, who is light by nature, becomes in the light that is by imitation, as the archetype in the image. Or rather, God the Father is light in light—that is, in the Son and the Holy Spirit—not being one light and another and another, but one and the same in essence, threefold in radiance according to the mode of his existence. 9. Concerning "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be." 9. Question 9: Why does the holy John say again, "Brethren, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be"? If it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, how does the holy Paul say to us, "God has revealed it to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God"? And how does he also philosophize about such things concerning what we shall be? Answer.

The holy evangelist John says that he did not know the manner of the future deification of the children of God who are born here through the virtues that accord with faith, since the self-subsistent substance, in respect of form, of the good things to come had not yet been made manifest. For here we walk by faith, but not by form. And the holy Paul says that he received the divine goal concerning the good things to come through revelation, but that he did not know the manner of deification that accords with the divine goal. Therefore he says, clearly interpreting himself: I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward calling—wishing, evidently, to know from experience the manner of the actual fulfillment of the divine goal, which had been made known to him here through revelation, of the deifying power for those deemed worthy. The apostles, then, are in harmony, breathing together through teaching that appears contradictory, as being moved by one and the same Spirit. For the one confesses ignorance of the manner of the future deification according to grace, while the other nobly introduces knowledge of the goal.

That the great apostle holds this opinion, he himself has become a witness to himself through all his divine words, sometimes declaring that all knowledge and prophecy will be abolished, sometimes not reckoning that he has yet attained, sometimes saying that he sees future things through a mirror and in riddles and that there is a time to enjoy the great and beyond-understanding grace of face to face with the things hoped for, sometimes confessing that he knows in part and prophesies in part, sometimes crying out plainly that he must know just as he was also known, as one who clearly has not yet known what will be known. And to speak briefly, the statement spoken by the apostle, "when the perfect comes, what is in part will be abolished," seems to me to be the same as what was said by the theologian, "it has not yet been revealed what we shall be." 10. Concerning "The one who fears has not been perfected in love." Question 10: If the one who fears has not been perfected in love, how is there no deficiency for those who fear him? If there is no deficiency, it is clear that he has been perfected. How then has the one who fears not been perfected?

Answer. The good order of the divine Scriptures, according to the saving ordinance of the Spirit, defines the degrees of those who are moved from the outward multitude that is according to the passions to the divine unity: it calls those who are being introduced and are somewhere at the forecourts of the divine court of the virtues, while still fearing, and it knows how to name as those making progress those who have acquired a proportionate state of the words and manners that are according to virtue, and it addresses as perfect those who have already become, in a gnostic manner, at the very summit of the truth that reveals the virtues. Therefore neither does the one who fears the Lord—having wholly turned away from the old way of life that is according to the corruption of the passions and having given over his entire disposition to the divine commandments because of fear—fall short of any good thing that is fitting for those being introduced, even if he has not yet acquired the state that is in the virtues, and has not become a partaker of the wisdom that is spoken among the perfect; nor indeed does the one making progress fall short of any of the good things that belong to his degree, even if he has not yet acquired the same knowledge of divine things that is superior among the perfect.

And again, let those who manfully pursue the practical philosophy, not yet having released the soul from fear and the remembrance of the coming divine judgments, be understood by us as those who fear, lacking nothing at all, according to the blessed David, of those who contend for the truth against the opposing power, yet still falling short of the pure transmission of the mystical visions according to the mind of the perfect. But let those who have already been mystically deemed worthy of the contemplative theology, and who have established the mind pure from all material imagination and bearing the image of the divine beauty as a wholly and unfailingly complete imitation, be for us those who love. There is, then, no deficiency for those who fear, according to the blessed David, insofar as they fear, even if the one who fears does not have the fullness and perfection of immediate union with the Word equally with those who love the Lord. For each, in his own rank, has the perfection of the abode appointed to him, even if one is higher than another in quality or quantity of spiritual stature. But since fear is twofold—according to "but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in Gehenna," and according to "the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever and ever, and it is great and fearful over all those around him"—it must be asked how love casts out fear, if indeed it endures forever and ever, and how God, enduring through the boundless ages, will be fearful over all those around him.

Or rather, since, as I said, fear is twofold, the one pure and the other not pure—for instance, the fear that arises from offenses in expectation of punishment, having sin as the cause of its own origin, being not pure, will not endure forever, being made to vanish together with sin through repentance; but the pure fear, which exists forever without the remembrance of offenses, will never pass away, because it has somehow been implanted essentially in God in relation to creation, making manifest to all his natural reverence for the preeminence that is above every kingdom and power. Therefore, the one who does not fear God as a judge, but reveres him because of the surpassing excellence of his infinite power, has no deficiency, being perfect in love, loving God with reverence and the fitting awe; and this is the one who has acquired the fear that endures forever and ever, and he has no deficiency at all. The prophet and the evangelist therefore agree with each other: the one says that those who fear the Lord with pure fear have no deficiency, while the other says that the one who fears him as a judge because of a defiled conscience is not perfect in love. In this sense, perhaps, God is also fearful to all those around him, since he makes the love of those who love him and will be around him mixed with fear. For love, when separated from fear by itself, is naturally prone for the most part to fall into contempt, unless, as it were, the boldness naturally born from it is tempered by fear.

Let us consider, if it seems good, what is meant by the phrase "round about him." For he who is encircled has those encircling him both in front and behind and on the right and on the left. Since, then, the Lord also has those who encircle him, let us understand those behind as those who have walked blamelessly behind the Lord God through the commandments according to the practical virtue; those on the left as those who have accomplished the natural contemplation in the Spirit together with the pious reception of the judgments—for the book of Proverbs says concerning Wisdom, "and in her left hand are riches and glory"; those on the right as those who have received the immaterial knowledge of intelligible things, pure from sensible imagination—for "in her right hand," it says, "are years of life"; and those in front as those who, through an erotic fervor of the mind's aspiration surpassing the divine beauty, have been deemed worthy of enjoyment face to face. But if there is also another account concerning this, greater and more lofty, it is for you and the divine men among you to receive. 11. QUESTION 11: What is the beginning of the angels who did not keep it, and what is the dwelling place they abandoned, and what are the eternal bonds, and what is the darkness under which they are kept, and what will they suffer in the judgment of the great day?

Answer. The precise account of these matters must be kept for those whose understanding is apostolic alone—those taught directly by the Word both the unerring knowledge of things that exist and the good and just ordering of the wise providence over things that exist, since they have left no obstructive wall in their minds, neither of themselves nor of the Word. But as far as it reaches me—one who is below and has many hindrances to the Word's passage toward me—the beginning of the angels who did not keep it is perhaps the word according to which they were created, or the natural dominion given to them by grace for deification, or again the order of their station according to the worthiness of grace. And their dwelling is either heaven or the wisdom according to the state of goods beyond understanding, which these were made to dwell in—for the word is accustomed also to call wisdom a house—or the guardian oversight of the immaculate divinity over the natural and acquired goods given to them, which they abandoned when they tyrannized. And eternal bonds are their complete and perpetual immobility according to their own will toward the good, by which they never at any time enjoy divine remission, or again the power that, by God's providence, restrains their madness against us for the sake of our salvation, not permitting the devices of their wickedness against us to proceed. And darkness is the complete and entire ignorance of divine grace, by which, having been wholly disposed according to their own will, they are deprived of the blessed and all-radiant transmission of the undefiled light, having consumed all the noetic power given to them by nature upon what is not.

What they will suffer on the fearful day of judgment, the righteous Judge alone knows—he who assigns to each a just recompense according to worth, and distributes the form of judgment equally and fittingly to the measure of wickedness, and brings forth with justice a verdict suited to endless ages, in accordance with his good decrees. 12. QUESTION 12: What is the garment defiled by the flesh? Answer. The life stained by many transgressions of the passions that come from the flesh is a defiled garment. For each person is naturally made manifest, as it were, by some garment—the conduct of his life—whether righteous or unrighteous: the one having a clean garment, the virtuous life; the other possessing a life defiled by evil deeds. Or rather, the garment defiled by the flesh is the habitual state and disposition that, through the memory of the evil motions and activities that come from the flesh, forms the soul according to conscience; seeing this always wrapped around itself like a garment, the soul is filled with the foul odor of the passions. For just as from the Spirit, through the virtues woven together with one another according to reason, there comes to the soul a garment of incorruption, which when she puts on she becomes beautiful and glorious, so too from the flesh, when the passions are woven together with one another in unreason, there comes to be a certain unclean and defiled garment, making the soul known from itself, imposing upon her another form and image contrary to the divine. 13. Concerning "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.

QUESTION 13: What is the meaning of "For his invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and divinity"? What are the invisible things of God, and what is his eternal power and divinity? Answer. The principles of beings, pre-established in God before the ages, as he himself knows, being invisible—which the divine men are accustomed to call also good wills—are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made. For all the works of God, when contemplated by us in a knowing manner according to nature with the fitting knowledge, secretly declare to us the principles according to which they came to be, and together reveal to themselves the divine purpose in each work, in accordance with which the heavens also declare the glory of God, and the firmament announces the work of his hands. And his eternal power and divinity is the providence that holds together beings, and the deifying activity according to it of those under providence. Or perhaps the invisible things of God are nothing other than his eternal power and divinity, which have as their most clear heralds the transcendent magnificences of things that have come to be. For just as from beings we believe that God, who truly is, exists, so from the substantial difference of beings according to species we are taught that his wisdom, innate according to substance, subsists and holds together beings; and again, from the substantial motion of beings according to species we learn that his life, innate according to substance, subsists and completes beings, receiving the account concerning the holy Trinity—I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—from the wise contemplation of creation.

For the Logos is the eternal power of God, as being of the same essence, and the Holy Spirit, being of the same essence, is the eternal divinity. Therefore those are condemned who have not been taught together from the contemplation of things that exist the cause of things that exist and the properties that belong by nature to the cause—I mean the power and the divinity. The creation therefore cries out through the works within it and, as it were, announces to those able to hear with the mind its own cause hymned in a threefold manner—I mean God and the Father, and His ineffable power and the divinity, that is, the only-begotten Logos and the Holy Spirit. For these are the invisible things of God, which from the creation of the world are perceived by the mind. SCHOLION 1. That from things that exist, he says, we know the cause of things that exist; and from the difference of things that exist we are taught the subsistent wisdom of the One who exists; and from the natural motion of things that exist we learn the subsistent life of the One who exists, the life-giving power of things that exist, the Holy Spirit. 14. CONCERNING "AND THEY WORSHIPPED AND SERVED THE CREATURE RATHER THAN THE CREATOR".

14. Question 14: What is the meaning of "they revered and served the creature rather than the Creator"? What is reverence, and what is service? Answer. Reverence is the worship of the divine with faith, while service is the care shown through works. This reverence, that is, faith, men transferred to the creature, and worshipped rather than the Creator, believing in demons, and they served them, offering them care through evil works. But let us, who revere God through faith in him, be zealous also to offer him pure service, a way of life perfected through the virtues. 15. Concerning "For your imperishable Spirit is in all things." Question 15: What is the meaning of "For your imperishable Spirit is in all things; therefore you reprove those who fall away little by little"? If it speaks of the Holy Spirit, how will wisdom not enter into an unintelligent heart, nor dwell in a body burdened with sins? I noted this because of the phrase "in all things" being used without qualification. Answer.

The Holy Spirit is absent from none of existing things, and especially not from those that have in any way partaken of reason. For it is the cohesive principle of each one's knowledge, since it is God and the Spirit of God, penetrating all things providentially according to their capacity and stirring up the natural principle of reason in each, and through it leading the one who perceives and whose choice is readily inclined to receive the right thoughts that come from nature toward an awareness of the things done amiss contrary to the ordinance of nature. Indeed, we find many even among the utterly barbarous and nomadic peoples who pursue nobility of conduct and reject the bestial laws that prevailed among them from of old. In this way, then, the Holy Spirit is simply present in all things. But in a more specific sense, and according to another conception, it is present in all those who are under the law, as the one who legislates and foretells the mysteries to come, implanting in them a perception of the transgression of the commandments and a knowledge of the perfection foretold in Christ. Hence we find many of these also abandoning the old worship that lies in shadows and eagerly turning to the new and mystical worship.

In addition to the modes already mentioned, it is also present in all those who have obtained through faith the divine and truly deifying name of Christ—not only as a guard and, providentially, as an awakener of the principle according to nature, and as an indicator of the transgression and keeping of the commandments, and as a proclaimer of the promise announced in Christ, but also as the creator of the adoption as sons given by grace through faith. For it becomes productive of wisdom only in those who have purified both soul and body through the exact practice of the commandments, conversing with them as its own through simple and immaterial knowledge, and imprinting their mind toward deification by the undefiled understandings of ineffable things. It is, then, present simply in all things, insofar as it is the cohesive and providential principle of all things and the awakener of natural seeds; but it is present specifically in all those under the law, insofar as it is indicative of the transgression of the commandments and illuminative of the promise announced in Christ; and in all those who are in Christ, in addition to what has been said, as that which confers adoption as sons. But as productive of wisdom it is present simply in none of those mentioned, except in those who understand and who have made themselves worthy, through their divine conduct, of his deifying indwelling. For everyone who does not do the divine wills, even if he is a believer, has an unintelligent heart, as a workshop of evil thoughts, and a body deeply indebted to sins, as being continually held fast by the defilements of the passions.

SCHOLIA 1. That the Holy Spirit is in all things as maker and provident ruler of all. 2. That the Holy Spirit is lawgiving and foretelling, and is also in those who are under the law. 3. That the Holy Spirit is preeminently in Christians as the maker of divine adoption as sons. I (16). ON THE MOLTEN CALF IN THE DESERT. 16. QUESTION 1: What is the molten calf, and why does it say "calf" in the singular, but "these are your gods, O Israel" in the plural, and what is the meaning of its being ground fine and scattered under the water, and what are the earrings and the rest of the ornaments? ANSWER. The mind that, in the manner of Israel, is going out from Egypt—that is, from sin—and has with it the delusion of sin that shares its course, when, having neglected for a little while, it is left behind by rational discernment, sets up the irrational habit, like a calf, which is the mother of all the passions—just as Israel of old did in the absence of Moses—having as a stamp of wickedness in its understanding the image formed by fancy.

As earrings, the words he has received naturally concerning theology from the pious contemplation of beings; and as necklaces, the God-befitting opinions concerning beings that arise in him from natural contemplation; and as bracelets for the hands, the natural activities of the virtues according to the practical life, forging them as in a furnace, in the fiery boiling of the passionate disposition of anger and desire, and according to the preconceived fantasy and form of evil in the mind, through its activity producing sin—the habit that is always being scattered and scattering along with itself the mind that performs it, and cutting it off from the single identity concerning the truth and dispersing it among many and abominable fantasies and opinions of non-beings—he establishes an irrational habit, which the presence of the divine Word smooths and sows under the water, smoothing by the fineness of contemplation the thickness of the mind that is toward sense perception in the passions, and clearly distinguishing the change and confusion of the natural powers that has occurred among one another according to the passion, and leading them back again to the proper principle of knowledge. For this is what I understand by "sowing under the water.

The discourse has thus set before us, in summary form, the whole contemplation of the things recorded in this place. But so that the passage may become clearer, let us, if it seems good, consider each point by way of definition. A molten calf, then, is the confused mingling and confounding of the natural powers with one another, or rather a passionate and irrational coming-together, productive of the irrational operation of the passions contrary to nature. And it is one calf, because there is one habit of vice, dispersed into many forms of vice. And it is a calf because of its endurance, laboriousness, and agricultural character, and, as it were, its capacity for growth and invention—as in rumination—of the evil disposition concerning the passions. And it is molten, because the habit and operation of the passions is brought to completion according to the form of the evil fantasy previously stored up in the mind. And the phrase "these are your gods, O Israel," spoken in the plural, because evil is by nature scattered and unstable and multiform and divisive. For if the good is by nature unifying of things divided and cohesive, then evil is clearly divisive and destructive of things united.

The earrings are the words concerning theology that naturally exist in the mind, arising from the pious contemplation of beings; the ornaments around the neck are the correct doctrines about beings according to natural contemplation; and the bracelets are the activity of the virtues in practice. Or again, the earrings are the innate word—for the ear is a symbol of the word—and the ornament around the neck is the irascible faculty, for the neck is a figure of uprising and tyranny, and the bracelets are the desire of the hands, made manifest through action in accordance with pleasure. The mind, casting all these into the fire of the passions according to the concept given concerning each, produces the irrational and unintelligent state of ignorance, the mother of all evils. But it makes this state thin whenever the mind, having examined the thickness of the passion at its surface with regard to perception, leads each of the things that compose the passion back to its own principle by dividing them, and thus sows beneath the water—I mean the knowledge of the truth—bringing the things that have been distinguished and freed from their mutual evil entanglement and composition.

For example, this is what I mean: every passion arises altogether from the conjunction of something perceptible, perception, and a natural power—I mean, for instance, of anger, or desire, or of the reason that has been perverted from what is according to nature. If, then, the mind, having contemplated the end of the perceptible object, of perception, and of the natural power directed toward it in their composition with one another, is able to lead each of these back, by distinguishing them, to its own principle according to nature, and to contemplate the perceptible object by itself without perception's relation to it, and perception apart from the perceptible object's affinity for it, and desire, say, or some other of the natural powers, without the passionate disposition toward perception and the perceptible object—so that the particular movement of the passion prepares the contemplation to take place—it ground it fine, smoothing it down, the composition of the calf, that is, of whatever passion happens to occur, and sowed it beneath the water of knowledge, having utterly destroyed even the bare imagination of the passions through the restoration of the things that constitute it according to nature to themselves. May it come about that we too, having ground fine the molten calf, destroy it from the soul, which has only the divine image unadulterated, defiled by nothing at all of external things.

What follows—that Moses gave it to the sons of Israel to drink—signifies the manner of the teaching that destroys the passions, being given by teachers to those who learn. 17. CONCERNING THE ANGEL WHO THREATENED MOSES WITH DEATH ON THE ROAD IN EGYPT. Question 17: If God sent Moses to Egypt, for what reason did the angel of God seek to kill the one sent by God—and would have killed him, had not his wife hastened to circumcise the child and by herself halted the angel's onset? And if the circumcision of the child was necessary, why did God not command him to circumcise the child before sending him with gentleness? And why, when there was a fault, did the good angel not gently admonish the one sent by God for such a ministry? Answer. He who searches out the riddles of the Scriptures with the fear of God and for the sake of divine glory alone, as it were removing the letter as a veil from the spirit, will find all things, according to the principle of wisdom, set before his eyes, with no obstacle found to hinder the blameless motion of the mind toward divine things. The history, then, which was already fulfilled bodily in the times of Moses, we shall pass over, but the power of the history in the spirit let us understand with noetic eyes, as it is always coming to be and by coming to be is ever more flourishing.

The wilderness, therefore, from which Moses is sent into Egypt to lead out the sons of Israel, is either human nature, or this world, or the state that is devoid of passions; according to which and in which the mind, having been educated in the knowledge that comes through the contemplation of beings, receives from God a secret and mystical commission, in the hiddenness of the heart, to lead out of Egypt—I mean out of the flesh and the senses—as though they were Israelites, the divine concepts of beings, which toil without understanding around the clay, I mean the passions of the flesh. And the mind, believing itself to be entrusted with this divine service, together with the companion joined to it as a wife in the knowledge of wisdom, and with the noble manner and reasoning born from it, journeys altogether on the road of the virtues of the venerable conduct of life, which in no way admits of a standing still on the part of those who walk in it, but they keep their soul's course ever-moving and swift toward the goal, toward the prize of the upward calling, since standing still in virtue is the beginning of vice—when the mind has busily occupied itself passionately with some material thing lying on either side of the road, and makes the pure and wholly circumcised manner and reasoning of pious conduct uncircumcised and profane.

Therefore the mind immediately beholds the reproving word as an angel threatening death according to conscience, and testifying that the cause of the threat is the state according to virtue—the state that procures the uncircumcision of the reasoning, which the wisdom dwelling together with the mind persuades, by the vote of the word of faith, like Zipporah, circumcising the material fantasy that has arisen in the reasoning as a child, and drying up every notion of sensible life. For it says, the blood of the circumcision of the child stood still, that is, the passionate life and fantasy and motion ceased, when the defiled reasoning was purified through wisdom according to faith; after which purification the word that strikes the sinning mind through conscience and slanders every thought of his that is moved contrary to what is fitting ceases, like some angel. For the way of the holy angels has been filled with many virtues in truth—the angels who are active in each virtue according to its kind, I mean both words and manners, and the angels who invisibly cooperate with us toward good things and stir up such words in us.

Well then, the word of Holy Scripture is noble and magnanimous, always presenting the things understood before the things narrated, in those who possess healthy eyes of the soul, and having no accusation against either God or his holy angels. For Moses, when sent by God, did not have, according to the understanding of Scripture, an uncircumcised son—that is, a thought—since God had first commanded him to circumcise before sending him. Nor indeed was the divine angel harsh, disclosing to Moses the death that came upon him from his mistaken resistance on the road of the virtues, which the weakness of the virtues during the journey perhaps brought about. For if you also attend more carefully to the history, you will clearly find that the angel met him not at the beginning, nor at the middle, nor at the end of the road, but at the lodging place, and secretly threatened death on account of the passion that had come upon him in his mind—so that, if he had not stopped his course and ceased from his journeying, he would not have been accused, having received through the angel the indignation over the uncircumcision of the child.

Let us entreat God, if indeed we are in the way of the commandments, that He not cease, on account of every transgression of ours, from the death that comes from it, sending forth the word that declares to the conscience as a kind of angel, so that, having come to perception, we may learn through our innate prudence to cut off, as it were a foreskin, the uncleanness of the passions that secretly befalls us in the course of life. 18. ON "IF THE DOERS OF THE LAW SHALL BE JUSTIFIED, HOW DOES HE WHO IS JUSTIFIED IN THE LAW FALL FROM GRACE?" 18. QUESTION 18: If the doers of the law shall be justified, according to the apostle, how does he again say, "As many as are justified in the law have fallen from grace"? Answer. Not simply the doers of the law shall be justified, but those who do the spiritual law in a spiritual manner and according to the inner man in the Spirit shall be justified, not falling from grace because of the passage of the word into the depth of the soul in the course of purification. But those who serve the law bodily according to its outward appearance altogether fall from the divine grace, ignorant of the perfection in grace of the spiritual law that purifies the mind from every stain, and of the end, which is Christ. 19. ON "AS MANY AS SINNED WITHOUT LAW SHALL ALSO PERISH WITHOUT LAW." 19. QUESTION 19: What is "as many as sinned without law shall also perish without law," and "as many as sinned in the law shall be judged through the law"? And how does the same man again say, "when God shall judge the hidden things of men according to my Gospel through Jesus Christ"? If they shall be judged through the law, how through Jesus Christ?

Answer. The Word of God, Jesus Christ, as the creator of all things, is also the maker of the law that is according to nature; and as provider and lawgiver, He is clearly the giver of both the law that is in the letter and the law that is in the spirit, that is, in grace; for Christ is the end of the law—evidently of the written law, understood spiritually. If, then, both the law according to nature and the written law and the law of grace are gathered together into Christ as creator, provider, lawgiver, and propitiation, the divine apostle speaks truly when he says that God will judge the hidden things of men according to His Gospel, that is, according as He proclaims the good news through Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Word who is by essence His own, pervading all things, convicting some and receiving others in a fitting manner, and assigning to each according to worth, through the unutterable Word who is by essence co-eternal with Him, the things that are according to nature, law, and grace. For the Word of God is the maker of every nature and every law and institution and order, and the judge of things that are in nature, law, institution, and order; for apart from the Word who declares it, there is no law. Whether, then, one is judged in law, he will be judged in Christ; or whether without law, he will again certainly be judged in Him; for the Word, as creator, is the beginning, middle, and end of all things that exist and are spoken and are thought.

K (20). On the Fig Tree Withered in the Gospel. 20. Question 20. What is the fig tree in the Gospel that was withered contrary to reason, as far as appearances go? And what is the intemperance of the hunger that sought fruit out of season? And what is the curse of the insensate one? Answer. God the Word, who orders all things with wisdom for the sake of the salvation of men, having first trained nature through the law, which had a more bodily form of worship—for it could not receive the truth stripped bare of typical coverings, because of the ignorance and estrangement that had arisen in it toward the archetype of divine things—later, having become man manifestly through Himself, having come by the assumption of flesh that has a rational and intelligent soul, and having, as Word, transferred nature to the immaterial, gnostic worship in the Spirit, did not wish, once the truth had shone forth in life, that the shadow should hold dominion—of which the fig tree was a type. Therefore He says: returning from Bethany to Jerusalem, that is, after His presence hidden in the typical and shadowy manner according to the law, again visiting the nature of men through the flesh—for thus one must take the

Returning, he saw a fig tree by the road having only leaves—that is, the bodily worship of the law existing in shadows and types, according to the unstable and transient tradition, lying as it were by the road, and consisting only of passing types and ordinances. The Word, seeing it—elegantly and abundantly, as it were a fig tree—adorned on the outside, as with leaves, by the coverings of the bodily observances of the law, and finding no fruit, clearly that of righteousness, since it did not nourish the Word, he cursed it—or rather, he commanded that the truth be no longer covered over by the legal types exercising dominion. And this, having come to pass, was shown by the works, when the legal beauty that had its being in forms alone was completely dried up, and the pride of the Jews over it was extinguished. For it was neither reasonable nor timely, once the truth of the fruits of righteousness had been clearly shown, that the desire of those who run through the present life as a road should be misled and seduced by leaves, having abandoned the edible fruitfulness of the Word. Therefore he says, It was not the season for figs—that is, the time in which the law prevailed over human nature was not a time of the fruits of righteousness, but one that imaged the fruits of righteousness and, as it were, indicated the future saving, divine, and ineffable grace of all. Not reaching this, the old people perished through unbelief. For Israel, says the divine apostle, pursuing a law of righteousness—that is, the one in shadow and types—did not attain to the law of righteousness, that is, the one perfected in the Spirit according to Christ.

Or again, since the multitude of the priests and scribes and lawyers and Pharisees, sick with empty opinion through the display of supposedly reverent conduct, while seeming to pursue righteousness, nourished the conceit born of presumption, the word says that the presumption of those mentioned is a barren fig tree luxuriating only in leaves. The one who desires the salvation of all men and hungers for their deification, cursing it as barren, dries it up, so that, preferring to be rather than to seem righteous, having stripped off the garment of moral display that belongs to hypocrisy, and having pursued virtue undefiled, as the divine Word wills, they may pass their life piously, displaying the disposition of the soul to God rather than the outward conformation of conduct to men. And if we Christians are also such as these, shaping our reverence through mannerisms apart from righteousness in deeds, let us receive the Word, who in his love for mankind hungers for our salvation, drying up the seed of evil in the soul—presumption—which no longer bears the fruit of corruption, namely people-pleasing. You have, according to my poor ability, the power of the word, as the exposition set forth has shown well the Lord hungering usefully, cursing the fig tree beneficially, and drying it up opportunely, as an obstacle to the truth, whether it be the old tradition of bodily types according to the law, or the presumption of the Pharisees and of us in matters of conduct. KA (21). CONCERNING "HAVING STRIPPED OFF THE PRINCIPALITIES AND THE POWERS." 21.

QUESTION 21: What is "having stripped off the principalities and the powers," and so on? And how was he, who had been made without sin, clothed with them at all? Answer. The Word, who rules all things divinely, having in every way without change assumed our nature in the same manner as we, apart from sin alone, and having become a perfect man, had the first Adam appearing in the modes of his coming into being and his birth. For instance, the first man, having received his existence from God and having come into being according to the very generation of existence, was free from corruption and sin—for corruption and sin were not created together with him—but when he transgressed the commandment and sinned, he was condemned to a birth constituted through passion and sin, since because of it sin had, as it were in law, the passible element henceforth according to nature in generation; according to which no one is without sin, being by nature subject to the law of the birth introduced after generation because of sin. Since, then, through the transgression came sin, and through sin the passible element in birth entered the nature of men, and the first transgression always grew together with the passible element of birth through sin, there was no hope of freedom, since the nature was bound by an evil bond, unloosed in accordance with its own inclination. For as much as nature hastened toward its own constitution through birth, so much the more did it tighten itself to the law of sin, having the transgression active in it according to the passible element.

For in the very passible element, which by natural circumstance has the increase of sin, it possessed the activities of all the opposing powers, principalities and authorities, hidden by the passions contrary to nature within the passions according to nature, in accordance with the generic sin in the passible element; through these every evil power worked, driving the will, by means of the passions according to nature, toward the corruption of the passions contrary to nature in the passible element of nature. Therefore the only-begotten Son and Word of God, having become a perfect man out of love for humanity, in order to rescue the nature of human beings from this evil helplessness, took from the first constitution at Adam's generation and possessed sinlessness without incorruption, while from the generation later introduced into nature because of sin he received only the passible element without sin. Since, then, in the passible element according to Adam, as I said, the evil powers had their activities because of sin, hidden invisibly in the circumstantial law of nature, reasonably, when they saw in the Savior God the passible element according to nature because of the flesh, and supposed that the Lord too necessarily possessed the law of nature circumstantially as a mere man, but not as one moved by will according to intention, they attacked, hoping to persuade him also, through the passion according to nature, to imagine the passion contrary to nature and to do something like them. But he, by the first experience of the temptations according to pleasure, allowed them to be mocked by their own wiles, and stripped them off, driving them out of nature, remaining inaccessible and untouchable to them, making the victory plainly for us and not for himself.

To whom he also became a man, leading forward, as one good, the whole of what was rightly accomplished. For he himself had no need of trial, being God and Lord and free by nature from every passion, but so that, drawing out the evil power by our temptations, he might destroy it by the assault, having put to death the expectation that it would seize him as it had seized Adam in the beginning. Thus then, by the first trial, having stripped off the principalities and authorities that assaulted him, he put them far from nature, and healed the passible element according to pleasure, and blotted out in himself the handwriting of Adam's deliberate consent to the passions according to pleasure; by which handwriting man, having his disposition inclined toward evil pleasure, was proclaiming against himself, even in silence through his deeds, a dominion, not being freed from the entanglement according to pleasure by the fear of death. Since, therefore, through the first trial according to pleasure the Lord had defeated and made void the evil powers, principalities and authorities, he also allows them to make a second assault and to bring forward the remaining trial of temptations through pain and toils, so that, having completely emptied in himself the destructive poison of the

...so that, consuming their wickedness like fire, having utterly abolished it from nature, having stripped off at the time of death on the cross the principalities and the powers, remaining unconquered by sufferings, or rather appearing fearsome against death, having emulated the passible in respect of pain in nature; whose inclination, inclining away through cowardice, man always possessed, and being tyrannized by fear of death against his will, because of living he clung to the slavery that is according to pleasure. The Lord, then, stripped off the principalities and the powers at the first trial of temptations in the desert, healing the passible in respect of pleasure of the whole nature; and he stripped them off again at the time of death, having likewise emulated the passible in respect of pain of nature, making his own, through love for mankind, what is rightly accomplished by us, as though he were liable, or rather, as one good, reckoning to us the glory of what is rightly accomplished.

For since he took upon himself, like us and without sin, the passibility of nature, through which every evil and destructive power naturally works its own effects, at the time of death he stripped off those powers that came against him for the sake of examination, and having triumphed over them and made a public example of them on the cross at the departure of his soul, since they found nothing at all of their own in the passibility of his nature—especially when they expected, because of what is naturally passible in the flesh, to find something altogether human—for this reason, by his own power and as from a kind of firstfruits, from his holy flesh taken from us, he set free the whole nature of human beings from the wickedness that had been implanted in it through the passible element, subjecting to that same passibility of nature the evil dominion of nature that had once reigned in it—I mean in the passible element. It would indeed be possible in another way to contemplate the account concerning this more mystically and more sublimely. But since, as you know, the more secret things of the divine doctrines ought not to be set down in writing, let us be content with what has been said, which urges on the mind that busies itself inquisitively about this matter. And if God grants that we be deemed worthy of this also in your sight, we shall inquisitively examine the apostolic meaning with a love of learning.

SCHOLIA 1. He calls "genesis" the first formation of man from God; and "gennesis," the succession from one another after the condemnation because of the transgression. 2. He calls "evil" the activities of the unclean spirits. Passions are of two kinds: the one is the passions contrary to nature, which are always evils opposed to the virtues, and can never be manifested in the virtues; the other is those passions which, although not made by God in the nature of men, nevertheless entered it together with the transgression, and therefore, considered in themselves, are evil, but can be changed into good by those who use them well—namely, pleasure and pain, desire and fear, in which evils are hidden, through which the opposing powers naturally perform unjust deeds. 3. He calls "movements of the soul" pleasure and pain, desire and fear, taken as good and evil, in which the evils secretly subsist. 4. He names the succession of men an introduced gennesis into our nature, by bodily union, like that of animals. For if the nature of man had not fallen through the first man by the transgression, the multiplication of the human race would not have come about by the union of bodies, which is the penalty of the transgression, but by some wondrous divine manner, without defilement of seed. 5. He names "succession" the gennesis of men through union from seed, which was not in his nature, but is an introduced penalty into nature.

6. The unclean spirits are by nature inclined to drag men down, secretly suggesting, with deceit, the passions contrary to nature under the form of things according to nature. 7. The experience of our pleasure was appropriated by the one who by nature is without pleasure, for the provocation of the tempter, and as a man being impassible; for he was passible in the flesh according to nature, as a man, because of mortality, but not subject to passion in his will, as being without sin. 8. The promptings of the devil against the Lord in the wilderness, in the temple, and on the high mountain he calls temptations. 9. He calls the passion of the cross that by which the devil was defeated and the nature of man was set free from death and sin. 10. One thing is the passibility of pleasure, and another is the passibility of the flesh; the passibility of pleasure, that is, sin, was not in Christ. 11. He has called it a property of nature, the inclination to sin from weakness in the will after transgression; which the Lord did not have naturally according to the flesh, even though he was in the flesh essentially without sin.

12. That interpreters of Scripture ought not to interpret anything as being incapable of being interpreted otherwise. 22. QUESTION 22: If in the ages to come God will show his wealth, how have the ends of the ages come upon us? Answer. He who by the mere inclination of his will brought creation into existence before all the ages, both visible and invisible, had before the very generation of things that came to be his ineffably most-good purpose concerning them; and this was that he should be united without change to the nature of men through the true union according to hypostasis, and should unite to himself the human nature without alteration, so that he himself might become man, as he himself knows, and might make man God by his union with himself, clearly dividing and distinguishing the ages wisely—some for the working of his becoming man, and others for the working of his making man God.

Of the ages, then, that were foreordained with a view to the actual accomplishment of his becoming man, the ends have reached us, the divine purpose having received its fulfillment through the very facts of the incarnation. Perceiving this, the divine apostle, seeing the end of the ages according to purpose—namely, that God should become man—through the very incarnation of God the Word, says that the ends of the ages have reached us; the ages being understood by us not in a simple sense, but as those which, with a view to the actual accomplishment of the mystery of embodiment, have received their proper limit according to the purpose of God. Since, then, the ages foreordained according to purpose with a view to the actual accomplishment of God's becoming man have received their end in us—God having truly accomplished and fulfilled his own perfect becoming man—it is necessary henceforth to await the other ages that will come, with a view to the actual accomplishment of the mystical and ineffable deification of human beings, in which God will show toward us the surpassing wealth of his goodness, having perfectly accomplished deification in those who are worthy. For if he himself

For the mystical operation of his becoming man has reached its end, and he was made like us in every way except sin alone, and descended into the lower parts of the earth, where the tyranny of sin had cast man down; so too the mystical operation for the deification of man will certainly reach its end, having made man like himself in every way—except, clearly, identity with himself in essence—and having raised him up above all the heavens, where the greatness of grace, being by nature, calls the man who lies below, because of the boundlessness of its goodness. Teaching this mystically, the great apostle says that in the ages to come the surpassing riches of God's goodness toward us will be shown. Let us too, then, divide the ages by our understanding, and set apart some for the mystery of the divine incarnation and others for the grace of human deification, and we shall find that the former are at their proper end, while the latter have not yet arrived. And to speak briefly, some of the ages are of God's descent toward men, and others are of men's ascent toward God. Understanding it thus, we are not darkened by the obscurity of the divine words, supposing that the divine apostle suffered a lapse into the same meaning. Or rather, since our Lord Jesus Christ is the beginning and middle and end of all the ages—past, present, and future—it is fittingly that the end of the ages, which will come to be in actuality according to grace for the deification of the worthy, has reached us by the power of faith.

Or again, since the principle of doing is one thing and the principle of suffering another, the divine apostle mystically and at the same time wisely divided the principle of doing and of suffering into ages past and ages to come. For example, the ages of the flesh, in which we now live—for Scripture also knows temporal ages, according to the words "and he labored unto the age, and he shall live unto the end"—belong to the property of doing, while the ages that are to be, of the Spirit after the present life, belong to the transformation of suffering. Here, then, being as those who do, we arrive at the ends of ages, our power and our activity receiving their limit in respect of doing. But in the ages to come, suffering the transformation toward deification by grace, we do not act but suffer, and for this reason we do not cease being deified. For then the suffering is beyond nature and has no defining principle of the deification of those who suffer it, extending without limit. For we act insofar as we possess by nature the rational power productive of virtues, being energized, and the noetic power receptive of all knowledge, passing over the whole nature of beings and things known without restraint and making all the ages behind itself; and we suffer when, having perfectly passed through the principles of things that come from non-being, we come unknowably to the cause of beings and bring our own powers to rest together with things naturally limited, becoming that which is in no way an achievement of natural power, since nature does not possess a power capable of comprehending what is beyond nature.

For nothing created is by nature productive of deification, since it is not even capable of comprehending God. For this is proper to divine grace alone by nature: to bestow deification on beings in proportion to each, and to illumine nature with light beyond nature, and to place it above its own limits by the exceeding abundance of glory. Therefore the ends of the ages have rightly come upon us, who are about to receive, very soon, through the grace in Christ, the gift of good things beyond ages and nature, of which the modes of the virtues and the principles of things that can be known by nature are types and prefigurations, through which God, always willing it among the worthy, becomes man. Blessed, then, is the one who, after making God man within himself through wisdom, has also fulfilled the generation of such a mystery, suffering to become God by grace, because the ever-ongoing becoming of this will receive no end. For he who works this in the worthy, being boundless in essence, has a boundless power—and beyond all boundlessness—that works this and never terminates together with the things that come to be by it, as we do, but always rather holds together with itself those who receive being from it, who cannot be without it. Hence he also called it wealth of goodness, since the divine and all-radiant disposition toward us in goodness, for the transformation unto deification, never ceases. SCHOLIA 1. The union of the Word with the flesh according to subsistence revealed the ineffable purpose of the divine counsel, in that he did not confuse the essence by the union of the flesh, but showed the subsistence to be one, even in the incarnation of the Word.

so that the flesh may remain flesh in essence, and yet become divine in hypostasis. 2. Of the ages, he says, some have been declarative of the divine incarnation, the ends of which have reached us; while others are demonstrative of our deification, the wealth of whose glory has not yet been revealed. 3. A sure pledge, he says, of the hope of deification for the nature of humans is the incarnation of God, making the human so much God as he himself became human. For the one who became human without sin—clearly without any change into divinity—will deify the nature and raise it up through himself as much as he lowered himself through the human. 4. A contemplation through which he shows that in Christ, without interval, according to circumscription, are the beginning, the middle, and the end of the ages. He who reached us as the end of the ages through incarnation, having by nature the fullness of the Father's goodness, of which he made us partakers in himself by grace, establishing for us the hope of faith as a sure pledge.

5. The principle of doing is the natural power directed toward the activity of the virtues; but the principle of suffering is the grace of things beyond nature, or the concurrence of things contrary to nature. For just as we do not have a natural power for what transcends being, so neither do we have by nature the power for what is not. We therefore suffer deification as being beyond nature, by grace, but we do not produce it. For we do not have by nature a power receptive of deification. And again we suffer evil as being contrary to nature, by choice through concurrence; for we do not have a natural power for the generation of evil. Here, then, he says, while we are in this life, we do the virtues, having by nature the power to do them; but in the age to come we suffer deification, receiving this grace as a gift for the purpose of suffering it. 6. After this life, he says, we cease doing the virtues; but we do not cease suffering the deification that is beyond them, according to grace. For the suffering that is beyond nature is unbounded, because it is also active; but that which is contrary to nature is non-existent, because it is also inactive. 7. The principle, he says, presiding over anger and desire produces the virtues; and the intellect, applying itself to the principles of created things, gathers the unerring knowledge. When, therefore, the principle, after the casting off of things opposed, finds the natural object of love; and the intellect, after the passage through things known, lays hold of the cause of beings that is beyond substance and knowledge—then at that time the suffering of deification by grace supervenes, leading the principle away from natural discrimination, where that which is discriminated does not exist; and bringing the intellect to rest from natural understanding, where not

is the object of knowledge, and makes God, by the sameness of its stability, the one deemed worthy of divine participation. 8. He says that the types of the divine goods are both the modes of virtue and the principles (logoi) of beings; by these God continually becomes man, having as it were a body the modes of the virtues, and as it were a soul the spiritual principles of knowledge, by which He deifies the worthy, giving an embodied impress of virtue and granting the substantial existence of unerring knowledge. 9. He interpreted as wealth of goodness the disposition of God's benevolence toward us. 23. CONCERNING "AND GOD WILL GIVE HIM THE THRONE OF DAVID HIS FATHER." Question 23: If David reigned over Israel according to the flesh only, and Israel according to the flesh rejected the kingdom of Christ—which is why it passed over to the Gentiles—how, according to the voice of the archangel, will there stand the saying "And God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever"? Answer.

This puzzle seems to me to have a clear and manifest explanation. For if not all those from Israel are Israel, nor because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children, but God reckons the children of the promise as seed, and if the number of the sons of Israel be as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be saved, it is clear that the faithful people, who see God through works of righteousness and through the true knowledge that is according to faith, is Israel, whether it bears its lineage from Israel according to the flesh, or belongs to the portion of the Gentiles. For he who bears in himself the clear and undefiled imprint of the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the faith of the true Israel, has not been estranged from the calling and the grace. But David himself, the blessed one of the faithful in Israel, also had the kingdom. Hence, at the same time as Israel extinguished for itself the light of faith, it also immediately departed from the kingdom of David.

Is it, then, the spiritual throne of David, and the intelligible kingdom of rational souls, and the faithful house of Jacob, and the holy and great nation—the one for which, in place of the carnal and embittering Israel, God, speaking prophetically to Moses, promised to establish him, that is, the one understood typologically through him, saying, "Let me alone, and I will blot out this nation at once, and I will establish you as a great and fearful nation, or this one"—but not the faithless house of Jacob and the one that embitters, and the sinful nation and the evil seed and the lawless sons and the rulers of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah and those who have turned away with an evil turning and have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel and have not known or understood God and have been struck with the incurable plague of unbelief, one that admits no method of rational healing, healing the unbelief of the soul—for woe, he says, to a sinful nation, an evil seed, lawless sons: you have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel. Why should you be struck further, adding lawlessness? There is no poultice to apply, neither oil nor bandages—not for those who have limped on both their legs and have turned away from the truth and have been cast out of the divine inheritance, like Cain and Ishmael and Esau and Reuben and Er and Onan and Manasseh and Eliab and Amnon, the firstborn of the patriarchs and prophets, both cast out and rejected—for he says, My firstborn son is Israel; for he is not an only-begotten.

For the introduction of another, divinely inspired and devout people was hoped for, unto adoption, a people built according to God and brought unto adoption in grace through the casting out of the firstborn and faithless Israel, who rose up against the intelligible Abel through envy and killed him after the manner of Cain, and mocked the divine manner of the intelligible Isaac after the manner of Ishmael, and raged against the intelligible Jacob as Esau, and poured out the seed of faith and of the righteousness according to it into the land of error and of the passions after the manner of Er and Onan, and denied the Church of God, as those men denied Tamar, and made forgetfulness of the virtues their own after the manner of Manasseh, and was greatly vexed with pride against the intelligible David when he received the kingdom, and for this reason was set at nought after the manner of Eliab, and became a maker of strange lawlessness after the manner of Amnon—not these alien sons and those who halt from their paths, who breathe madness and murder, who are truly fleshly and sons of flesh only, who are strangers to grace, whose god is their belly and whose glory is in their shame, whose memorial of faithlessness—may it perish with a sound—but, as I said, the faithful and spiritual Israel and the one who sees God through faith, the one gathered from all the nations by the election of grace into a people for his possession and a holy nation and a royal priesthood, God promised to give, when he spoke through the angel to the virgin concerning the Savior of all who was to be born of her.

This very thing received its own confirmation through the actual outcome of events, since the Lord fulfilled the promises made to the fathers and blessed all the nations in the spiritual Abraham and adopted them as sons, and established Abraham as father of all the nations in the Spirit through faith, and sat upon the spiritual throne of David and reigns over the faithful house of Jacob unto the ages with a kingdom that has no end. SCHOLIA 1. In the time of Jeroboam, Israel revolted from the house of David, having become faithless to God. 2. A reckoning of the firstborn cast out from the beginning of the age, to whom the Israelite people also is likened. Even if we grant that the words "Israel is my firstborn son" were spoken of him in a accommodative sense, he has been cast off as a firstborn because of the calling of the people of the nations who were adopted after him through faith. 3. The brothers who were plotted against by the firstborn, he says, bear a type of the Lord and of the new people according to faith. 24 (KD). CONCERNING "HAVING PASSED THE FIRST AND SECOND GUARD". 24. QUESTION 24: What is the meaning of what is written in the Acts concerning Peter, "having passed the first guard and the second, we came to the iron gate"? Answer.

The faithful and practical mind, according to Saint Peter, when held by Herod—for Herod is interpreted as "leathern," that is, the mind of the flesh—is confined by two prisons and one iron gate, being warred upon both by the activity of the passions and by the mind's consent to the passions. These, like prisons—that is, guardhouses—he passes through by the word of practical philosophy as by an angel, and comes to the iron gate that leads into the city, I mean the firm and steep and hard-to-conquer attachment of the senses to sensible things. This gate the word of natural contemplation in the Spirit opens, and thereafter sends the mind without fear, of its own accord, to the kindred intelligible realities, free from the madness of Herod. SCHOLION. 1. He called "prisons" the habit of evil and its activity; for the consent is the mark of the habit, under which the wicked one strives to make the saints do [evil]. And the "iron gate" is the natural attachment of the senses to sensible things, from which the word of practical knowledge, as an angel, rescues the truly faithful one. KE (25). CONCERNING "THE HEAD OF EVERY MAN IS CHRIST," AND WHAT FOLLOWS. 25. QUESTION 25: What is "I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of a woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God, and every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head; but every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head; for it is one and the same as the shorn woman"?

And what again is the meaning of "for this cause the woman ought to have authority on her head, because of the angels"? Answer. It should be known that when the divine apostle said that Christ is the head of every man—clearly of the faithful man, according to the practice of the divine commandments and the contemplation of pious doctrines—he declared that Christ is the head of man, the inclusive signification not enclosing in its statement unbelieving men as well. For how could Christ be the head of those who do not believe? Therefore, advancing by a single approach to the word of anagogical interpretation, we say that the man is the practical mind, having as its head the word of faith; looking toward this as toward Christ, the mind establishes its own life built up through practice by the graces of the commandments, not putting its head to shame—that is, its faith—by any of the outward coverings pertaining to matter, by not placing any of the temporary and dissoluble things above faith. And we say that the woman of such a mind is the very habit of practice, adorned and covered with many and various practical thoughts and dispositions—or rather, that the mind itself, as its own head, is covered according to the density and comeliness of such thoughts and manners. And we say that Christ is the subsistent faith, whose head is clearly God, to whom the word of faith leads, showing to the one being led up the God in whom He exists by nature.

And again, the man is the intellect that devotes itself to the natural contemplation in the Spirit, having as its head the principle that creates all things, made manifest through faith from the ordering of things seen, which the intellect does not put to shame by covering it and, as it were, placing it beneath something among things seen, and making it altogether lower than itself. And the woman of such an intellect is the perception that dwells with it, through which it mounts upon the nature of things perceived and gathers the more divine principles within them, not permitting it, when it has been uncovered of the rational coverings, to become a servant of irrationality and sin—the intellect having exchanged, for a head, through the casting off of the more divine principles as coverings, the passion of irrationality. And the head of Christ—that is, of the creative principle that appears by faith through the natural contemplation of created things, proportionately to the things that exist—is the ineffable intellect that begets him in essence; to which the Word, through himself, establishes the intellect that is led up through the pious contemplation of things that exist, supplying it with the intelligible impressions of divine things, measured to its knowledge of things seen. And again, the man is the intellect that has come within mystical theology, having as its head Christ uncovered—that is, the one who by irrefutable

the word of faith, understood unknowably through mystical initiations, or, to speak more properly, known without understanding—beyond which nothing of existing things is placed: not perception, not reason, not intellect, not thought, not knowledge; neither known nor thought nor spoken nor perceptible nor perceived—the intellect that cultivates the praiseworthy and transcendent deprivation of itself and of existing things, wholly and pre-eminently deifying. And the wife of such an intellect is the mind purified of all sensory imagination, having as its head the intellect, covered over by the unoriginate and supra-intellectual apprehensions of the ineffable and unknowable doctrines. And the head of Christ—that is, of the word that has been mystically declared pre-eminently—is the Intellect absolutely and in every way infinitely removed from all things, whom Christ, being by nature the Word of the Intellect, makes known to those who are worthy when he is understood. For he says, He who has seen me has seen the Father. For truly the understanding of the Word is the manifest knowledge of the Intellect that begot him, since he shows in himself the Intellect subsisting in essence, to whom he leads the intellect that aspires to identity with God according to grace, once it has been released from the difference and quantity in the multitude of existing things according to thought and has been gathered into a Godlike monad by the identity and simplicity of the intensively ever-moving motion around God.

Every practical intellect, therefore, when it prays or prophesies—that is, when it asks for the principles of the virtues (for so must "prays" be understood), or when it reveals their modes through works (for so must "prophesies" be understood)—ought to see only the bare word of faith, understanding or reasoning or doing nothing that covers the head by way of a covering, placing something else above it. And every woman, that is, the habit of a practical intellect, when she prays or prophesies—that is, when she is moved invisibly by disposition, or forms virtue by outward habits—without rational discernment, shames her head, pursuing the good toward passion, as one deprived of the word that adorns, as of a covering. And every intellect that practices natural contemplation, when it prays or prophesies with a covering on its head—that is, when it seeks the principles of beings in a gnostic manner, or hands them on to others in a didactic manner, with a leaning toward something else in any way whatever, without the aim of piety—shames its head, as having placed something above the right knowledge according to piety, something that passes away. And every woman, that is, sense perception, when it naturally assails sensible things without having the noetic principles of the things seen covering it, shames its head, coming upon the contemplation of things seen toward passion because of natural attachment.

And every intellect that has become a lover of mystical theology, when it prays or prophesies with its head covered—that is, when it enters unknowingly into the innermost sanctuaries of contemplation, or teaches and initiates others into theology—if it holds any form of thought, being initiated into or initiating others into the Word that is beyond thought, shames its own head, subjecting the simple and transcendent-over-all-thought Word to some one of the things that exist and are known, when it ought, stripped bare of every concept and knowledge, to see the true God the Word without eyes of the mind, knowing clearly that in the case of God the negations by way of transcendence are more true, somehow indicating the divine position through the complete removal of existing things. And every woman, the faculty of understanding of such an intellect, when she prays or prophesies with her head uncovered—that is, with the noetic power within her set free from the many mystical contemplations that have thickened upon it—shames her own head, having cast off the divine and ineffable knowledge that covers the intellect as a head.

Every man, then—that is, the practical or the natural or the theological intellect—when he prays or prophesies, that is, when he is taught or teaches, let him have his head uncovered, namely Christ: the practical man, preferring nothing to faith and virtue; the natural man, holding no other thing higher than the first Logos; the theological man, not shaping in any way by the concepts drawn from beings the One who is beyond understanding and knowledge. And every woman—that is, the habit of the practical intellect, or the perception of the natural, or the wise thought of the theological intellect—let her cover her head: the practical habit, having the discernment of the Logos set over what is to be done and what is not to be done; the perception, the scientific power of the Logos concerning things seen; the thought, the wholly undemonstrable knowledge of things beyond understanding. For every habit or perception or thought that is not covered in the manner described differs in no way from a woman shorn—that is, from virtue or piety or mystical knowledge and divine love that has no Logos at all.

Every such woman, then, ought for what is fitting to have the authority of the word always upon her head—I mean the rational governance—and especially because of the angels, who behold our visible and invisible movements and record every thought and deed, to our praise or reproof on the fearful day of discernment; and because of the thoughts according to conscience, which are themselves figuratively understood as angels, accusing or else defending us for what is done by us, both now and afterward on the day of judgment; and because of the evil angels who watch our habit and perception and thought, so that when they see it stripped bare of rational and noetic discernment and piety and knowledge, they may set upon it, producing in them the genesis of their opposites—I mean indiscernment and impiety and ignorance—through which the evil demons are by nature wont to work wickedness and error and godlessness. And the head of Christ is said to be God, as being by nature Mind of the Word, in the manner of a cause, the beginning. SCHOLIA 1. That the man is also the intellect that pursues the practical philosophy. 2. He called Christ the head, as the subsistence of the good things to come. For faith, according to the divine Apostle, is the subsistence of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen—which is himself, in whom are hidden the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

3. Faith is substantial—active and practical—by which the Word of God is shown to be embodied in practical commandments; through these, as Word, he leads those who practice them up to the Father, in whom he is by nature. 4. For the man is also the mind that piously practices natural contemplation, having as head the Word of God, contemplated by faith in the understanding, as the cause of the generation of things seen. 5. Since, he says, Mind is altogether co-conceived with the Word that generates the things that exist, to which the Word has its reference by cause, he has called the Father the head of Christ, as Mind that by nature begets the Word. 6. For the man is also the one who is taught the mystical theology. 7. Understand “without understanding” by way of preeminence. For what is believed is beyond understanding, which is God. 8. The one who has received, unknowably, the immediate vision—by the preeminent privation of created things—of the Word beyond every word, he says, has as his head the altogether most singular Word himself; beyond whom, or with whom, or after whom, no other by nature at all exists