PG_91A_2

The Word has subsistence, whose begetter is the one Mind by nature; leading those who follow him up to this Word as to a head through the Spirit consubstantial with him, he establishes the mind that follows. 9. Of the practical life, he says, the wife is the habit, as being generative of the modes of virtue; of the natural life, the sense purified by the words of the Spirit, as giving birth to the dispassionate impressions of beings; of the theological life, the pure understanding, which alone is receptive of the one thrice-shining light. 10. He calls Christ the supersubstantial Word, who was incarnate in a supersubstantial manner, because not even his incarnation was comprehended by the mind through a natural principle. And he says that the head of this is the Mind which is the cause by nature, conceived together with the Word by nature according to causality. For the one who has seen the Word by faith has at the same time, timelessly, mystically seen with the Word the Mind that begets the Word, as being in him by nature. Some say that Christ is the human nature of Christ, as the head of the whole, that is, of the entire nature. Of this human nature, it is clear, the divinity of Christ is the head. For by naming the parts with the name of the whole, they have delivered a correct notion. 11. The identity, according to grace, of the perfected mind with God is the simple and undivided motion toward that which is the same by nature, in which there is no apprehension of intelligibles that differ in quantity according to substance and in quality according to power; but it is an ineffable enjoyment, having perception that surpasses thought. 12. He says that prayer is, for the practical life, the petition of the virtues; and prophecy, the true teaching of the principles within them.

Of the natural [man] he says that prayer is the request of scientific knowledge concerning beings; and prophecy, the transmission of this to others through true teaching. Of the theological [man] he says that prayer is the unutterable silence, according to which the mind, by way of transcendence, through the privation of beings, becomes worthy of the union beyond thought and knowledge; and prophecy, the initiation of others into this. For prayer effects the union of the one praying with God; and prophecy persuades the one prophesying, for God's sake, to communicate to men the good things given. 13. He understands God as Word, grasping nothing—that is, nothing of the things that can come under grasping—or being understood as nothing—that is, nothing of the things that can be understood, or come into reasoning—or doing nothing—that is, nothing of the things subject to generation and corruption; for these are properly called actions—he understands that he is the Word. 14. When we affirm the divine, he says, we co-conceive it with beings, but as a productive cause. But when we utterly deny it of beings, we do not co-conceive it with beings according to cause, because, truly speaking, it has no relation to beings—a relation according to which we are naturally disposed to bring up together the conception of the relation to both of which it is. Therefore the good theologian makes the ignorance according to transcendence a position of true knowledge—the utterly unthinkable [nature] of God. 15. Such, then, is the position that the privations according to transcendence take. For they show that God alone exists, denying that he is among things that exist or can come under grasping or be understood or be spoken.

CONCERNING THE KING OF BABYLON AND JUDAH AND THE NATIONS. 26. QUESTION 20: If the king of Babylon is allegorized as the devil, what is the meaning of the threats he makes through the prophet Jeremiah to the kings of the nations and to the king of Judah—collars and bonds and famine and death and sword and captivity, unless they serve him, but that those who serve willingly shall be at ease in their own land—and that he calls him a servant, saying, I have given all the earth to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon my servant, and I have given the beasts of the field to serve him? Who, then, is the servitude of the devil, and what are the beasts, and what are the six forms of the threat, and who are the kings of the nations and the king of Judah? Answer. The devil is both an enemy of God and an avenger. He is an enemy when, as one hating him, he seems in some way to have acquired a destructive love toward us men, persuading our free choice through pleasure, by the modes of voluntary passions, to prefer the temporary to the eternal goods, through which, stealing the whole desire of the soul, he wholly separates us from the divine love, making us voluntary enemies of the one who made us. He is an avenger when, having stripped bare his hatred toward us, since we have already become subject to him through sin, he demands the punishment against us. For nothing is so dear to the devil as a man being punished.

But when this has been permitted him, devising successive onsets of involuntary sufferings, he is borne fiercely like a tempest against those over whom he has received authority by God's permission, not wishing to fulfill the divine command, but desiring to feed his own passion of hatred against us, so that the soul, buckling under the great weight of painful calamities through weakness, might cut off from itself the power of divine hope, making the onset of grievously occurring events a cause of godlessness instead of admonition. For God, being good and wishing to root out completely from us the seed of evil—the pleasure that despoils the mind of divine love—permits the devil to bring pains and punishments upon us, at the same time scraping away through the soul's pains the poison of the preceding pleasure, and wishing to implant in us hatred and complete aversion toward things present that merely tickle the senses, so that, having gained nothing more than punishment as profit in their use, he might make that punishing and man-hating power of his a circumstantial cause of the return to virtue for those who have voluntarily slipped away from it. As, therefore, punishing sinners by permission, the devil is called a servant of God, though he is an apostate and a wicked robber, and has a will wholly suited to those who voluntarily through pleasure fall away from God—for it is fitting and just that those who have gladly received his wicked suggestions for voluntary sins be punished by the devil—so then the devil is both a sower of pleasure through voluntary passions and a bringer-on of pain through involuntary ones.

When, then, those who inhabit Judea and Jerusalem—that is, those who have received the practical habit or the theoretical knowledge—pursue these things for the glory of men, sketching the characters of virtues in outward manner only, and speaking words of wisdom and knowledge alone without the works of righteousness, and displaying to others the vanity that comes from virtue and knowledge, they are rightly handed over to fitting labors, learning by suffering the humility they ignored, in exchange for their vain conceit. Knowing this, the wondrous apostle also handed the lawless Corinthian over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. For this reason, in place of Judea and Jerusalem, the king is handed over to the king of the Assyrians—that is, the contemplative and gnostic mind is delivered over to the devil for punishment, who justly brings upon it labors and calamities, so that by suffering it may learn to philosophize about endurance and the patience of labors rather than to vaunt itself proudly and vainly over things that are not.

Everyone, therefore, who willingly endures, from the consciousness of what he himself has done, to accept the painful onslaughts of involuntary temptations with the gratitude that is due, is not driven out from the habit and grace of virtue and knowledge, as were those of old from Judea and Jerusalem—as one who has willingly submitted to the yoke of the king of Babylon and, as it were, paying a debt, accepts the onslaughts of torments—but remaining in them he renders to the king of Babylon the violent pains arising from the passible nature and the consent in his mind regarding them, as a debtor to them because of his preceding transgressions, while to God he offers, through true worship—I mean the humble disposition—the correction of the things he has neglected.

But the one who does not gratefully accept the misfortune brought upon him by God's permission for his correction through involuntary temptations, and who does not set aside the conceit he has repented of—the conceit of seeming to be righteous—as one who opposes the divine decrees of the righteous judgments, like the ancient inhabitants of Judea, and who does not willingly consent to come under the yoke of the king of Babylon according to the divine ordinance, is handed over into captivity to the king of Babylon, and is wholly deported from his own land—that is, from the habit of seeming to be in virtue and knowledge—being condemned by the captivity for his apostasy from divine things, by the collars for his false opinion about realities, by the bonds for his complete inactivity in good things, by the famine for his deprivation of divine teachings, by the death for his perfect (hardening and insensitivity toward good things, and by the sword for the passionate and dissolute thoughts that destroy the divine remembrances.

For all these things and more than these, the man who is being exiled from the habit of virtue and knowledge, as from his own land, suffers because he does not wish, out of pride and vain conceit, to be well pleased in afflictions and constraints and distresses, according to the divine apostle, paying the just penalties for the things in which he has transgressed, although by reason of righteousness he is free from every debt on account of these things. For the great apostle knew that the humility of the body, established outwardly through labors, is a safeguard of the divine treasures in the soul, and for this reason, cherishing it, he endured, both for his own sake and for the sake of those for whom he was set forth as a model of virtue and faith, so that even if they suffer as those liable, like the Corinthian who was rebuked, they might have as consolation and as an imitation of endurance the one who suffers without being liable. But the kings of the nations, in this place of Scripture, I think to be the men who preside over the remaining passions of dishonor, and who are themselves justly subject to the punishment of their own debts, and for this reason are handed over to the king of Babylon as to a punitive power that rejoices in the torment of nature. Therefore the Egyptian king is the pleasure-loving and dissolute mind, the Moabite is the luxurious and soft mind, the Ammonite is the covetous mind, the Syrian is the superstitious and disputatious mind—for it is written that the Syrian alone opposed Solomon, that is, peace and wisdom—and the Tyrian is the world-loving and life-loving mind.

And all the other kings whom the gnostic will know through their own signification, from the interpretation of their names, or from the position of their places, or from the general tradition prevailing among them, or from their practice toward one another, or from their particular antipathy toward Israel... For not always and not all are taken in the same way and in one signification, but according to the underlying need and the power of the prophecy, since indeed Scripture knows how to take Pharaoh for the devil, when he becomes a destroyer of Israel, and again for the law of nature, when Joseph serves him according to the economy, prophetically signifying through himself the God the Word who by nature served our passions willingly, apart from sin alone; likewise the king of Tyre is understood as the devil, when he wars against Israel through Sisara, and again as the natural law, when he makes a covenant with David and contributes very many things to the building of the divine temple for Solomon. And each of the kings enumerated in Scripture is taken in many other significations as well, according to the power underlying the prophecy. And the beasts which God gives to the king of Babylon are the demons, each one ministering according to the disposition inwardly underlying him toward this or that inducement of temptations. For one is productive of one evil and another of another, and one is clearly more polluted than another and more suited to this particular form of evil.

For not even the demons themselves can minister in any way to the devil, the author of evil, without divine permission, so that, as God himself knows, with the fitting, philanthropic, and good providence, he permits the devil through his ministers to inflict various punishments for the sins we have committed. And the writing concerning Job clearly shows this, recording that the devil was unable to approach Job at all without divine permission. But Nebuchadnezzar himself, the king of Babylon, is also often taken to signify the natural law. And this (those who were unable to embrace the spiritual law and were therefore dragged down to the land of Babylon—I mean the condition of confusion regarding matter—indicate when they write to those in Jerusalem: Pray for the life of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and for the life of Belshazzar his son, that is, for the natural law and its condition in respect of motion, under which they had then come to be, that their days may be as the days of heaven, thereby urging those who remain in the impassibility of virtue and the truth of knowledge to pray, so that the thoughts of the natural law and of its condition in respect of motion, under which—having abandoned the spiritual law—they have come to be, may be as the divine thoughts of the law of the Spirit, calling the thoughts "days" and the spiritual law "heaven." For they sought that the natural and laborious law under which they had come to be should not be discordant with the spiritual law.

With these things agrees also what was said mystically to him according to the divine threat by the great Daniel, when he interpreted the dream that was seen: "And they shall drive you out from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the wild beasts, and they shall feed you grass as an ox, and you shall be lodged by the dew of heaven, and seven times shall be changed upon you, until you know that the Most High rules over the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever he wills"; and that he said: "Leave the stump of the roots of the tree in the earth; your kingdom remains for you, from the time you know the heavenly kingdom." He is saying, then, that the "driving out" is perhaps the expulsion from paradise into this world because of the transgression, and the alienation from the way of life with the holy angels—that is, the turning from intelligible visions to the perception of the law of nature; and the "dwelling with the wild beasts" (he means the abiding, that is, the dwelling and companionship, with the passions and the demons who work them). And the grass which, it is clear, the men themselves fed him, and not the beasts with which he had his dwelling—for those do not feed but tear to pieces—is the natural understanding of things that appear, according to sense perception, and the laborious practice according to virtue, which the angels supply to men as grass. And "to be lodged by the dew of heaven" is to have obtained, through divine providence, the continuance in these things; for the word called providence the "dew of heaven," through which in this age man had his preservation together with those who were numbered—that is, the

The law according to nature, never entirely corrupted, or perhaps the measured knowledge of things intelligible that comes about by God's grace through things that appear, by which man is here held fast in the hope of things to come. And "seven times shall be changed upon you" signifies the hebdomadic extension of time according to this age, under which the law according to nature has come to be, having let go the guarding of its own state and activity, and after which, when it is completed at the expected resurrection, through the casting off of irrational peculiarities it will return again to itself, recovering the original felicity of the kingdom, having recognized through the providential economy according to this age the power of the true kingdom. For the saying "leave the stump of the roots of the tree in the earth" indicates that the seed and the powers of goodness are not wholly destroyed from nature because of the transgression; by these, receiving growth again, it is brought back through the resurrection to its former natural magnitude and beauty. But for us it is better, following the law of the commandments, to train ourselves toward the destruction of the mind of the flesh by voluntary labors, and not only better, but also very much (philosophical and fitting for those who have established the innate reason as ruler over the passions. But if not this, at least the second best after it: being disciplined involuntarily, let us accept with fitting thanksgiving the will of him who disciplines us, receiving the punishment for the things in which we have sinned as though a yoke of the king of Babylon.

And the intelligible king of Babylon does not carry away our mind from our own land, that is, from faith and hope and the virtuous disposition. In this way, then, which was set out above, the devil is also called a servant of God, and the kings of the nations are handed over to him, and the king of Judah, and the beasts of the field. SCHOLIA 1. In what way, he says, is the devil an enemy of God and an avenger. 2. A soul separated by the devil, ignoring or despising the divine threat through temptations, that is, the punishment, makes itself a cause of impiety toward the commandment. For it abandons God and flees to the devil, regarding the enemy as a redeemer. 3. He says that a soul corroded by the filth of pleasure is cleansed by toil, and that toil completely strips away its attachment to material things, once it has learned by loss the harm of its friendship toward them; for this reason God permits the devil, by a just judgment, to oppress men with torments. 4. Present things, he says, only flatter the senses, bringing no profit, whereas the punishment that comes through the devil, by God's permission, makes us hate and despise them.

5. The one who suffers, he says, for the sake of God's grace that has been transgressed, if he recognizes the reason of the divine providence that heals him, both receives his misfortune with thanksgiving, rejoicing, and corrects the transgression for which he is being disciplined; but the one who is insensible to this healing that has been given is justly deprived of grace, and is handed over to the confusion of the passions, being left to come to the practice of those things whose desire he had inwardly. 6. Solomon had peace according to the appellation of the name; but wisdom he had according to divine gift, as the fruit of prayer. 7. Here Nebuchadnezzar is taken to mean the natural law, and his son Belshazzar the habit of that same natural law. 8. From the prayer, he says, it is clear that Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar here signify the natural law and the habit born from it, but not the devil; for no one altogether explains that a prayer is made for the devil; for the prayer which the word of prophecy did not disparage, one must not think was offered to God for the devil.

27. QUESTION 27. Since the Lord after the resurrection clearly commanded that all the nations be made disciples, why did Peter need the revelation concerning Cornelius for the sake of the nations? Or how did the apostles in Jerusalem, when they heard the things concerning Cornelius, dispute with Peter? ANSWER. Most certainly the all-holy Peter, the leader of the apostles, did need the divine revelation concerning the nations. For he did not know that there is no distinction between circumcision and uncircumcision in respect of faith, nor indeed did he clearly know that the Lord said the nations were to be made disciples apart from the worship that appears according to the law, until by revelation he made known to him the secret counsel, the mystery, having persuaded him both by the example of the sheet and by the grace of the Holy Spirit that was given, as was fitting, to him and to the nations through faith alone, so that there is no distinction in Christ between Jew and Greek; which the apostles in Jerusalem also, not knowing it, disputed with him, until they too learned the wealth hidden in secret of the divine goodness toward all men. For the grace of the preaching was a teaching of divine life and of a new worship introduced alongside the legal one, and a pattern of another, more divine principle of generation, belonging to a soul that voluntarily releases itself from the body according to its own judgment. And for this reason those who were entrusted with this ministry needed, at every word, the teaching of the one who commanded it.

If I seem to anyone to be more meddlesome than is fitting, every word of a divine commandment absolutely needs the manner of teaching and revelation appointed for it in order to be put into action. For there is no one at all who understands the manner of any word without the revelation of the one who spoke the word. Knowing this, the all-praised Peter also, having already received from the Lord the word concerning the preaching to the nations, did not undertake it, waiting to be taught by the one who gave the word the manner of the word. And perhaps there were other things besides these, which the great Peter was taught through the sheet let down from heaven and the various animals in it—or rather the whole race of mankind, or he who in his own person had grasped the divine summit of faith—learning plainly to extinguish completely every sensation of his own; according to which, as long as he sees the things that appear, he knows God's creation to be corruptive of itself, unable to be pure of corruption and confusion. So then, through the sheet and the animals in it, he who spoke with him and made it fit for spiritual eating was prefiguring the visible world understood by the invisible through words, or the invisible world made visible by the types of sensible things. Therefore he says, "Rise, Peter, sacrifice and eat." From where is he commanded to rise?

From where else than from the sensory habit and disposition and the more lowly preconception concerning beings, or from the righteousness thought to be according to law, so that, by the intellect alone, released from all sensory imagination, having been able to behold the principles of sensible things stripped of forms, he might recognize the types of intelligible things and learn that nothing of the things that have come to be by God is unclean. For he who has contemplated from the intelligible world the visible creation shining forth in its principles, or the types of intelligible things from the ordering of things that appear, as a sheet let down from heaven, would believe that nothing of visible things is unclean, beholding no antipathy manifest in the principles of beings. For corruption consists in sensation and the war of things that have come to be against one another; but in the principles there is nothing at all contrary. The sheet, then, is the sensible world, itself held together from four principles, as it were elements; and the creeping things and the wild beasts and the birds are the various principles of things that have come to be, being unclean with respect to sensation, but with respect to the intellect clean and nourishing and constitutive of the life that is understood; and the voice that came the third time teaches practical and natural and theological philosophy. For it is necessary, not once but twice and three times, having risen, to sacrifice the creation of things that appear and to eat it cognitively—for the one who follows God wholly genuinely. For he who has risen from the passionate disposition toward things that appear has sacrificed the movement of things that appear, and having set right the practical life has eaten virtue;

But the one who has risen above the false opinion concerning beings sacrificed the forms of things that appear, and having eaten the reasons of things that do not appear, he set right the natural contemplation that is in the Spirit. And the one who has risen above the polytheistic error sacrificed the very substance of beings, and having eaten by faith the cause of beings, he was filled with the power of theological knowledge. Every contemplative intellect, therefore, having the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, within itself, having killed the motion of the visible creation, set right virtue, and having cut off from itself the imagination of sensory forms, found the truth in the reasons of beings, in accordance with which natural contemplation consists, and, having become above the substance of beings, receives the illumination of the divine and unyielding monad, in accordance with which the mystery of true theology consists. Or perhaps the chief of the apostles, Peter the all-glorious, was commanded from God, having risen from the power measured to nature to the divine inheritance according to grace, to sacrifice with God by the sword of the word the passions of wickedness that are in human beings, and to make a good food, both suitable for the word and assimilated for spiritual digestion by the setting aside of the former passionate and beastly life. For they say that blood is a symbol of life, which by nature always flows out when an animal is slaughtered. And perhaps the difference of the animals shown reveals the variety of passions in human beings.

For the reptiles prefigure those who drag the whole desiring faculty down to earthly things, and the wild beasts those who rouse the whole irascible faculty to mad destruction of one another, and the birds those who thrust the whole rational faculty toward the insolence of pride and speak the loftiness and injustice that comes from it against the height, and set their mouth in heaven. These, as a fellow-worker with God, the great Peter sacrificed by the word of the Spirit, and made some of them desirous of heavenly things, others gentle and humane and supportive of one another, and others lovers of God and humble-minded. But let us consider what Joppa also wishes to signify through the interpretation of its own name, in which the great foundation of the Church, the all-holy Peter, saw this vision. Joppa is interpreted as "watchtower," signifying the guard that befits those engaged in the practical life. For lying beside the shore of the sea, it would be battered by many waves, unless the city had its position on a height. Whence it seems to me to signify the one who builds virtue like a city on the height of knowledge, but is not far from involuntary temptations, having close at hand, like the sea, the relation to sensible things not yet perfectly calmed, and for this reason needing watchfulness, lest, escaping notice through involuntary temptations, they make the

the impetuous assault of the voluntary passions, the unclean demons. But also, obtaining the portion of the tribe of Issachar—Joppa, which is interpreted as "recompense and toil"—this gives us to understand further that the practical faculty is a guarding habit, guarding against the invisible assaults of the spirits of wickedness. From this, then, the great apostle was perhaps commanded to rise and transfer his mind to the knowledge of things on high. Therefore let him who dwells in the height of the watchtower of practical philosophy be said to be in Joppa, while he who dwells in Zion in Jerusalem—that is, the watchtower established in the vision of peace (for Jerusalem is interpreted as this)—has come far from every relation according to sense, as far as, historically, the sea is from the position of the place of Zion, and he contemplates only, being in the height of knowledge, the intelligible spectacles of beings by the mental removal of the visible forms among beings, and receives the manifestations of divine things, visible as far as is lawful, which imprint his ruling faculty toward the more divine. He, then, who dwells in Joppa is the practical man, contemplating the snares of the adversaries, while he who dwells in Zion is the gnostic, contemplating with the mind only the comeliness of divine things.

But if again the vessel of the sheet was drawn up into heaven, let us understand that after the spiritual principles of sensible things, existing together with the intelligible things, were shown to the great Peter, God again draws these back to himself, teaching that nothing of which the principles remain in him is altogether unclean. Therefore, the great apostle, having recognized the power of the things seen, learned that no one should call any man unclean, nor that there is partiality with God, making the division of beings unjust. Hence, delaying nothing, he fulfilled the divine command, sacrificing for spiritual life those who willingly circumcise their heart by the word of grace, and who cast off all uncleanness of unbelief, wickedness, and ignorance as a foreskin, while not circumcising anything of the flesh's natural attributes that belong to it—attributes whose constitution is not from a passionate disposition but whose generation is from divine creation. For nothing according to nature is unclean, because it has God as the cause of its existence. SCHOLIA 1. He speaks of a translation of life and an angelic service, and a voluntary alienation of the soul from the body; and the generation of the divine transformation in the Spirit proclaims the mystery of the New Testament.

2. The principle of the commandment, he says, is one thing, and the manner of fulfilling the commandment is another. So when the great Peter received the commandment concerning the preaching to the Gentiles, being ignorant, he was taught the manner through the sheet of the commandment: that without circumcision, and the rest of the more bodily customs of the law, the calling of the Gentiles must take place. For the principle knows a spiritual circumcision, the excision of the soul's passionate attachment to the body. 3. He who does not remain in the shapes of visible things because of sensation, but seeks out their principles by the mind, contemplating them as types of intelligible things, or as principles of sensible created things, is taught that nothing of the things seen is unclean. For all things are by nature very beautiful. 4. He who is not changed along with the motion of sensible things pursues the unadulterated practice of the virtues. And he who has not molded his mind to their shapes has received the true opinion concerning beings. And he who has run past even the very essence of beings in his thought, as the best theologian, after this has approached the monad in unknowing. Therefore he who has sacrificed the creation of visible things third within himself has become worthy of the order of the perfect.

5. Joppa, he says, is a habit of virtue, guarding against the harm that comes from the sensible things lying at hand. But Zion is a gnostic habit, looking toward the reception of the intelligible gifts. CH (28). CONCERNING "COME AND LET US GO DOWN AND CONFUSE THEIR TONGUES." 28. QUESTION 28: To whom was God speaking when he said, "Come and let us go down and confuse their tongues"? Answer. We find that Holy Scripture, in accordance with the underlying disposition of those under providence, shapes God accordingly; whence also it calls him lion and bear and leopard and panther and man and ox and sheep and sun and star and fire and spirit and countless other things, which he in no way is, but is said to be, being contemplated according to the conception of each name. So when God appeared to Abraham, who was perfect in knowledge, in the discourse concerning the monad he taught the immaterial discourse concerning the Trinity, since his mind had already completely transcended matter and the types that are in it, and for this reason he both appeared as three and conversed as one. But to Lot, who had not yet made his mind pure of the composition of bodies, but was still dependent on the generation of bodies from matter and form, and who believed that God was the maker only of the visible creation, God, appearing, was shown in a twofold manner but not in a threefold manner, showing by the forms in which he shaped himself that the mind being led up had not yet transcended matter and form. In this way, examining with knowledge the meanings in each place of Scripture, which shapes God in many ways, you will find that the disposition of those under providence is the cause of the great variety of the divine figures.

Since, then, those who built the tower, having first departed from the region of light, the east—I mean the one and true knowledge of God—came into the land of Sennaar, which is interpreted as blasphemous teeth, and fell into many opinions concerning the Godhead, and, putting together as it were certain bricks—the account of each opinion—built up, like a tower, the godlessness of many gods, God rightly scatters the confession of the deluded men of their evil agreement, and, from the disposition of those who are providentially cared for, when it had been scattered and torn apart into countless opinions, He names Himself in the plural, showing that, being one, He was divided among many in them (just as it appears He also says in the case of Adam: "Behold, Adam has become as one of us"). In relation, then, to the underlying cause, God is either multiplied or gathered together in the utterances of the Scriptures. But as to whom God speaks: it is the custom of Scripture to fashion in bodily form the unspoken and hidden counsels of God, so that we, from kindred words and sounds, may be able to understand divine things, since God is an unknown mind and an ineffable word and an incomprehensible life, and neither speaks nor is spoken to, being in essence self-word and self-will. And if we understand the utterances of the divine Oracles in this way, we shall not stumble at any of the things written because of their obscurity. But if someone should say that the plural signification concerning God is not at all set down in Scripture by way of accusation, and brings forward for the confirmation of his own argument the text "And God said":

Let us make man according to our image and likeness—and surely, he would say, we do not understand the word to introduce through this voice a suspicion of polytheism. We say that whenever Holy Scripture uses the plural word concerning God in a pious manner toward the pious, it makes a declaration of the all-holy three hypostases, mystically signifying the mode of existence of the all-holy and unoriginate monad, since the all-venerable, adorable, and all-praised Trinity of hypostases is a monad in essence; for God is a monad in a triad and a triad in a monad. But whenever it makes the plural word concerning God toward the impious, it refutes their blameworthy notion, as I think, concerning divinity—they having supposed the difference in the properties to be natural but not hypostatic, which clearly introduces polytheistic error to those who thus hold concerning divinity.

But if even saying this we do not persuade—since it is dear to the Spirit and beloved by those who love the Spirit not to fight—let us receive the Holy Scripture in agreement with one another, which presents the all-holy Trinity in unity sometimes as creator, as in "Let us make man" (for the subsistence of things that exist is clearly the work of Father and Son and Holy Spirit), sometimes as accepting those who have lived according to its pious laws, sometimes as provident over those who have received from it their coming into being, as appearing to Abraham in a threefold manner and conversing in a single manner, and sometimes as punitive, that is, judging those who have corrupted the laws of nature, and corrective of those who have fallen from the fitting law of nature, as in "Let us go down and confuse their tongues." For the holy and consubstantial Trinity is not only creative of things that exist, but also sustaining and distributing to each according to worth, as being one God by nature, creator, provider, and judge of the things made by him. For it is common to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, just as to create, so also to judge and wisely to provide for the things made. SCHOLIA 1. He says that to each one God appears according to the opinion concerning God that underlies in him. To those who have passed beyond the material composition according to desire, and who have acquired the powers of the soul equal in rank to one another in one and the same ceaseless motion toward God, he appears as a Monad and a Triad, so that he might demonstrate his own existence and mystically teach his manner.

To those whose desire is moved by a material disposition alone, and who possess the powers of the soul disconnected from one another, it is manifested not as it is but as they are—showing that they laid hold with both hands on the material dyad, according to which the bodily cosmos consists of matter and form. 2. He who says that the difference of properties in God is natural, says he—but not a hypostatic difference—such a one is not inspired by God but is polytheistic, claiming that the divine admits a numbering of essences by property, but not of hypostases. 29. Concerning "who through the Spirit told Paul not to go up to Jerusalem." 29. Question 29: What is it that is written in the Acts, "who through the Spirit told Paul not to go up to Jerusalem"? Why did he disobey the Spirit and go up? Answer. The holy prophet Isaiah, in his own prophecy, says that seven spirits rest upon the Savior who sprang from the root of Jesse—not knowing seven spirits of God, nor teaching others so to understand, but calling the energies of the one and the same Holy Spirit "spirits," because the Holy Spirit who works is wholly and without deficiency present in every energy, proportionately; and the divine apostle calls the diverse energies of this same one Holy Spirit diverse charisms, clearly wrought by one and the same Spirit. If, then,

According to the measure of faith in each person, the manifestation of the Spirit is given; each of the faithful, in the participation of this or that gift, clearly receives the activity of the Spirit measured out to him according to the proportion of his faith and the disposition underlying it in his soul, granting him the fitness suited to the activity of this or that commandment. Therefore, just as one receives a word of wisdom, another a word of knowledge, another faith, and another some other of the gifts of the Spirit enumerated by the great apostle, so one receives through the Spirit the gift of perfect and immediate love toward God, having nothing material, according to the proportion of faith; another, through the same Spirit, the gift of perfect love toward neighbor, according to the same Spirit, as I said, each having his own gift energized. And if someone calls these gifts "spirits" according to Saint Isaiah, as I think, he does not fall short of the truth. For to every gift, whether greater or lesser, the Holy Spirit is wholly present as the one working proportionally.

Therefore Paul, who was truly great and became a minister of mysteries beyond human understanding, having received directly the perfect grace of God in love according to the proportion of the faith in him that the Spirit gives, when those who had received the gift of perfect love toward him were saying to him through the Spirit not to go up to Jerusalem—that is, through the gift of love toward him that was being worked in them by the Spirit (for the Spirit is the same as the gift, as I said, taking it from the prophet)—he did not obey, preferring the divine and beyond-understanding love incomparably to the spiritual love shown toward him by others; or rather, he did not even disobey but went up, drawing those who were prophesying by the activity of the Spirit given to them in measure according to the gift, by his own pattern, toward the desire for the One who transcends all things, in accordance with their longing. Therefore the great Paul did not disobey the Spirit, but taught that the Spirit—that is, the gift—was transferred from the lesser to the higher, in the case of those who were prophesying about him according to the gift of love.

And again, if the prophetic grace is by far second to the apostolic grace, it was not the work of the Word who directs the whole and assigns to each his order that the better yield to the lesser, but rather that the lesser follow the better. For those who prophesied at that time, through the prophetic spirit in them—but not the apostolic spirit—made known the manner of the suffering that was to befall holy Paul for the sake of the Word; but he, looking only to the divine purpose, considered all intermediate things as nothing, being eager not that he might surpass the things that were to befall him, but that he might become another Christ, having accomplished all things by imitation of Christ, for the sake of which Christ in His love for humanity chose, according to the economy, the life in the flesh. Therefore, the seeming disobedience of the great apostle, and his clear teaching that the ranks of the Church, well distinguished by the Spirit, are in no way to be confused with one another, is a guarding of good order—of the order that governs and directs all divine things and preserves each one without falling away from its proper abode and foundation. SCHOLIA 1. That which operates in different ways, in each of those in whom it operates in different ways, is whole, and in all together is not divided. For, he says, the Holy Spirit appears operating without mixture in all and in each individually indivisibly, according to one and the same power, because it is also the fulfillment of all things that exist; for it is God, and is incomprehensible to all things that exist, for it is beyond being.

2. He says that every active habit of a commandment is a gift of the Spirit. 3. He who loves God with all his heart and soul and strength is, he says, greater than he who loves his neighbor. It is not, then, a matter of the better being legislated for by the worse, but rather of the lesser being led by the greater. Therefore the divine Apostle did not permit the apostolic dignity and order to be ruled by those ranks over which it rules, lest the good order of all things that exist, and especially the order of divine things, be dissolved. 4. He says that the kinds of temptations are in the middle, which those who prophesied foreknew through the Spirit—the struggle for the truth on behalf of holy Paul—of which he took no thought at all, hastening to be united to Christ, according to the subsistence of goods in form, after the passage through existing things in faith. SCHOLIA. 1. That which works in different ways, in each of those things that are worked in different ways by it, is whole, and is not divided among all at once. For, he says, without mixture, in all and in each individually, the Holy Spirit is shown to work indivisibly according to one and the same power, because it is also the fullness of all things that exist; for it is God, and is incomprehensible to all existing things, for it is beyond being.

2. He says that every active habit of a commandment is a gift of the Spirit. 3. He who loves God with all his heart and soul and strength is, he says, greater than he who loves his neighbor. It is not, then, a matter of the better being legislated by the worse, but rather of the lesser being led by the greater. Therefore the divine Apostle did not permit the apostolic dignity and rank to be ruled by those ranks which it rules, lest the good order of all things that exist, and especially the order of divine things, be dissolved. 4. He says that the kinds of temptations are intermediate, which those who prophesy foreknew through the Spirit—the struggle for the truth that was shown to Saint Paul; for he took no thought of them at all, hastening to be united with Christ, according to the subsistence of good things in the form of goods, after the passage through existing things in faith. 30. CONCERNING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CUP AND BAPTISM. 30. QUESTION 30: What is the meaning of "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized"? What is the difference between the cup and the baptism? Answer.

The Lord's baptism is a type of the voluntary and our own labors undertaken for virtue by intention; through these, washing away the stains of conscience, we accept the voluntary death of our choice in relation to things that appear. But the cup is a type of the involuntary temptations that rise up against us for the sake of the truth from circumstances, contrary to our intention; through these, preferring the divine desire even to nature itself, we willingly pass over the circumstantial death of nature. This, then, is the difference between baptism and the cup: baptism makes the choice dead to the pleasures of life for the sake of virtue, while the cup persuades the pious to prefer the truth even to nature itself. He placed the cup before baptism because virtue exists for the sake of the truth, but the truth does not exist for the sake of virtue. Hence he who practices virtue for the sake of the truth is not wounded by the arrows of vainglory, while he who pursues the truth for the sake of virtue has conceit as a companion of vainglory.

( SCHOLIA 1. The Lord's baptism, he says, is the complete putting to death of our free choice toward the perceptible world; and the cup is the denial of this present life itself for the sake of truth. 2. He says that truth is divine knowledge, and virtue is the struggles of those who strive for it on its behalf. Therefore, the one who endures labors for the sake of knowledge of virtue is not vainglorious, knowing that truth is by nature unattainable through labors. For the first is not delimited by nature by the second. But the one who pursues knowledge for the sake of the struggles on its behalf is altogether vainglorious, as though he thought he had received the crowns before the sweats; not knowing that the labors are for the sake of the crowns, not the crowns for the sake of the labors. For every method is by nature unstudied once that for the sake of which it naturally exists has been accomplished, or has seemed to be accomplished. LA (31). CONCERNING "IF GOD DOES NOT DWELL IN TEMPLES MADE WITH HANDS". 31. QUESTION 31: If God does not dwell in temples made with hands, how did he dwell in the temple of the Jews?

Answer. God, who wisely cares for what is foreseen in proportion, first leading through types, in a way congenial to those governed by sense perception, toward the truth, secretly mingled himself with all the types given to the old people, effecting the ascent of those being educated. God therefore dwelt in the temple of the Jews typically but not truly, circumscribing by such a dwelling in the temple the ineffable counsel of the whole pedagogy of those being initiated into what is foreseen. For the pure mind alone is most fit to be a dwelling place of God; for its sake he permitted the typical temple to be built, wishing by exceedingly coarse symbols to draw up from matter the mind of the Jews, which had been made far more coarse than the senseless types, so that it might perceive that it was unfit for the dwelling of God because of what is material and incongruous, and from this might come to a complete perception of the things naturally present in it. The Jew, not discerning this—he who knows only how to nourish the smoke of piety from pride—was rightly deprived of the type and wickedly estranged himself from the truth. SCHOLION 1. It is not fitting, he says, that a temple be built to God from domestic material and a fleshly soul. For these are coarser symbols and unfit for God; therefore one must build a temple to him from elements fit and proper to his nature. 2. He who pursues only the form of knowledge, which is the bare word, and he who pursues the image of virtue, which is the bare character, is a Jew, he says, and he himself is puffed up by the types of truth.

32. Question 32: What is the meaning of "if perhaps they might grope for him and find God"? How does one who gropes find God? Answer. He who does not look upon all the visible bodily worship of the law by sense perception, but examines each of the visible symbols by the mind's approaches, being taught the God-perfect reason hidden in each, finds God in the reason, groping well through the noetic power, as in refuse, in the material of the legal ordinances, if perhaps he might find hidden in the flesh of the law the pearl—the Word—which entirely escapes sense perception. Likewise also he who does not circumscribe the nature of visible things by sense perception alone, but wisely searches out by mind the reason in each creature, finds God, being taught from the displayed mighty works of beings the cause of the beings themselves.

Since, therefore, discernment is proper to one who gropes, he who approaches the legal symbols in a knowing way and contemplates the apparent nature of beings in a scientific way, discerning Scripture and creation and himself—Scripture into letter and spirit, creation into reason and appearance, and himself into mind and sense—and taking the spirit of Scripture, the reason of creation, and his own mind, and uniting them to one another indissolubly, has found God, since he has come to know, as is both fitting and possible, the God who is in mind and reason and spirit, having been delivered from all things that deceive and drag one away into countless opinions—I mean letter and appearance and sense, in which there is a differing quantity and an opposition to the monad. But if someone, having woven together the letter of the law and the appearance of things seen and his own sense, confuses them with one another, he is blind, nearsighted, suffering from ignorance of the cause of beings. Scholion 1. He, it says, who has seen only the spirit of Scripture without the types, and the reasons of creation without the shapes, by mind alone, released from activity according to sense, has found God: in the spirit of Scripture, as of goodness; in the reasons of beings, as of power; in himself, as the cause of wisdom. For the reasons of things that came from non-being declare the power of the Creator; and the spirit of Scripture, leading back those who had wandered to deification, proclaims the goodness of the one who wrote; and the noetic faculty in us, receiving the reasons of things that have come to be without interval, openly heralds the wisdom of the Craftsman. 33.

Concerning "Amen I say to you, whoever says to this mountain." 33. Question 33: What is "Amen I say to you, that whoever says to this mountain, 'Be lifted up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says comes to pass, it shall be done for him"? What is "and does not doubt"? Answer. The divine and great apostle, defining what faith is, says, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." And if someone should define it as an inward good, or as a true knowledge that demonstrates the ineffable goods, he has not missed the truth. And the Lord, teaching about the ineffable goods and the things hoped for and not seen, says, "The kingdom of God is within you." Therefore the faith of God is the same as the kingdom of God, being divided from the kingdom only in conception. For faith is the formless kingdom of God, while the kingdom is faith made form in a divine manner. So that, according to this account, faith is not outside us—faith which, being energized by the divine commandments, becomes the kingdom of God, known only to those who possess it. (But if the kingdom of God is faith energized, and the kingdom of God effects the immediate union with God of those who reign in it, then faith is clearly shown to be a relational power, or an active relation, of the perfect, immediate, supra-natural union of the believer with the God in whom he believes.

Since, therefore, man consists of soul and body, he is moved by two laws, I mean that of the flesh and that of the spirit; and the law of the flesh has its operation according to sense, while the law of the spirit has its operation according to the mind; and the law of the flesh is by nature bound to matter, being operated according to sense, while the law of the spirit, being operated according to the mind, makes union with God directly. Rightly, then, he who has not been divided in his heart—that is, who has not in his mind divided or cut apart the direct union with God that has come about through faith—as one who is passionless, or rather as one who has already become God through faith by that union, will say to this mountain, "Be moved," and it will be moved; by saying "to this," he indicatively signifies the mind and law of the flesh, which is truly heavy and hard to move, and, as far as natural power goes, altogether immovable and unshakable. For to such an extent has the power of unreason been rooted in the nature of men through sense, that the many think man to be nothing other than flesh, having sense as a power for the enjoyment of the present life. All things, then, are possible to him who believes and is not divided—that is, is not separated from the union with God that has come about in his mind through faith, by reason of the soul's attachment to the body according to sense—as many things as alienate the mind from the world and the flesh and bring it near to God, perfected by right actions. (SCHOLIA 1. He calls bare faith an immaterial kingdom, not having the divine likeness that comes from the virtues.

He calls kingdom the faith that possesses through works the divine form of goodness. 2. Faith, he says, is undemonstrated knowledge. And if it is undemonstrated knowledge, then faith is a relation beyond nature, through which we are united to God in an unknowing, not a demonstrative, way, according to the union that surpasses understanding. 3. The intellect, having received the immediate union with God, keeps the natural power of understanding and being understood wholly at rest. Whenever, then, it dissolves this by understanding something among the things after God, it is divided, cutting off the union that surpasses understanding; and while it remains joined to God, as beyond nature, and has become God by participation, like an immovable mountain, it sets aside the law of its own nature. 4. One must also understand in addition, he says, the saying: All things are possible to the one who believes—namely, all things that alienate the intellect from the world and the flesh. For these are the things that are possible to the one who believes, with God. 34. CONCERNING "THEREFORE I SAY TO YOU, ALL THINGS WHATEVER YOU ASK IN PRAYER, BELIEVE THAT YOU RECEIVE." 34. QUESTION 34: What again is the meaning of "Therefore I say to you, all things whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive, and it will be yours"? How can one believe that he certainly receives what he asks, when God alone knows whether the thing asked is beneficial or not? And if out of ignorance he asks for what is not beneficial, how does he grant it? And if he does not grant what is asked unbeneficially out of ignorance, how can one believe, in the case of every request, that he receives and it will be his?

Answer. Everything in the present chapter has been resolved in summary in the one before it. For it belongs only to those who have recognized how one must believe to know what one must ask for, and how, and concerning what. For knowledge is not of all, just as faith is not either. Indeed the Lord, having said, Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, that is, before all things the knowledge of the truth and thus the practice of the fitting ways of life, clearly showed that those who believe must seek only the divine knowledge and the virtue that adorns it through works. Since, then, there happen to be many things sought by believers for the knowledge of God and virtue— release from passions, endurance of temptations, principles of virtues, modes of action, zeal for the soul's disposition toward the flesh, estrangement of the senses from their relation to sensible things, the mind's complete withdrawal from all created things, and simply countless other things that lead to abstention from evil and ignorance and to the right establishment of knowledge and virtue—reasonably the Lord said, All things whatever you ask for believing, you will receive, saying that the pious must seek and ask with knowledge and faith only those things that contribute simply to the knowledge of God and virtue. For these are altogether beneficial, and the Lord altogether gives them to those who ask. Therefore the one who seeks all things that lead to union through faith alone, that is, through direct union with God, will altogether receive them. But the one who seeks without this, the cause, whether other things or the things previously mentioned, will not receive them; for he does not believe, but as an unbeliever he traffics in his own opinion through divine things.

CONCERNING HOW WE ARE COMMANDED TO EAT THE FLESH OF THE WORD AND DRINK THE BLOOD, BUT NOT TO BREAK THE BONES. 35. QUESTION 35. Since the Word became flesh, and not only flesh but also blood and bones, and we are commanded to eat the flesh and drink the blood, but not to break the bones, I ask to learn what this threefold power of the incarnate Word is. Answer. Wishing to come into being, as the supersubstantial Word himself, the creator of all things that exist, knows, he brought with him the natural principles of all things that exist, both visible and intelligible, together with the incomprehensible thoughts of his own divinity; of these, the principles of intelligible things would be the blood of the Word, and the principles of sensible things let be the visible flesh of the Word. Since, then, the Word is the teacher of the spiritual principles both in things visible and in things intelligible, fittingly and reasonably he gives to those who are worthy, as it were to eat flesh, the knowledge of the principles of things seen, and, as it were to drink blood, the knowledge of the principles of things intelligible—which things Wisdom also mystically prepared beforehand through the bowl and the victims in Proverbs; but the bones, that is, the principles concerning divinity that are beyond understanding, which are infinitely distant in equal measure from every created nature, he does not give, since the nature of existing things does not possess any capacity that admits a relation to these.

And again, the true virtue is the flesh of the Word, and blameless knowledge is the blood, and secret theology is the bones. For just as blood, by its nature, is changed into flesh, so knowledge, through the practical life, is transformed into virtue; and like bones, which hold blood and flesh together, the words concerning the Godhead that surpass every thought, existing in all things, unknowably create the essences of beings and sustain them in being, and establish all knowledge and all virtue. And if someone should say that the words concerning judgment and providence are the flesh and the blood, as destined at some time to be eaten and desired, and that the secret words concerning the Godhead hidden within them are the bones, he has not, I think, departed from what is fitting. Perhaps, again, the flesh of the Word is the perfect return and restoration of nature to itself through virtue and knowledge, and the blood is the deification that will hold it fast in ever being well by grace, and the bones are that unknown power itself which holds nature fast in ever being well through deification.

But if someone were to state it in a more readily graspable way, that the flesh is the voluntary putting to death through the virtues, and the blood is the perfection through death on behalf of the truth under circumstances of trial, and the bones are the first principles concerning divinity that are beyond our reach, this person too has spoken well and has in no way fallen short of the fitting conception. SCHOLIA 1. Secret theology is the complete ignorance according to transcendence, which is unknown to the same degree that the things naturally known are known. 2. The blood was taken for deification, as it will be life for those deemed worthy of it. For blood is a symbol of life. 36. CONCERNING WHAT THE BODIES OF THE SACRIFICED ANIMALS ARE. 36. QUESTION 36: What are the bodies and bloods of the irrational animals, through which the Israelites, when they worshipped, ate the bodies but no longer the bloods, but poured it out around the base of the altar? ( Answer. Those of old who worshipped God according to the law in shadow bore the type of those being introduced to piety, being scarcely able to understand even the visible ordinances of the typical symbols themselves. Since, then, the law was given not primarily for them but for us, being perfected spiritually in Christ through us, let us consider the reason of the sacrifices of that time together with piety. The one being introduced to piety, when taught concerning the works of righteousness, performs the practice alone with all obedience and faith, as though eating the visible things of the virtues as flesh, but he concedes the principles of the commandments, in which lies the knowledge of the perfect, to God through faith, not yet being able to extend himself to the length of knowledge.

For the altar is a symbol of God, to whom we are all spiritually sacrificed and to whom we yield the knowledge of things beyond our power, so that we may live. And the base of the altar is a type of the faith in him. For faith is the foundation, bearing the whole building of divine works and thoughts; and everyone who is unable to enjoy soberly, in knowledge, from the divine bowl of wisdom, pours out his words well to it—that is, surrendering the knowledge of things beyond his power to faith—so as not to be drunk with the knowledge of things he cannot attain. As therefore the old people, bearing the type of those who are introduced into piety, ate the flesh of the sacrifices and poured the blood toward the base of the altar, being unable, because of their infantile reasoning, to attain the mystical knowledge of what was taking place. But Christ, having come as high priest of the good things to come, offering the ineffable sacrifice, gives himself with the flesh and the blood to those who have the senses of the soul trained, through perfection, for the discernment of good and evil. For the perfect man, having run through not only the order of those being introduced but also that of those advancing, is not ignorant of the reasons of the things done by him according to the commandment, but having first drunk them in the Spirit, he eats all the flesh of the virtues through his works, raising the motion of things done according to sense up to the knowledge according to the mind. There are indeed very many other accounts about these things, most fitting for you who are most devoted to contemplation; but let them be passed over now because of their number. SCHOLIA 1. He called the appearances of the virtues the ethical training.

2. The blood, in the contemplative sense, he took for knowledge, as nourishing the body of the virtues. 37. CONCERNING THE VIPER THAT BIT PAUL. Question 37. He says in the Acts concerning Saint Paul: so that even handkerchiefs and aprons were carried from his skin to the sick, and diseases were released from them. Was this done because of the ministry, even for the unbelievers, or was it accomplished from his skin because his body had been sanctified? And if in this respect he suffered nothing even from the viper, by what reason did the body of the saint not fall victim to the poison of the beast, but did fall victim to the sword? I seek the same thing also concerning the body of Elisha. And what are the aprons? ( Answer. Neither because of the holiness of Saint Paul alone, nor because of the faith of those receiving them alone, did the surface of his body accomplish the healings through the handkerchiefs and aprons, but because the divine grace, dividing itself between him and them, in a loving manner made the holiness of the apostle effective in them through faith. Thus, then, again, when grace willed it, his body remained unharmed, not being corrupted by the poison of the beast, whether grace changed the destructive quality in the poison of the beast, or made the body of the saint incapable of such consuming corruption, or in some other manner of dispensation, which God, who does these things and transforms them, knows. And again he fell victim to the sword, when grace willed it. For he was not immortal by nature, even though he was a wonderworker by grace.

If he was by nature immortal, we would rightly inquire into the reason by which, contrary to nature, he fell to the sword; but if by nature, even after his sanctity, he remained mortal, it is not necessary to inquire into the reason by which the divine apostle passed from this life in the flesh in one way rather than another. For in whatever manner God, who before the ages providentially ordained the life of each for their benefit, wills, he leads each one to the proper end of his life, whether righteous or unrighteous. If, then, the principle of nature and the principle of grace were one and the same, it would be worthy of wonder and astonishment that what happens according to nature is contrary to grace, or what happens according to grace is contrary to nature; but if the principle of nature and the principle of grace are rather different and distinct, it is clear and evident that, as saints, they worked wonders through grace, and, as human beings, they suffered through nature, since grace did not abolish the passibility of nature—the principles in nature and in grace in no way being confused with one another. Let us understand in this way that the grace of God in the saints, both living and dead, does all things by the economy of those under providence, as in its own instruments (providing for the salvation of others), but that the saints do not perform these things in others by nature through grace. This, then, is also the case with the body of Elisha.

But since the things understood in the accounts delight the soul of those who love God more than the accounts themselves, we say that the skin of the great apostle is his piety, according to which he was to some a fragrance from life to life, and to others a fragrance from death to death; and the handkerchiefs are the manifest words of his gnostic contemplation, and the aprons are the reverent modes of the practical philosophy according to virtue—for they say the aprons were hand-cloths. These words and modes, breathing and emitting as it were a sweet fragrance—the skins, that is, the great piety of the blessed apostle—those who received them obtained healing from the weakness that pressed upon them: some, through the words concerning contemplation, as through handkerchiefs, driving away the disease of ignorance, and others, through the virtuous modes of action, utterly destroying the sickness of vice.

Thus I infer that the gloomy storm that befell him is the weight of involuntary temptations; the island, the firm and unshaken habit of divine hope; the fire, the habit of knowledge; the brushwood, the nature of visible things, which he gathered together with his hand—I mean the apprehensive power of the intellect in contemplation—nourishing by the thoughts drawn from it the habit of knowledge, which heals the dejection inflicted on the mind by the storm of temptations; and the viper, the evil and destructive power secretly hidden in the nature of sensible things, which bit the hand—that is, the apprehensive activity of contemplation according to the intellect—but did not harm the discerning intellect, since by the light of knowledge it straightway destroyed it as in fire—the destructive power that had attached itself to the practical movement of the intellect from the contemplation of sensible things. In the same way I understand the matter in the case of Elisha: that each dead man in his transgressions, whenever he is laid upon the tomb of the prophet, in which the body was—that is, upon the memory that bears the trace of the prophet's life, in which the body of the virtues was well preserved—is made alive by the imitation of his ways in conduct, being transferred to the virtuous life from the deadness of the passions of vice. SCHOLIA 1. The faith of those who need healing, he says, called upon the power of the Spirit that is in the saints, so that through faith the power that had hitherto lain hidden might become manifest; and the hidden faith might through the power become evident to all.

For it is then that the true manner of healings is naturally made manifest, whenever, by the faith of those who are being energized, the power of those who energize in the Spirit comes to pass through all things. 2. He who, by his disposition, says he is pure from the corruption that is according to sin, destroys the destruction of those things that are naturally destructive. For the incorruption of the free choice naturally preserves the corruption of nature incorrupt by providence, through the grace of the Spirit within it, not permitting it to be dominated by the opposing qualities. 3. Since, he says, the principle of nature and of grace is not one and the same, it is not worthy of perplexity how some of the saints at one time prevailed over the passions, but at another time rather fell under the passions; since we know that the wonder was of grace, but the passion of nature. 4. The Apostle was a fragrance from life to life, as by his own example he prepared the faithful to be moved through action toward the sweet savor of the virtues, or as a herald he led those who were persuaded by the word of grace from the life according to sense into the life in the Spirit; but a fragrance from death to death, to those who have driven from the death of ignorance to the death of unbelief, giving them a sense of the condemnation that abides with them. Or again, a fragrance from life to life, to those who are led up from action to contemplation; but a fragrance from death to death, to those who pass from having put to death by the idleness that is according to sin the members that are upon the earth, to the praised deadening of the passionate thoughts and imaginations. 5. He who, he says, has the memory of the conduct of the saints through imitation, puts away the deadening of the passions;

He accepts the life of the virtues. 38. Question 38: Concerning the Sadducees' question to the Lord. For did the Sadducees mention the number of the seven brothers in connection with the one woman at random, or does it have some deeper meaning? And if it does, who are those men and who is this woman? Answer. Some say that the words of the blameworthy persons in Scripture are not to be allegorized. Nevertheless, since it is better to labor diligently and to ask God unceasingly to grant wisdom and power for the whole of Scripture to be understood spiritually, trusting in your prayers, I say the following also concerning this present difficulty. The Sadducees, according to the sense of the anagogical interpretation, are the demons or the thoughts that introduce automatism, and the woman is the nature of human beings, and the seven brothers are the laws given to her by God at various times from the beginning of the age for her instruction and for the generation of the fruits of righteousness; having consorted with these as with husbands, she received a son from none of them, being barren of the fruit of righteousness. And the first law is the one given to Adam in paradise, the second the one given to the same man after paradise in the order of a penalty, the third the one given to Noah concerning the ark, the fourth the law of circumcision given to Abraham, the fifth the one given to the same man concerning the offering of Isaac, the sixth the law given through Moses, and the seventh the law of the predictive grace, that is, of prophetic inspiration. For nature had not yet been joined through faith to a husband who remains through all the ages, in accordance with the Gospel.

These things, then, the demons continually set before the reason within us through our thoughts, plausibly from the Scriptures warring against the faith, and raising the puzzle: "If there is a resurrection of the dead and another kind of life must be expected after the present one, according to which law of those given from the beginning of the age will the nature of men conduct its life?" So that, if we should speak according to one of those mentioned, they may bring in the charge, saying: "Then the life of men will be again vain and unprofitable, not having been released from the former evils, if indeed nature will be again bandied about in the same circumstances" — which clearly introduces automatism and casts out providence from among beings. But the Lord and saving Word muzzles such demons and thoughts, hinting at the incorruption of nature that will appear afterward according to the Gospel, and showing that human nature will conduct its life according to none of the preceding laws, having already been deified and fitted together through the Spirit to Him, the Word and God, from whom and to whom it has received and will receive both the beginning of its being and its end. But if one should take the seven thousand years, that is, ages, to be the men with whom the nature of men consorted, he will receive the passage not without reason and the fitting contemplation; of none of these will nature be a wife in the life to come, since nature has received an end of time, and an eighth man, the endless and unending age, has taken it to himself. 39. Concerning the three days that the crowds waited for the Lord. 39.

QUESTION 39: What are the three days during which the crowds remain with the Lord in the desert? Answer. The desert is the nature of human beings, or this world, in which those who endure hardship through faith and the hope of the good things to come remain with the word of virtue and knowledge. The three days, according to one mode of contemplation concerning them, are the three powers of the soul, by which they remain with the divine Word of virtue and knowledge: by one seeking, by another desiring, by another contending earnestly, they receive food incorruptible and fattening the mind with the knowledge of created things. According to another mode, the three days signify the three more general laws—I mean the written, the natural, and the spiritual, that is, the law of grace. For every law is, in a manner proper to itself, illuminating of human nature, having as craftsman of its light the sun of righteousness. For just as it is altogether impossible for a day to come to be without the sun, so too without the essential and subsistent Wisdom a law of righteousness cannot exist, since it makes its own rising in each law and fills the noetic eyes of souls with intelligible light. (Knowing this, the blessed David says: Your law is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths;

Having called the written law a lamp, because by the artificial and varied tokens of the riddles and types of bodily symbols it kindles the burning light of the wickedness of the passions for those who by action against the opposing powers widen the steps of the soul, and having called the spiritual law of grace a light, because without artifice, apart from sensible symbols, it shows the eternal paths; in which the contemplative intellect making its course is led to the highest end of goods, God, defining the movement of its thought by none of existing things. For the light of the law of grace is without evening, having no knowledge whatsoever that limits its all-shining rays. Or perhaps the prophet called "feet" the whole course of the life according to God, or the movements of the soul of good thoughts, guided as by a lamp by the light in the letter of the law, and "paths" the ways of the virtues according to the natural law and the principles of knowledge according to the spiritual law, shown by the presence of God the Word and leading nature itself and its cause back to itself through virtue and knowledge.

These three days, that is, the laws, having remained with God the Word and having eagerly endured the labors for each one, those who have their desire turned toward salvation are not sent away fasting, but receive nourishment abundant and divine: for the written law, the complete release from the passions contrary to nature; for the natural law, the faultless operation of the things according to nature, by which the mutually successive relation is established, thrusting away all the dispersive otherness and division of nature; for the spiritual law, the union with God himself, according to which, having gone out from all created things, they receive the glory beyond nature, through which God alone, flashing forth in them, is known. You have fuller treatment of this in the Difficulties, in the discourse of Saint Gregory on holy Pentecost. SCHOLIA 1. He means reason, spiritedness, and desire. For by reason we seek; by desire we long for the good that has been sought; by spiritedness we struggle on its behalf. 2. And he has called the powers of the soul days, as being receptive of the light of the divine commandments; and the three more general laws, as illuminating those receptive of them, namely the souls. For just as Scripture in Genesis called the light day, saying, "And God saw the light, that it was good, and God called the light day"; and again the illumined air, saying, "And there was evening, and there was morning, one day"; so it called days not only the powers of the soul but also the laws that illuminate them.

For the complete interpenetration of these into one another constitutes the composite day of the virtues, not separating from the divine light according to reason the powers that have been wholly conformed to it. 3. The Word of God is at once both a lamp and a light: as enlightening the natural thoughts of the faithful, and as burning up those contrary to nature, and as dissolving the gloom of the life according to sense for those who hasten through the commandments toward the hoped-for life, and as punishing by the burning of judgment those who cling in will to this dark night of life because of the pleasure-loving flesh. 4. The law, he says, when understood together with its symbols, is a lamp, destroying wickedness through the practice of the passions; but when understood apart from the symbols, it is a light, raising those who are led, by grace, through contemplation to the divine kinship. 5. He who has not first been led back to himself, he says, through the casting off of the passions contrary to nature, to his own cause—that is, to God—will not be led back through the acquisition, in grace, of the goods that are above nature. For the one who is truly gathered to God must be separated in thought from created things. 6. The work, he says, of the written law is the release from the passions; of the natural law, equity of equal honor toward all men; and the perfection of the spiritual law is assimilation to God, so far as is possible for man. 40. CONCERNING THE SIX WATERJARS AT CANA OF GALILEE. Question 40: What does the number of the six waterjars at the marriage in Cana of Galilee signify?

Answer. God, who created the nature of human beings, gave it existence at the same time by his will, and joined to it also a power capable of doing what is fitting. The six water-jars, then, are the natural power capable of doing the divine commandments; when human beings had emptied its knowledge in their vain zeal for material things, they held this power empty and waterless, and for this reason they did not know how to cleanse the filth of wickedness. For one who is without knowledge in no way understands the way of virtue that washes away the filth of wickedness, until the Word, the Creator of nature, came and first filled the aforementioned power capable of doing what is fitting with natural knowledge, and thus changed it into wine—I mean the supra-natural reason of knowledge, both the law and the reason of nature; those who drink it are transported beyond the nature of all things and fly to the hidden place of the divine gift, where they receive the gladness and exultation that surpasses all knowledges, drinking last of all, after all the providential dispensations concerning humanity, the good wine, that is, the reason productive of deification, ineffable. And the productive power of nature is taken to the number six, not only because in six days God made the heaven and the earth, but also because this number alone, of the numbers within the decade, is the most perfect and is composed of its own parts.

The word says that the water-jars, holding two or three measures each, are the practical power according to nature, containing, in accordance with natural contemplation, as it were two measures: the whole knowledge of created things—both of bodily natures composed of matter and form, and of intelligible essences composed of substance and accident, that is, the comprehensive knowledge of bodies and incorporeals; and in accordance with the theological mystical initiation attainable by nature, as it were three measures: the knowledge and illumination concerning the Holy Trinity, that is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You, then, as those who are gnostic, consider what remains: how the creative generic power of nature for things superior is divided into six, and these themselves generic, modes of the virtues, and what is the power that, in relation to the universal creative power of the virtues of nature, is the universal and more generic virtue than the others, and is divided into six species, these also generic, so that, fitted to the power of nature, it may be contained, being formed sixfold through its modes. And besides these, who are those who have drawn the water (the servants), who is the bridegroom, who is the bride, who is the chief steward, who is the mother who boldly declared in word that they have no wine. For all these things remain for examination by the mystic and initiator of the divine words and meanings, if indeed he altogether delights in the mode of ascent according to the intellect.

Nevertheless, so that the discourse concerning these things may not be left entirely voiceless for us at present and depart, granting to those who hunger well even in part the spiritual banquet, I shall speak according to my ability, not promising to reveal the whole meaning contained in what has been said—for my mind is weak for the comprehension of the intelligible visions in these things—but only as much as the power of my understanding is naturally able to contain. They say, then, that love is the most generic of the virtues, and that the most generic power of nature is the word that produces it; and this word, having grasped its own cause, when energized is divided into six more generic modes, comprehending the forms by which the word of love is naturally distinguished—caring for the hungry and thirsty, strangers, the naked, the sick, and those in prison, both bodily and spiritually. For the word of virtue is not circumscribed by bodies alone, nor does the power of nature occupy itself with sense perception alone. The most generic power of nature, then, is the form-giver of the most generic virtue, distinguishing virtue by its own six modes into as many forms, through which nature is united to the singularity of the will, showing the word of creation to be equally honored and undivided in all things, gathered to itself in doing good and in suffering.

Taking it up again when it has been strengthened through the labors that are fitting, the mind circumcises all the excesses and deficiencies of nature, which self-love, having devised them from each person's own disposition, turned the gentlest nature into a beast and cut the one essence into many parts, both opposed to one another and—nothing worse can be said—destructive of one another, and it brings forward and shows the stable mean, according to which the laws of the virtues were written by God from the beginning according to nature. And perhaps hinting at this mystery, the Logos introduces the six jars, empty and waterless, indicating the inactivity toward the good of the most generic natural power. Thus, then, the most generic power according to nature, divided into six modes according to practice, is formed into that many species of the most generic virtue, encompassing the whole by the whole; and when nature has come to be according to it, it receives its own most generic law, the unerring judge of truth, which the Logos called the chief steward, who clearly recognized that the good wine, which the Logos later mixed through his own presence, human nature had first to drink and become drunk with at the beginning—I mean the better and higher Logos concerning God—and thus later, like wines, to be initiated into the logoi of created things, those inferior to the first Logos. For it was most just, as truly also most fitting, that nature be first initiated into the Logos through whom it came to be, and thus later seek the logoi of the things that came to be for its sake.

Those who have drawn the water are the ministers of both the Old and the New Testament—I mean the holy patriarchs, the lawgivers, the commanders, the judges, the kings, the prophets, the evangelists, and the apostles—through whom the water of knowledge was drawn and given back again to nature; which water the Logos, who as good created and deified nature through his love for humanity, changed into the grace of deification. But if someone should say that the natural scientific and pious thoughts are also ministers, drawing the water of knowledge from the ordering of beings at the command of the Logos, this has not, I think, fallen short of the truth. (The bridegroom is plainly the human mind, led as a bride to union with virtue; honoring their life together, the Logos comes eagerly when called, binding tight their fellowship of spiritual marriage and spiritually warming their desire toward spiritual fruitfulness with his own wine.)

The true and undefiled faith is the mother of the Word. For just as, as God, the Word is by nature the creator of the mother who bore him according to the flesh—the mother he made for himself through love of humanity, deigning to be born from her as a man—so too, creating faith in us first, the Word later becomes the son of the faith that is in us, being embodied through it in the virtues according to practice, through which we accomplish all things, receiving from the Word the gifts that lead to salvation. For without faith—of which the Word is by nature God and by grace Son—we have no boldness to make our petitions to him. But may it be granted that we always bring about such a marriage, and that Jesus comes with his own mother, so that he may restore the knowledge in us that has flowed away because of sin, and transform it toward the deification that drives the mind out of the generation of beings, the deification that sharpens and, as it were, strengthens our knowledge of nature toward immutability, just as water is strengthened by the quality of wine. SCHOLIA 1. He calls "power" the motion toward the activity of virtues that is substantially sown in nature, but is manifested according to use in accordance with the will of the one who possesses it.

2. The nature that had been emptied of the knowledge given to it, the Word of God, having become man, filled again with knowledge; and having sharpened it toward immutability, he deified it not by nature but by quality, having marked it completely with his own Spirit, just as he blended water into wine by quality toward intensity. For this reason he truly becomes man, so that he might make us gods by grace. 3. He calls good wine the reason that is ecstatic from nature toward deification; which transgression did not permit Adam to drink; but he himself, by grace through love of humanity, having emptied himself as God, later through the incarnation, as he alone knows, made it drinkable. For he himself is also providence, as the cohesion of beings; and the Word of providence, as the method of the healing of those who are provided for; and the provider, as one who holds all things together by their own reasons for being. 4. The power of the mind, he says, is by nature receptive of the knowledge of corporeal and incorporeal things; but it receives the impressions of the Holy Trinity by grace alone, because it is only believing; but it does not presume to seek what anything is in essence.

5. That also the power of nature in its universal aspect is divided into six modes and activities; and love in its universal aspect is divided into six forms of virtue. For the one who comforts those seized by these things—whether bodily or spiritually—by hunger, and thirst, and nakedness, and exile, and sickness, and imprisonment, has fulfilled the love that consists of the six virtues, both toward God and toward neighbor; having preserved the soul's desire as one made qualitative for God alone. 6. He says that God is the cause of the Word; whom man has received the power of the Word to seek. 7. Into these things the substance of love is divided, in which it also consists. 8. He says that the one who by virtue is equal in disposition toward all has shown in himself the God who is no respecter of persons, just as the one and the same Word, having created one nature for all individually, so also legislated for all one motion of disposition, according to which the principle that appears to be scattered by nature is naturally gathered together. 9. He calls mediocrity the state that is freed from the passions contrary to nature, but has not yet attained the goods that are above nature. For it shows the disposition as equal in law to nature, having nothing self-willed and opposed to the principle of nature; and for this reason knowing all men as one, inasmuch as it has the law of nature as a God-written book.

10. That we have a natural criterion, the law according to nature, which teaches us that before the wisdom that is in all things, our desire had to be moved toward the mystical initiation of the Maker of all things. 11. Faith, the Mother of the Word, in the anagogical sense; which, being created first, later gives birth, embodied through the virtues, to the Word who created it. MA (41). CONCERNING THE FIVE HUSBANDS OF THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 41. QUESTION 41: What is the meaning of the five husbands of the Samaritan woman, and of the sixth, who was not a husband? Answer. Both the Samaritan woman, and the woman who took seven brothers in marriage according to the Sadducees, and the woman with the hemorrhage, and the woman bent toward the ground, and the daughter of Jairus, and the Syrophoenician woman, signify both the universal nature of human beings and the soul of each individual human being, each one indicating both the nature and the soul according to the underlying disposition of the passion. For example, the woman of the Sadducees is the nature or the soul, which lived barrenly with all the divine laws given from the beginning of the age, but did not accept the expectation of things to come. And the woman with the hemorrhage is likewise the nature and the soul, letting drain away through the passions toward matter the power given to it for the generation of works and words of righteousness. And the Syrophoenician woman is the same nature and the soul of each individual, having as a daughter the mind, which is grievously torn apart epileptically by helplessness in its friendship with matter. And the daughter of Jairus is likewise the nature and soul according to the law, utterly dead through the non-performance of the legal commandments and the inactivity of the divine ordinances.

The woman who was bent over is nature or the soul, which has bent its whole noetic power toward matter and toward practical activity through the deceit of the devil. And the Samaritan woman, just as the women who came before her, signifies nature or the soul of each individual, which, apart from the prophetic gift, has lived with all the laws given to nature as with husbands; of these, five had passed away, and the sixth, even if it was present, was not a husband of nature or of the soul, since it did not beget from it the righteousness that saves completely. Nature therefore first had as a husband the law in paradise; second, the law after paradise; third, the law at the flood in the time of Noah; fourth, the law of circumcision in the time of Abraham; fifth, the law of the offering of Isaac. Nature, having received all these, cast them aside, since they had died through its own unfruitfulness in the works of virtue. And it had the sixth law, the one through Moses, as though it did not have it—either because it did not perform the righteousness ordained by it, or because it was going to pass over to another law as a husband, the Gospel, since the law was not given to it forever.

by nature of humans, but by a pedagogy of economy leading to what is greater and more mystical; in which sense I think the Lord said to the Samaritan woman: "And now the one you have is not yours." For he knew that nature would be transferred into the Gospel. Therefore also around the sixth hour, when the soul is most brightly illumined from all sides by the rays of knowledge through the presence of the Word to it (the shadow in the law having passed away), he conversed with it, and by the well of Jacob, that is, by the fountain, with the Word, standing with the contemplations of the Scriptures. Let these things be said for now also about this. SCHOLION 1. The well of Jacob is the Scripture; the water is the knowledge in the Scripture; the depth is the hard-to-traverse position of the scriptural enigmas; the bucket is the learning of the divine Word through the letters, which the Lord did not have, being the Word himself, and not giving to believers the knowledge that comes from learning and study, but granting to the worthy the ever-flowing wisdom from spiritual grace, and never ceasing. For the bucket, that is, learning, taking a very small part of knowledge, leaves the whole unheld by any account. But the knowledge according to grace has the whole wisdom attainable by humans, even without study, bubbling up in various ways for needs.

MB (42). On how we are said to have made sin, while the Lord is said to have become sin but not to have known it. 42. Question 42: How is it that we are said to have made sin and to know it, while the Lord is said to have become sin but not to have known it? And how is becoming and not knowing it not heavier than making and knowing it? For the one who did not know sin, he says, he made to be sin for us. Answer. The choice of Adam, having first corrupted the principle of nature according to nature, corrupted nature along with itself, since it had set aside the grace of impassibility. And it became sin—first, and easily blamed, the fall of choice from the good toward evil; second, on account of the first, the blameless transformation of nature from incorruption into corruption. For two sins came to be in the forefather through the transgression of the divine commandment: the one blameworthy, the other blameless, having the blameworthy one as its cause; the one of choice, which voluntarily set aside the good, the other of nature, which involuntarily set aside immortality because of the choice. This reciprocal corruption and alteration of nature, then, our Lord and God correcting, having taken the whole nature, he too had in the nature he took the passible, adorned by the incorruption according to choice; and he became by nature, because of the passible, sin for us, but did not know the sin of inclination because of the immutability of his choice.

He corrected the passibility of nature through the incorruptibility of the will, making the end of the passibility of nature—I mean death—the beginning of the natural transformation into incorruptibility. And just as, through one man who willingly turned his will from the good, the transformation of nature from incorruptibility into corruption passed to all men, so through one man, Jesus Christ, who did not turn his will from the good, the restoration of nature from corruption into incorruptibility passed to all men. The Lord, then, not knowing my sin—that is, the turning of my will—did not take my sin nor become it, but became the sin for my sake, that is, the corruption of nature that came about through the turning of my will; taking it up, he became by nature a passible man for our sake, and through the sin for my sake he abolished my sin. And just as in Adam the individual character of the will toward evil took away from nature the common glory of incorruptibility—God having judged it not good that the man who had become evil in his will should possess an immortal nature—so in Christ the individual character of the will toward the good took away from the whole of nature the common shame of corruption, nature being refashioned into incorruptibility at the resurrection because of the immutability of his will, God having judged it reasonable that the man who did not turn his will should again receive an immortal nature. And by "man" I mean the incarnate God the Word, because of the flesh endowed with a rational soul that he united to himself in his own person.

For if the passibility, corruptibility, and mortality according to nature were introduced in Adam by the turning of his free choice, then reasonably the impassibility, incorruptibility, and immortality according to nature were brought back in Christ through the resurrection by the immutability of his free choice. Therefore the condemnation of Adam's sin of free choice is the transformation of nature into passibility, corruption, and death—which man did not have from God in the beginning, but he made and knew it, creating the sin of free choice through disobedience; of which the condemnation through death is clearly the offspring. This condemnation of my sin of free choice—I mean the passible, corruptible, and mortal according to nature—the Lord took upon himself and became sin for my sake in respect of the passible, corruptible, and mortal, voluntarily submitting by nature to my condemnation, being uncondemned in his free choice, in order that he might condemn my sin and condemnation, both of free choice and of nature, thrusting sin and passibility and corruption and death out of nature at once, and that the mystery concerning me might become new—the economy, out of love for humanity, of him who is above me for the sake of my salvation, who voluntarily appropriates to himself my condemnation through death, and through it grants me the recall to immortality. In many ways, I think, it has been shown in summary how the Lord became sin but did not know sin, and how man did not become sin but made and knew sin—both the sin of free choice, which he himself began, and the natural sin, which the Lord accepted for his sake, being entirely free of the former.

In no way, then, is doing and knowing sin better than not doing so, according to the intended meaning of the argument as it has been set forth, and with the fitting distinction being understood of the homonymy that pertains to sin. For the one effects a separation from God, when the free choice voluntarily thrusts away divine things; while the other often becomes a hindrance to vice, not permitting the vice of the free choice to proceed to action because of natural weakness. SCHOLIA 1. He says that death is a sin of nature, by which we perish from being even against our will; and that the choice of things contrary to nature is a sin of free choice, by which we fall away from well-being though we wish it. 2. That the Lord, having become incarnate as a man, was by nature corruptible, inasmuch as he is also said to have become sin, he says; but by nature he is incorruptible in his free choice, as being without sin. 3. The death of the Lord, he says, has become the beginning of incorruptibility for the whole of nature. 4. The corruption of nature is sin for our sake; but the mutability of our free choice is our sin. Therefore man became mortal, having undergone natural death by just judgment, for the removal of the death of free choice. 5. He says that the first sin is the turning of the free choice, which the Lord did not have, although he truly took on the passibility according to nature, which is a penalty of the

Adam's free choice had been turned. (Therefore he alone is free among the dead, not having the sin through which death came.) 43. CONCERNING THE TREE OF LIFE AND THE TREE OF DISOBEDIENCE. Question 43: If the tree of life is said in Scripture to be wisdom, and it is the work of wisdom to distinguish and to know "the known tree of the good and the evil," how then does it differ from the tree of life? Answer. The teachers of the Church, being able by the grace that is in them to say many things concerning the question set before us, judged it better to honor the place rather with silence, because the understanding of the many cannot reach the depth of what has been written, and they did not venture to say anything deeper. And if some did speak, having first discerned the capacity of their hearers, they spoke in part for the benefit of those being taught, and left the greater part unexamined. Therefore I too intended to pass over this place rather in silence, had I not suspected that your God-loving soul would be grieved. Nevertheless, for your sake I will speak what can be suitable for all and fitting for those of small and great understanding alike. The tree of life and that which is not such—from this very fact alone, that the one is named a tree of life, but the other is not called a tree of life but only "known of good and evil"—have a great and ineffable difference. For the tree of life is altogether also productive of life, while the tree that is not of life is clearly productive of death. For that which is not productive of life, from the very fact that it is not called a tree of life, would clearly be productive of death; for nothing else is set in opposition to life by way of contrariety.

Moreover, as wisdom, the tree of life has the greatest difference from the tree called the knowledge of good and evil, which is neither wisdom nor so named. For it is proper to wisdom to have intellect and reason, while it is proper to the habit opposed to wisdom, in the contrary way, to have unreason and sense perception. Since, then, man came into generation composed of a rational soul and a sentient body, let the intellect of the soul be, in one conception, the tree of life, in which is the possession of wisdom, and let the sense perception of the body be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in which is clearly the motion of unreason; and the man, having received the divine commandment not to touch this by experience through activity, did not keep it. But both trees, according to Scripture, are discriminative of certain things, namely, the intellect and the sense perception. For example, the intellect has the power to discriminate intelligible and sensible things, temporary and eternal things—or rather, being a discriminative power of the soul, it persuades it to cleave to some things and to rise above others. And sense perception has the power to discriminate the pleasure of bodies and pain—or rather, being a power of ensouled and sentient bodies, it persuades it to draw some things to itself and to reject others. If, then, man becomes [occupied] with the discrimination of bodies according to pleasure and pain alone, transgressing the divine commandment, he eats the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, unreason according to sense perception, having only the discrimination that constitutes bodies, according to which, as of good, he cleaves to pleasure, and as of evil, he abstains from pain.

But if it comes to be of the intelligible discrimination alone, which distinguishes eternal things from temporal, having kept the divine commandment, it eats the tree of life—I mean the wisdom that consists in the intellect—having only the discrimination that constitutes the soul, by which, as of good, it cleaves to the glory of eternal things, and as of evil, it abstains from the corruption of temporal things. Great, therefore, is the difference between the two trees, both of their natural discrimination and of the impression naturally implanted in each, since the name of good and evil has been uttered homonymously without distinction of appellation, and it can produce great error for those who do not approach the Oracles of the Spirit wisely and with careful examination. But you, being wise through grace, know that what is called evil simply is not altogether evil, but is evil in relation to something and not evil in relation to something else; likewise also what is called good simply is not altogether good, but is good in relation to something and not good in relation to something else; and guard against the harm that comes from homonymy. SCHOLIA 1. For it is good for the intellect: the impassible disposition toward the spirit; and evil: the passionate relation toward sense. And it is good for sense: the passionate movement toward the body according to pleasure; and evil: the disposition that arises in it according to virtue. MD (44). CONCERNING "BEHOLD, ADAM HAS BECOME AS ONE OF US". 44. QUESTION 44. To whom does God say, "Behold, Adam has become as one of us"? If to the Son, how is Adam compared to God, not being of his essence? But if to the angels, how does he again compare the angel to himself, saying "as one of us" as though to an equal in essence?

Answer. I have already said in the chapter concerning the building of the tower that, in accordance with the disposition of the things foreknown that underlies the soul, the Scripture molds God as speaking, hinting at the divine counsel through the modes that are natural and connate to us. And here, therefore, the Scripture does not show God simply saying, "Behold, Adam has become as one of us," but evidently after the transgression, adding also the reason for the expression, which you passed over when compiling the chapter, though it is clarifying of the whole meaning. For when the account had said, "Behold, Adam has become as one of us," it added, "to know good and evil," and "now, lest he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and live forever." For since at the same time as the counsel the devil taught him polytheism, saying, "On the day you eat of the tree, your eyes will be opened, and you will be as gods knowing good and evil," for this reason, with dissimulation and, so to speak, ironically and reproachfully, for the refutation of the man who was persuaded by the devil, God makes the phrase "has become as one of us" in the plural, directed toward the notion of divinity that was implanted in Adam by the serpent through deceit.

And let no one think that the form of expression by way of irony is foreign to scriptural custom, when he hears the Scripture saying in the person of God to Israel, "If you walk with me crookedly, I also will walk with you crookedly," knowing that crookedness differs in no way from irony; and again, finding how it contrived the deception of Ahab, putting falsehood before him as truth, bringing upon him justly the punishment for the things in which he sinned. For if the Scripture had not introduced God as saying, in reference to Adam's error, "Behold, he has become as one of us, to know good and evil," how would it have brought in the knowing of good and evil, as though he had a composite knowledge and one composed of opposites—which it is impossible even to conceive concerning God, let alone dare to say it, since He alone is simple in essence and power and knowledge, and has only the knowledge of the good, or rather is Himself essence and power and knowledge. But neither does any of the rational essences that are from God and after God possess, at once and in the same simple motion of the mind, knowledge that subsists by composition from opposites. For by nature the knowledge of one of two things opposed to each other produces the knowledge of the other.

ignorance. For the knowledge of opposites is unmixed and altogether incapable of coexisting, since the knowledge of one of the opposites establishes the ignorance of the other, just as the eye cannot at the same time grasp both what is above and what is below, and the things on either side simultaneously, without a turning specifically toward one and wholly separated from the others. The Scripture therefore shows God appropriating the passion of Adam, or reproving Adam for the counsel of the serpent, leading him to a sense of the worthless things concerning polytheism that had been rubbed into him by the deceit. And if this is well and good, enough of the inquiries. Since you yourself, discovering the greater from yourself, share with me also the grace given to you from God concerning the things that are. But the "lest now he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and live forever" — this, as I think, providentially makes the separation of things unmixed with respect to practice, so that evil may not become immortal, preserved by participation in the good. For the Maker of man wills that knowledge be unmixed in the same man with respect to the relation of opposites. SCHOLIA 1. That God converses with Adam concerning the notion of divinity which he received, having been taught by the devil.

2. The one who loves falsehood is handed over to it for destruction, so that by suffering he may know what he willingly embraced, and by experience, having learned, may understand that he was unaware he was clinging to death instead of life. 3. That God alone has the knowledge of the good, as being both the nature and the knowledge of the good; and the ignorance of evil, as possessing its own impotence. For of those things whose power he possesses naturally, he has acquired knowledge substantially. 4. That evil is contemplated in rational beings according to a passion that befalls contrary to nature, and not according to a natural power. 5. In turn, he says, the existence of opposites is naturally contemplated in those things that are receptive of them. 6. Whoever has persuaded his conscience that the worst is by nature done as good, this one, stretching out the practical faculty of the soul as it were a hand, has wickedly taken from the tree of life, having deemed the worst to be by nature immortal. Therefore God, having placed in man by nature the conscience's accusation of evil, separated him from life when he became evil by choice, lest, while doing evil, he be able to persuade his own conscience that the worst is by nature good. ME (45). CONCERNING THE BREASTPLATE AND CONCERNING THE REMOVAL OF THE ARM.

Question 45. What does the breast-piece of the ephod in Leviticus and the arm of the removal-offering, consecrated to the priests in honor of God, signify? Answer. I think the better and higher contemplation is signified by the breast-piece, and action by the arm—that is, the habit and the activity of the intellective faculty, or knowledge and virtue—since knowledge brings the mind directly to God, while virtue through action withdraws it from the whole generation of things that exist. These things the Word set apart for priests, for those who have acquired God alone through all things as their inheritance, and who possess nothing earthly at all. Or again, since those who are wholly formed in knowledge and virtue by the Spirit make the hearts of others receptive through the word of teaching and of piety and faith, and by withdrawing their practical habit and power from the pursuits concerned with corruptible nature, transfer them to the activity of incorruptible goods that are above nature—for this reason the Word rightly commanded that the breast-piece of the ephod, that is, the heart of those brought to the sacrifice of God, and the arm, clearly the action of the same, be consecrated to the priests. Scholia 1. The breast-piece is a symbol of contemplation, and the arm of action. For contemplation is by nature a habit of the intellective faculty, and action is its activity. And by both of these the true priesthood is characterized.

2. The one who performs the sacred service for God through a pious word—sanctifying the hearts of others, to which the breast-piece corresponds, and their practical power, to which the arm corresponds, by setting them apart for the activities of the commandments—has become a priest, receiving from those who offer themselves as a sacrifice to God the breast and the arm. M (46). Concerning the mirror and the riddle. 46. Question 46. What is the difference between the mirror and the riddle? Answer. The mirror is, to speak within limits, a conscience that possesses without deficiency the form of all good things pertaining to practice, through which the one pure in mind is naturally able to see God, or a practical habit that circumscribes the unity-shaped composition of all the virtues into one another like a divine face. The riddle is knowledge through the complete, by way of contemplation, encompassment of the divine principles attainable by nature, having the indication of what is beyond understanding. And simply, the mirror is a habit indicative of the prototype form of the virtues that will be manifested to the worthy; for it intimates the future end of practical philosophy to those who possess the mirror; while the riddle is an indication of the archetype of things understood concerning knowledge. All righteousness here, then, compared to the one to come, holds the rank of a mirror, possessing the image of the archetypal things, but not the things themselves subsisting in their form; and all knowledge here of lofty things, compared to the one to come, is a riddle, having an indication of the truth, but not the truth itself subsisting, which is going to be manifested.

Since the divine things are held together by virtue and knowledge, the mirror is indicative of the prototypes according to virtue, and the enigma is manifestive of the archetypes according to knowledge. The mirror has this difference from the enigma, in that the mirror discloses the end of the practical life as something future, while the enigma brings to light the mystery of the contemplative life. SCHOLION 1. That the mirror is expressive of the goods that belong to the practical life, while the enigma is indicative of the mysteries that are to come in knowledge. 47 (47). ON "THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS." 47. QUESTION 47: What is the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and the things that follow? What is the wilderness, and what is the way of the Lord here, and what is its preparation? Who are his paths, and what is it to make them straight? What are the valleys, and what does "every valley shall be filled" signify? What are the mountains and the hills, and what is their humbling? What are the crooked things, and how

Every saint is plainly a voice of the Word of God who cries out from the beginning in the wilderness—I mean the nature of men or this world—whether, like Abel, he rightly offers from sincerity the first movements of the soul for contemplation, seasoned by the virtues; or, like Enosh, having laid hold of the good things to come by the firm hope of faith, he obtained a well-toned invocation on behalf of those things for which he hoped; or, like Enoch, having pleased God through every virtue, and having wholly detached his mind from the relation and knowledge of beings, he was translated without attachment to the very cause that is beyond understanding; or, like Noah, having by faith contemplated the future forms of the divine judgment, he prepared for himself, as it were an ark, a manner of life and ascetic practice secured on every side by divine fear, which rescues him from the wrath to come; or, like Abraham, having seen with the pure eye of faith the beauty of the good things to come, he readily obeyed the call to go out from land and kindred and his father's house, leaving behind the relation and attachment to flesh and sense and sensible things, and becoming higher than nature in the time of trial and struggles, preferring the cause of nature, as the great Abraham preferred God to Isaac; or, like Isaac, through extreme dispassion and the soul's noble insatiability for contemplation, he kept his position unswerving from the truth, even when warred against by evil spirits—the state of virtue and knowledge; or, like Jacob, having purified his mind from the roughness of material things and the confusion concerning them, he made it smooth, and by the putting on of goatskins—I mean the life according to God concerning the flesh—

by harshness, having received from God the dominion over the mind of the flesh, and having moved to Harran—by which I mean natural contemplation—out of fear of the uprising of the passions and out of longing for the higher learning that comes by experience, from which, having received through practical labors the whole spiritual knowledge of the visible world, gathered in various reasonings and thoughts, he returned to the land of his father and his own—I mean the knowledge of intelligible things—carrying with him, as it were wives and maidservants, the firmly established habits and activities of both the practical and the contemplative life that had come to be in him, and the sons born to him from these, which are these very things. And to speak simply, lest the account be lengthened beyond what is fitting, going through the life of each one, every saint, through his own manner of life, since he has the Word crying out his own wills to other men, is plainly a voice of the Word and a forerunner, in proportion to the righteousness and faith within him. But above all, John the Great is a voice of the Word and a forerunner, and a declarer and herald of the true presence of God without types and symbols, and a revealer to those who do not know, showing openly the one who takes away the sin of the world and contributing his own ministry to the dispensation for the fulfillment of the mysteries at the baptism.

Since, because of the wealth of grace, every syllable of the divine Scripture, even the most ordinary, can be taken in many ways for the benefit of those who desire virtue and knowledge, come, let us contemplate the things set before us also in another way, as far as we are able. Therefore, as I said, the nature of men is a desert, and this world, and the soul of each individual, because of the barrenness of good things that came from the ancient transgression. And the voice of the crying Word is the conscience's awareness of each one's transgressions, as it were crying out in the hidden depth of the heart to prepare the way of the Lord. And a clear and manifest preparation of the divine way is the change and correction of one's habits and thoughts for the better, and the cleansing of former defilements. And the good and glorious way is the life according to virtue, in which, as on a road, the Word makes the course of salvation in each person, dwelling through faith and walking about among the various institutions and doctrines of virtue and knowledge. And the paths of the Word are the various modes of the virtues and the varied conduct of the life according to God—that is, the pursuits according to God—which those straighten who pursue virtue or the study of divine words neither for the sake of glory nor under the pretext of greed nor for the sake of flattery and pleasing men and display, but who do and say and think all things for God. For the divine Word does not naturally linger in crooked paths, even if he finds the way ready in some. What I mean is this:

If someone fasts and abstains from the diet that inflames the passions, and does all the other things that can contribute to release from evil, he has prepared what is called the way; but if he practices such ways for the sake of vainglory, or greed, or flattery, or pleasing men, or any other cause apart from the divine good pleasure, he has not made straight the paths of God, and he has endured the labor of preparing the way, but he did not have God walking in his paths. The way of the Lord, then, is virtue, and the straight path is the manner of life that is upright in virtue and guileless. Every valley shall be filled—that is, of those who have prepared the way of the Lord well and made his paths straight; for not simply every valley, nor of all, since it is not of those who have not prepared the way of the Lord and made his paths straight. A valley is the flesh of each individual, which has been furrowed by the great flow of the passions and, according to the law of God who bound them together, has been cut off from its spiritual continuity and union with the soul. It is also possible to understand the soul as a valley, hollowed out by the great winter of ignorance and, through vice, having laid aside the beauty of the fair smoothness that is in the Spirit. Every valley, then—that is, the flesh and soul of those who have prepared the way of the Lord and made his paths straight—shall be filled through the removal of the passions, which produce in them irregularity like that of valleys, and through the restoration of the virtues, receiving back its natural appearance, made smooth by the Spirit.

And every mountain and hill shall be brought low. It is in the valleys, as it seems, that mountains and hills are especially wont in some way to be situated. Every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God is a mountain, and every evil that rises up against virtue is a hill. If, then, the mountains are the spirits that work ignorance, and the hills those that work evil, whenever every valley—that is, the flesh or soul of those who have prepared, as I said, the way of the Lord and made straight his paths—is filled with knowledge and virtue through the presence of the Word of God who walks in them through the commandments, then all the spirits of falsely named knowledge and of evil are brought low, as the Word treads them down and subjects them, and casts down the evil power that exalts itself against human nature, and, as it were, demolishes the magnitude and height of the mountains and hills and leads them to the filling up of the valleys. For in truth, if one receives through the power of the Word all that the demons, having taken from nature, produced contrary to nature—ignorance and evil—then no height of ignorance or evil will in any way subsist, just as neither a mountain nor a hill of things visible to the senses would subsist, if there were some device for men to demolish the mountains and the hills and to fill up the valleys.

The humbling, then, of the intelligible and evil mountains and hills is the restoration of the natural powers of the flesh and of the soul to themselves; by which, being naturally directed by the wealth of virtue and knowledge, the God-loving mind passes evenly through this age and is carried straight on to the ageless and incorruptible world of the intelligible and holy powers, neither being led astray by the voluntary passions of the flesh through the many-wiled pleasure, nor being roughened by the involuntary temptations through pain, refusing the way of the commandments as hard to pass because of the roughness of the flesh's labors, out of a sparing of the flesh. The crooked things, then, are made straight when the mind, having freed the members of the body from the passions—that is, having cut off the senses and the remaining activities according to pleasure—teaches them to be moved according to the simple principle of nature, directing them toward the cause for which they came to be. And the rough things, that is, the onsets of involuntary temptations, shall become smooth ways, when especially the mind, rejoicing and being glad, takes pleasure in weaknesses and afflictions and necessities, through involuntary labors removing the whole dominion of the voluntary passions.

For whoever longs for true life, knowing that every toil, whether voluntary or involuntary, becomes death to the pleasure that is the mother of death, will accept all the rough onsets of involuntary temptations with gladness, rejoicing through endurance, making afflictions into easy and smooth paths that guide him without error to the prize of the upward calling, as he piously runs the divine race in them. Therefore everyone who by self-control has dissolved the much-twisted and much-entangled pleasure, intertwined in many ways with all the senses together, has made the crooked things straight. And he who by endurance has trampled the hard-to-traverse and rough onset of toils has made the rough ways into smooth paths. Hence, as a prize of virtue and of the labors endured for its sake—as one who has contended well and lawfully, and has conquered pleasure by his longing for virtue, and has trampled pain by his love of knowledge, and through both has nobly carried through the divine contests—he will see the salvation of God. For, it says, all flesh shall see the salvation of God: all flesh, that is, that is faithful, according to I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, namely, that which has believed. Not, then, does all flesh simply see the salvation of God—for neither does the flesh of the impious, if indeed the word that declares Let the impious be taken away, that he may not see the glory of the Lord is true—but with specific qualification, all faithful flesh.

Scripture customarily signifies the whole man by a part of the flesh, as it were crying out, "And all flesh shall see the salvation of God"—that is, every man who has heard the voice crying in the wilderness, and who, according to the stated principle of contemplation, has prepared the way of the Lord and made straight his paths, and has fulfilled this through the demolition of the intellectual and evil mountains and hills (making the soul, which through its own hollow provided, by the transgression of the divine commandment, the height and elevation to the said evil mountains and hills, a valley, and effecting the filling of it as the humbling of the evil powers, and making straight the crooked things of the voluntary passions—that is, the motions of pleasure—through self-control, and leveling the rough misfortunes of involuntary temptations—that is, the modes of pain—through endurance and bringing them into smooth paths); such a man will reasonably see the salvation of God, having become pure in heart; by which, through the virtues and the pious contemplations, he sees God at the end of his labors, according to "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," having received in return for his labors on behalf of virtue the grace of dispassion, than which nothing more clearly reveals God to those who possess it.

Insofar as it happens that for those who seek the higher things of contemplation, the Word is also otherwise present to be seen, as in a wilderness, by the soul that has been stripped of the passions—the voice of the divine Wisdom and Knowledge that cries invisibly through the virtues—since the one and the same Word becomes all things to all in proportion to each one, containing himself through each and bestowing beforehand, as a forerunner voice, the grace that prepares each one beforehand for his own presence: in some, repentance that has come to be, as the forerunner of the righteousness that is to come; in others, virtue, as the preliminary preparation for the knowledge that is awaited; in others again, knowledge, as the imprint of the contemplative habit that will be present. And, to speak simply, time will fail the contemplative mind as it makes the divine ascents of the Word in a manner of knowledge and adapts his transcendent and philanthropic conceptions to each one, according to which he becomes all things to all, in order that he may save all through the riches of his goodness. (SCHOLIA 1. He who pursues knowledge adorned with the virtues, that is, practical knowledge, has become Abel, having God looking upon him and upon his gifts.)

2. He who has known and truly hoped for the things to come never ceases from the invocation in practice on behalf of the things for which he has hoped; and he becomes a new Enos, calling upon God. 3. He who has pleased God through practice transfers his mind through contemplation to the region of intelligible things, so that he may not behold through some fantasy the death that lies in the passions according to sense, as one who is altogether unfindable by any of those who wish to seize him. 4. He who, because of the coming wrath, has pursued the course of hardship, he says, has become a Noah, fleeing by the small constraint of the flesh the coming condemnation of the impious. 5. He calls the flesh "land"; the senses "kindred"; the "father's house," the sensible world—from which the patriarch has gone out, having laid aside the soul's attachment to them. 6. Isaac alone is written of as not having moved from the land of promise—his father Abraham, and his son Jacob, the one having gone out from Mesopotamia and entered into Egypt, and the other having been driven into Mesopotamia and afterward having dwelt as a sojourner in Egypt, where he also died. 7. He took the wives as the states of virtue and knowledge, and the maidservants as their activities, from which he begets, as it were sons, the principles that are in nature and time.

8. Just as the flesh becomes a ravine when it is struck by the onsets of the passions, so too, he says, the soul becomes a ravine, hollowed out by the streams of evil thoughts. 9. The casting off of the passions that are contrary to nature, and the taking up of the virtues that are according to nature, fills up the soul that has been made a ravine, and humbles the dominion of the evil spirits that rushes upon it. 10. He has called the movements of the senses that are contrary to nature "crooked," which are made straight when the mind teaches them to move according to nature toward their own cause—I mean God. 11. He has called "rough" the encounters of involuntary temptations, which pass over into smooth ways through endurance with thanksgiving. 12. Pleasure is the mother of death; and the pain of death is the offspring of pleasure, both the pain that is chosen and the pain that is beyond choice. 13. He who loves virtue willingly withers the furnace of pleasures; but he whose mind has been made firm by the knowledge of the truth is not held back by involuntary pains, since the ever-moving impulse of the soul's longing for God carries him on. 14. Because through transgression the soul has been hollowed out, it has given its height to the demons as though to mountains—that is, its own power over itself. 15. Virtue enacted in practice becomes the voice of the knowledge that cries out, as in a wilderness, in the state of the soul that has been deprived of the passions. For virtue is the forerunner of true wisdom, announcing the truth that will appear after it in the order of providence, which exists before it in the order of cause.

QUESTION 48. The second book of Chronicles says concerning Uzziah that he did what was right before the Lord, and that he was seeking the Lord in the days of Zechariah, who understood in the fear of the Lord. And the Lord prospered him. And Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem, and at the corner gate, and at the corner of the ravine, and at the corners, and he strengthened them. And he built towers in the wilderness and cut out many cisterns, because he had many cattle in the Shephelah and in the plain, and vinedressers in the hill country and in Carmel, because he was a farmer. Who are the towers, and what is the corner gate, and what is the ravine and its corner? And again, who are the corners, and who are the towers in the wilderness? And who are the cisterns that were cut out, and what are the cattle? And what is the Shephelah and the plain, and who are the vinedressers? And what is the hill country and Carmel, and what is it that he was a farmer? Answer. Come, O Word of God, all-praised, grant us the measured revelation of your own words, and, removing the thickness of the coverings, show us, O Christ, the beauty of the things understood.

Take our right hand—I mean the noetic power within us—and guide it in the way of your commandments, and lead it to the place of your wondrous tabernacle, even to the house of God, in the voice of gladness and the sound of confession of one who keeps festival, so that we too, having been deemed worthy to come, through confession in practice and gladness in contemplation, to your ineffable place of feasting, may join our voices with those who keep festival there spiritually, hymning the knowledge of things unutterable with the unceasing voices of the mind. And forgive me, O Christ, and be gracious, because at the command of your worthy servants I dare to attempt things beyond my power; and enlighten my unenlightened mind for the contemplation of what lies before us, so that you may be glorified the more, who give sight to the blind and make the tongue of the stammerer clear. I think, then, that just as Solomon was in some respect a type of Christ God, so Uzziah too was in some respect a type of the Savior. For the name Uzziah, translated into the Greek tongue, means strength of God, and the Lord our Jesus Christ is the natural strength and hypostatic power of God the Father—he who became the stone at the head of the corner, I mean of the Church.

For just as the corner makes a mutual conjunction of two walls through itself, so the Church of God becomes the union of the two peoples—both the one from the Gentiles and the one from the Jews—having Christ as the bond, who builds the towers in Jerusalem (I mean the vision of peace), the divine and indestructible first principles of the doctrines concerning divinity, that is, the strongholds, and upon the gate of the corner the principles of the doctrines concerning the incarnation. For he himself is again the gate and door of the Church, who says, I am the door, who has the towers—that is, the strongholds of the divine doctrines concerning the incarnation—as a gate; through which those who wish to believe rightly must make their entrance, guarded into the corner—I mean the Church. For the one armed with the towers of the divine doctrines as strongholds of truth does not fear the words or demons of assailants. And upon the corner of the ravine. The ravine is the flesh, and its corner is the union with the soul according to the conjunction in the Spirit; upon which the towers, that is, the strongholds of the commandments, are built, and the doctrines concerning them according to discernment, so that the union of the flesh with the soul may be preserved indissoluble, as it were a corner.

And he built towers on the corners. The passage perhaps called "corners" the various unions of the divided created things that came about through Christ. For he united man, mystically removing the difference of male and female by the Spirit and setting the principle of nature free in both from the peculiarities that lie in the passions. And he united the earth, driving out the difference between the perceptible paradise and the inhabited world. And he united the earth and heaven, showing that the nature of perceptible things inclines toward itself as one. And he united both perceptible and intelligible things, and showed that the nature of created things is one, being joined together according to a certain mystical principle. And, according to the principle and mode that transcends nature, he united created nature to the uncreated. And at each union, that is, each corner, having secured the cohesive and connective towers of the divine doctrines, he built towers. And he built towers in the wilderness. The wilderness is the nature of things that appear, that is, this world, in which the Word is accustomed to build towers, granting to those who ask the pious opinions concerning existing things, that is, the correct principles in the Spirit of the doctrines concerning natural contemplation. And he hewed many cisterns, because he had many cattle in Shephelah and in the plain, and vine-dressers in the hill country and in Carmel, because he was a husbandman.

The Lord quarries pits in the desert—I mean in the world and in the nature of men—hollowing out and cleansing the hearts of the worthy from material weight and disposition, and making them spacious to receive the divine rains of wisdom and knowledge, so that they may water the cattle of Christ—I mean those who, through childlikeness of soul, are in need of the moral teaching. And the cattle in Sephila. Sephila is interpreted as a narrow basin. It signifies those who are cleansed through involuntary temptations and made white from the defilements of soul and body, who need to be watered, as it were with water, by the word concerning endurance and patience. And in the plain: evidently those who prosper in the breadth of favorable circumstances flowing smoothly for them, or those who run well in virtues and are widened without passion by the law of the commandments, who also themselves need to be watered by the word concerning humility, and the imparting of and sympathy for the weaker, and thanksgiving for what has been given to them. And vinedressers in the hill country and in Carmel. The vinedressers in the hill country are those who labor lovingly over the divine and ecstatic word of knowledge that gladdens the heart, in the height of contemplation. But the vinedressers in Carmel are those who, in contemplation, practice in a lofty manner the word concerning perfect purification and the complete removal of beings. For Carmel is interpreted as knowledge of circumcision; upon it the one who cultivates the vine [practices] the mystical [word] of circumcision

He cultivates the word, circumcising the mind through knowledge from matter and material things, but not in a Jewish manner considering shame to be glory. And the word says that these too need the divine stream of wisdom from the pits quarried in the desert, so that each, according to the proportion of faith, may receive the fitting word from those entrusted with the grace of the teaching of the saving word; through which our Lord Jesus Christ, the good and knowledgeable farmer, both being and always becoming, cares magnanimously for the soul of each individual, and has done all the things previously mentioned for the sake of our salvation. Thus, then, let the things set before us be contemplated by us concisely in one way, pointing to our Lord Jesus Christ. But in another way, when contemplated with reference to each individual mind, they have the greatest power for the completion of perfection in those guarded by the fear and love of the Lord. But before touching on their contemplation, I am at a loss, marveling how Uzziah, being king of Judea according to the history, could have vinedressers in Carmel, which was not under the kingdom of Judah but was subject to the kingdom of Israel; under whom also that city itself had been built, belonging to the kingdom of Israel. But, as it seems, the word, rousing our sluggishness of mind toward the investigation of truth, has interwoven into the fabric of the history something that does not exist at all.

Uzziah, then, is the mind that has acquired divine strength in both practice and contemplation; for "strength of God," as I said, is how the name is interpreted. And he says that Uzziah was seeking the Lord in the days of Zechariah, who understood in the fear of the Lord. Zechariah is interpreted as "memory of God." Therefore the mind, insofar as it has within itself the living memory of God, seeks the Lord through contemplation—and not simply so, but in the fear of the Lord, that is, in the practice of the commandments. For the one who seeks the Lord through contemplation without practice does not find the Lord, because he has not sought the Lord in the fear of the Lord. And the Lord prospered him. For to everyone who acts with knowledge the Lord gives prosperity, teaching the ways of the commandments and revealing the true principles of existing things. And Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem. The one who is rightly prospered toward the seeking of the Lord through contemplation, together with the fear that has been laid upon him—that is, the practice of the commandments—builds towers in Jerusalem, that is, in the simple and tranquil state of the soul, raising up the principles concerning the Godhead. And upon the gate of the corner. The gate of the corner, that is, of the ecclesiastical faith, is the pious conduct of life, through which we are led into the inheritance of good things; upon it, as upon strong and noble towers, the gnostic mind builds the fortifications of the divine doctrines concerning the Incarnation, composed as they are of various meanings like so many stones, and the ways of the virtues for the guarding of the work of the commandments.

And upon the corner of the valley. The valley is the flesh, and its corner is the union with the soul through the law of the commandments; on this, as on a tower, he builds the discernment that subjects the flesh to the soul according to the law of the Spirit. And upon the corners. He says that there are many corners, on which the mind, strongest according to God, is said to have built the towers. A corner is not only, in the same nature, the union of the parts with the universals according to the same principle of being—as, for instance, of individuals under them with the species, and of species with the genera, and of genera with the essence, the extremes being joined to one another in a singular way at their limit, on which the principles of the parts that have appeared universally make, as it were, corners—the many and various unions of divided things—but also the union of mind with sense, and of heaven with earth, and of sensible things with intelligible things, and of nature with principle. On all these, the contemplative mind, having fixed the true opinions concerning each according to its proper knowledge, wisely builds the intelligible towers on the corners, that is, on the unions the doctrines that bind the unions together. And he prevailed and built towers in the wilderness and hewed out many cisterns. He who was able to emulously excite the senses of the passions and to separate the soul from the relation of the senses prevailed to wall off the entrance of the devil to the mind that had come about through the senses; and therefore in the wilderness, I mean natural contemplation, he built, as it were, safe towers—the pious opinions concerning existing things.