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PROLOGUE TO THE FOURTH TOME OF THE VARIOUS QUESTIONS OF SAINTS DIONYSIUS AND GREGORY, ADDRESSED TO THOMAS THE SANCTIFIED

To the sanctified servant of God, spiritual father and teacher, lord Thomas, Maximus, humble and sinful, unworthy servant and disciple. Having received from diligent zeal concerning divine things an unchangeable habit of unerring contemplation—not simply of wisdom, but of its beauty—you, greatly beloved of God, have become its most temperate lover. The beauty of wisdom is practical knowledge, or wise action, of which the word of divine providence and judgment is the character, as being completed through both. By it, having joined sense to mind through the Spirit, you have shown truly how God is by nature accustomed to make man in the image of God, and you have made known the wealth of goodness, showing God embodied in the virtues within yourself through the precious good mixture of opposites; and having measured your imitation to His height, you did not disdain to descend in self-emptying even to me, seeking those things of which you have knowledge by experience. These are the chapters of Dionysius and Gregory, those saints, greatly praised and blessed men, of the true election of those who from the beginning, according to the purpose of the ages, joined themselves to God, who truly

The text comes from three sources: 1) from the electronic library of Greek texts, ( :// ), 2) texts not included in the Patrologia of , volume and (typed by the mother of Fr. Arsenios Meskos), and 3) the scholia on the works of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite from the BYZANTIO editions; the text was passed through a scanner, followed by optical character recognition and proofreading.

Volume and page for the BYZANTIO editions are recorded in the following manner: , that is, the tenth page of volume B follows. There is also an indication of the page of the Patrologia when the text comes from there.

* The text comes from the Patrologia of , volume (typed by the mother of Fr. Arsenios Meskos), in comparison with the text of the editions "TO BYZANTION" of the series "GREGORY PALAMAS" Thessaloniki *

1992, PHILOKALIA OF THE NEPTIC AND ASCETIC FATHERS, volume IV.

...since they had received the attainable outpouring of wisdom granted to the saints, and by the setting aside of the life according to nature had made the substance of the soul, and for this reason had possessed Christ alone as living, and—to say the greater thing—He had become to them a soul of the soul and was made manifest to all through all works and words and thoughts, so that from this they were persuaded that the things set before them were not their own, but Christ's, who by grace had exchanged Himself for them. But how shall I call Lord Jesus, not yet having received the Spirit of holiness? How shall I speak the mighty acts of the Lord, I who am slow of speech, and have fastened my mind upon the attachment to corruptible things? How shall I make even some of His praises heard, I who am deaf, and who, through friendship with the passions, have the hearing of the soul wholly turned away from the blessed voice of the Word? How shall the Word become manifest to me, who am defeated by the world, when He is by nature not manifest to the world but conquers the world, since by a disposition fond of matter He is by nature unknowable? How is it not presumptuous for the defiled to approach the saints, and for the unclean to lay hands on the pure? Therefore I would have declined the undertaking of the things commanded, fearing the reproach of presumption, had I not feared more the danger of disobedience. Caught therefore between these two, I choose rather the reproach of presumption, as more tolerable, fleeing the danger of disobedience as unforgivable.

And through the mediation of the saints and the help of your prayers, with Christ, our great God and Savior, granting us to think piously and to speak as is fitting, I will make the answer concerning each chapter as brief as possible [the discourse is addressed to a teacher able to procure great things for the small], beginning with Gregory the God-minded, since he is closer to us in time.

1. From St. Gregory the Theologian, from the first discourse On the Son, on the text "Therefore a monad, having moved from the beginning into a dyad, stood still at a triad." And again from the same, from the second Irenic discourse, on the text "A monad having been moved, because of its richness; and a dyad having been surpassed—for it is beyond matter and form, from which bodies come; and a triad having been defined, because of perfection." If, servant of God, having observed the apparent disagreement, you were perplexed at the true agreement, it is not possible to find anything more unified than the meaning of these expressions. For it is the same thing to have surpassed a dyad and not to have stood still at a dyad, and again for the movement of the monad to have been defined as a triad and to have stood still at a triad—since we honor a monarchy that is not without generosity, as though circumscribed in one person, nor again disorderly, as though poured out to infinity, but the one which a triad equal in nature—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—establishes, whose wealth is their connaturality and the single leap of their splendor, with the Godhead neither poured out beyond these, lest we introduce a multitude of gods, nor defined within these, lest we be condemned to a poverty of Godhead.

This, then, is not a demonstration of the cause of beings that is above being, but a proof of pious opinion concerning it, since the Godhead is a Monad, not a dyad, and a Trinity, not a multitude, as being without beginning, incorporeal, and free from faction. For the Monad is truly a Monad: it is not a beginning of things after it, by a contraction of distinction, so as to be poured out and proceed naturally into a multitude, but it is the enhypostatic essence of the consubstantial Trinity. And the Trinity is truly a Trinity, not completed by a number that is dissolved (for it is not a composition of monads, so as to suffer division), but the unitive existence of a three-hypostatic Monad. For the Trinity is truly a Monad, because it is so, and the Monad is truly a Trinity, because it so subsists; since there is also one Godhead, being in a monadic way and subsisting in a triadic way. But if, having heard of motion, you wondered how the Godhead that is beyond all bounds is moved, the passion is ours, not hers, since we are first illumined with the principle of her being, and thus enlightened as to the manner of her subsisting, if indeed being is altogether conceived before how it is. Motion of the Godhead, then, is the knowledge that comes about through manifestation concerning both that she is and how she subsists, established for those who are receptive of her. Of the same, from the first discourse, "The things that are higher, bring to the Godhead...

From the same, from the same first discourse, on the text: "In one summary, refer the higher things to the Godhead and to the nature superior to passions and body, but the lower things to the composite, to him who was emptied and became flesh for your sake, and it is no worse to say, became man."

The Word of God, being wholly a complete substance—for he is God—and wholly a perfect hypostasis—for he is Son—having emptied himself, became the seed of his own flesh, and by an ineffable conception having been composed with it, he became the hypostasis of the flesh he assumed. And by this new mystery, having truly and without change become wholly man, of two natures, uncreated and created, impassible and passible, he himself was the hypostasis, receiving without deficiency all the natural principles of which he was the hypostasis. But if he substantially received all the natural principles of which he was the hypostasis, to him who became composite by the assumption of the flesh according to the hypostasis, the teacher very wisely assigned the passions of his own flesh, lest they be thought mere words, since the flesh was his own and, being truly God according to it, he was passible against sin.

Of essence, then, according to which the Word, even when made flesh, remained simple, and of hypostasis, according to which by the assumption of flesh he became composite, and was shown to be a passible God by economy, the teacher shows the difference when he says: "Lest, attributing the things of the hypostasis to ignorance of the nature, we unwittingly, like the Arians, worship a God passible by nature." And he added, "Nor is it any worse to say, 'and made man,'" not only because of the Arians, who in place of a soul dogmatize the Godhead, and the Apollinarians, who dogmatize that the soul is without mind, and in this way cut off the perfection of the nature of the Word that is ours, and make him passible by the nature of the Godhead, but also so that the only-begotten God might be shown to have become perfect man for us in truth, as through flesh active by nature, ensouled intelligently and rationally, working out our salvation by himself, since in all things except sin alone—of which no principle at all is sown in nature—but not except natural activity, he has truly become man, of which activity the definition is the boundary of the essence, characterizing naturally all those in whom it is implanted by essence. For what is predicated commonly and generically of certain things is the boundary of their essence, the privation of which altogether works the corruption of nature, since none of existing things, deprived of what it is naturally disposed to be, remains preserved as what it was.

Of the same, from the same discourse, on the passage: "For this one who is now despised by you was also when he was above you; the one who is now man was also incomposite; what he was, he remained; what he was not, he assumed. In the beginning he was without cause (for what cause is there of God?); but later he came to be for a cause, and that was your salvation—you, the insolent one, who for this reason despise the Godhead because it accepted your coarseness, having conversed with flesh through the mediation of mind, and the God below became man, since he was mingled with God and became one, the better prevailing, so that I might become as much God as he became man. For this one, he says, who is now despised by you, was also when he was above you—clearly existing beyond every age and every nature that exists for its own sake, even if now for your sake he has willingly come to be under both. The one who is now man was also incomposite, simple in nature and in hypostasis, inasmuch as he was God alone, bare of body and of all that belongs to body, even if now by the assumption of flesh having a rational soul he has become what he was not—composite in hypostasis, remaining what he was—simple in nature, in order to save you, the human being. For this alone he had as the cause of his fleshly birth: the salvation of nature, which he took upon himself, and having submitted to the passible, like some frost, he conversed with flesh through the mediation of mind, becoming man—the God below—becoming all things for all, as many things as we are, except sin: body, soul, mind, and through all these, the common result of these—man, God seen because of what is understood.

Therefore the Word himself, without change, in the proper sense having emptied himself toward the passible nature that is ours, and truly having come under natural perception through incarnation, was called visible God and God below, having made his infinite power manifest through a naturally passible flesh, since the flesh was plainly mingled with God and became one, the better prevailing, the Word who assumed it truly deifying it by hypostatic identity. "He became one," but not "one thing," the teacher said, showing that even in the identity of the one hypostasis the natural otherness of the united realities has remained unconfused, since the one is indicative of hypostasis, the other of nature. For the saying, "That I may become as much a god as he is a man," is not mine to say—mine, who have been defiled by sin and who am wholly without desire for the life that truly is—but yours, who are known by the perfect recovery of nature from grace alone, and who are to be shown forth from the power in it to the same extent as the God by nature who was incarnate for our sake partook of our weakness, the deification of those saved by grace being measured out, as he himself knows, in proportion to his own emptying, when they become wholly godlike and capable of containing the whole God, and become his alone. For this is the perfection toward which hasten those who believe that this promise will truly come to be.

Of the same, from the second discourse On the Son, the Word, on the text "For as Word, he was neither obedient nor disobedient": For these things belong to those under the hand and to the second rank—the one to the more well-disposed, the other to those worthy of punishment. But as the form of a servant, he condescends to his fellow servants and to servants, and takes the form of what is alien, bearing the whole in himself together with my own, so that in himself he might consume the worse, as fire does wax, or the sun a vapor of the earth, and I might partake of his own through the mingling. For this reason he honors obedience in deed and tests it through suffering. For disposition alone is not sufficient, just as it is not for us either, unless we also proceed through actual deeds. For deed is the proof of disposition. And perhaps it is no worse to understand this too, that he tests our obedience, and measures all our sufferings by his own, by the art of his love for humanity, so as to know—by his own, our own—both how much is demanded of us and how much is forgiven us, our weakness being reckoned together with his suffering.

For as God the Word by nature, he says, he is entirely free from obedience and disobedience, since by nature as Lord he is also the giver of every commandment, of which obedience is the keeping and disobedience the transgression. For it is of things moved by nature that the law according to commandment, and the fulfillment and transgression according to it, exist—not of that whose being is by nature a state of rest.

But as in the form of a slave, that is, having become man by nature, he condescended to his fellow slaves and to slaves, being formed in what is alien, and at the same time with his nature also putting on the passibility of our nature. For the penalty of the one who sinned is alien to the sinless one according to nature—that is, the passibility of the whole nature that was condemned because of the transgression.

But if, having emptied himself, he is in the form of a slave, that is, having condescended as man, and is formed in what is alien, that is, he becomes man by nature, passible—then the emptying is therefore contemplated in him as both good and philanthropic, and the condescension, the one showing him as truly man, the other as truly a man passible by nature, having become so. Therefore the teacher says: "Bearing me whole in himself together with my own," that is, the entire human nature, in union according to hypostasis together with its blameless passions.

By consuming in himself what was worse in us—wherefore the passible element was added to nature, I mean the law of sin that comes from disobedience, whose strength is the disposition of our will contrary to nature, introducing impassionedness into the passible element of nature by relaxation and intensification—he not only saved those held captive by sin, but also imparted divine power in himself, having dissolved our penalty, while the soul works steadfastness and the body incorruption in the sameness of the will toward the good that is by nature, for those who strive to honor grace in deed. This, I think, is what the saint teaches when he says: "That he might consume in himself what is worse, as fire consumes wax, or the sun a mist of the earth, and that I might partake of his things because of the union"—that is, having become pure by grace, perhaps equal to him in passion. I know also another account concerning the words "the alien is formed," having learned both the word and the life from a certain holy and wise man. For he said, when asked, that obedience is by nature alien to the Word, just as also subjection, which he paid on behalf of us who transgressed the commandment and thereby accomplished the whole salvation of the race, making our things his own. Therefore he honors obedience in deed, having become a new Adam by nature on behalf of the old, and he attempts it through suffering, willingly borne along with us through the same sufferings. If indeed, according to this great teacher, "he labored, and hungered, and thirsted, and agonized, and wept" by the law of the body, which is a clear proof of an active disposition, and a token of his condescension toward fellow servants and servants.

For by nature he remained Master, and became a servant—me, who am a servant by nature—in order to make me master of him who tyrannically ruled through deceit. For this reason, performing servile things in a masterly way—that is, fleshly things in a divine way—he displayed the impassible and by nature ruling power in fleshly things, destroying corruption through suffering and creating imperishable life through death; and doing masterly things in a servile way—that is, divine things in a fleshly way—he showed the ineffable kenosis, through passible flesh making divine the whole race that had been buried in corruption. For by the interchange of these things he clearly established both the natures of which he was the hypostasis and their essential energies, that is, motions, of which he was the unconfused union, not admitting division in both the natures of which he was the hypostasis, since he acted in a manner proper to himself, in a singular way—that is, in a unified way—and through each of the things done by him, by the power of his own divinity, inseparably manifested together with it the energy of his own flesh. For since he is one, nothing is more singular than he,

Nor again is he more victorious or more saving than himself in his own things. For this reason, even when suffering he was truly God, and when working wonders he was truly the same man, because he was a true hypostasis of true natures in an ineffable union. Working in a manner fitting and proper to them, he was shown truly saving them without confusion and being saved; since he remained by nature impassible and passible, immortal and mortal, visible and intelligible, as the same one by nature God and by nature man.

Thus, then, to speak after my own measure, the Master by nature honors obedience, and he tests it by suffering—not only in order to save his own whole nature by purifying it from what is worse, but also in order to test our obedience, learning by experience the things that pertain to us from our own, he who by nature circumscribes all knowledge—how much is required of us, and how much is forgiven us for perfect submission, through which he naturally brings those who are saved to the Father, having appeared in accordance with him by the power of grace. How great and truly awesome is the mystery of our salvation. (For we are required to render as much as he is by nature in what pertains to us, and we are forgiven as much as he, being above us, in what pertains to us by union. Unless perhaps a disposition of sin-loving opinion makes the weakness of nature a material for vice. And this great teacher is clearly of this opinion, confirming it in what follows. For he says: "If the light was persecuted because of the proposition, shining in the darkness, in this life, by the rest of the darkness—I mean the evil one and the tempter—how much is the darkness, as being weaker? And what is wonderful if, when that one had escaped entirely, we were to some extent overtaken?")

For to him being persecuted is a greater thing than to us being apprehended, in the judgment of those who rightly reckon these matters.

CHAPTER 5: ON THE LETTER TO GAIUS OF DIONYSIUS: "HOW, HE SAYS, IS JESUS, WHO IS BEYOND ALL THINGS, ESSENTIALLY COORDINATED WITH ALL MEN?"

On the letter to Gaius the Therapeutist by Dionysius the Areopagite, bishop of Athens: "How, you say, is Jesus, who is beyond all things, essentially coordinated with all men? For he is not here called man as being the cause of men, but as himself being truly man in his whole essence." Since, according to the simple reading of the holy Scripture, God as the cause of all things is signified by all the names of the things brought forth from him, Gaius the Therapeutist, supposing perhaps that even after the incarnation God is again called man in this way alone, is corrected by these words of the great Dionysius, who teaches that the God of all things, having become incarnate, is not called man in a simple sense, but as himself being truly man in his whole essence. Of this there is one and true proof: the constitutive power of its nature, which one would not err in calling a natural energy of the truth, properly and primarily characteristic of it, as being a form-giving motion, the most generic container of every inclusive property that naturally belongs to it, apart from which there is only non-being, since only that which in no way exists, according to this great teacher, has neither motion nor existence.

Most clearly, then, he teaches that God, having become incarnate, denied nothing at all of what is ours, except sin—since it was not of nature either—plainly declaring that he is not simply a man, but truly man in his very essence, wholly. Insisting that the name "man" belongs to him properly through what is added, and that he was made man in essence in a human way, he says: "But we do not define Jesus in a human way." For we do not dogmatize him as a mere man, dividing the union that surpasses understanding. For we speak the name "man" of him essentially, and not as the cause of men, since he who is by nature truly God according to us was truly made man in essence. For he is not only man, because the same one is also God—since he is neither a mere man nor a bare God—"but truly man is he who is preeminently the lover of mankind." For by his boundless longing toward men, he has become in nature truly that very thing which is longed for, neither suffering anything in his own essence from the ineffable emptying, nor changing or diminishing anything of human nature because of the inexpressible assumption—those things of which the principle is properly its constitution. "Beyond men," because he is divine without a man; "and according to men," in a human way, because by the law of conception. "From the essence of men the one who is beyond essence was made essence"; for he did not merely present to us in himself a bare outward form of flesh in appearance, according to the nonsense of the Manichaeans, nor flesh consubstantial with himself which he brought down with him from heaven, according to the myths of Apollinaris, but having become truly man in his very essence, wholly, evidently by the assumption of flesh endowed with a rational soul, united to him according to hypostasis.

He is none the less full of super-essentiality, who is ever super-essential.” For he was not subjected to nature when he became man; on the contrary, he rather raised nature up with himself, making it another mystery, while he himself remained wholly incomprehensible, and showed his own incarnation, which received a generation that is super-essential, to be more incomprehensible than every mystery—having become comprehensible through it to the very extent that through it he was known to be more incomprehensible. “For he is hidden even after the manifestation,” says the teacher, “or, to speak more divinely, even in the manifestation. For this too is hidden in Jesus, and by no word nor by any mind has the mystery concerning him been brought forth, but even when spoken it remains unutterable, and when understood, unknown.” What could be more demonstrative than this for proving the divine super-essentiality, since by manifestation it makes clear the hidden, by word the speechlessness, and by mind the unknowability according to pre-eminence, and—to say the greater thing—by essentialization the super-essential? “Indeed, by the abundance of this, having truly come into being, he was essentialized beyond essence”—that is, having innovated the laws of natural generation, and having truly become man without seed from a man, in the form of sowing. And the Virgin shows this, conceiving him supernaturally—the super-essential Word—without a man, from her own virginal bloods, in a human manner, formed by a strange ordinance beyond nature.

And he acted beyond man in the things of man,” having in an impassible manner innovated the nature of the elements by his steps. And he clearly shows that unstable water bore the weight of material and earthy feet and did not yield, but by a supernatural power stood firm against dissolution; since truly with dry feet, having bodily bulk and the weight of matter, he traversed in a passing manner the wet and unstable substance, walking upon the sea as upon dry ground, and by the power of his own divinity, inseparably through the passage, he manifested together with it the natural activity of his own flesh; since by nature the passing motion belongs to it, but not to the divinity united to it in hypostasis, which is beyond infinity and beyond essence. For once the supersubstantial Word was made subsistent in a human way, along with the human essence he possessed, as his own, also the motion of the essence that generally characterizes him as man, undiminished, being naturally specified in all the things he did as a man; since he truly became man, breathing, speaking, walking, moving his hands, using his senses in a fitting way for the apprehension of sensible things, hungering, thirsting, eating, sleeping, laboring, weeping, being in agony, although he was a self-subsistent power, and all the other things by which, as a soul moving its connatural body naturally and by its own agency, he moved the nature he had assumed as his own and which had truly become and was called his, or

To speak strictly, he himself, having become in reality that very thing which nature is, without change and without illusion, fulfilled the dispensation on our behalf. He did not, then, abolish the constitutive activity of the substance he assumed, just as the Teacher did not abolish the substance itself when he said, "He was made substance beyond substance, and he acted beyond man in the things of man"; rather, he showed in both cases the newness of the modes preserved in the stability of the natural principles, without which nothing that exists is what it is. But if we say that the positing belongs to the assumed substance and the removal to its constitutive activity—which is a negation by way of transcendence—by what reasoning shall we show that the same term, applied equally to both, signifies in the one case existence and in the other certainly annihilation? Or again, since the assumed nature is not self-moved but is moved by the divinity truly united to it in hypostasis, and we remove its constitutive motion, shall we not also refuse to acknowledge the substance itself, since it did not appear as self-subsistent, that is, as existing in itself, but received its being in the very God the Word who in truth gave it substance? For we would have an equal reason for rejecting both—or else we shall also acknowledge motion to belong to the nature, without which it is not even a nature, knowing that one thing is the principle of being and another the mode of how it is, the one attesting the nature and the other the dispensation.

The union of these things, having accomplished the great mystery of the transcendent natural theology of Jesus, showed at once both the distinction of the activities preserved and their union—the distinction being contemplated indivisibly in the natural principle of the united things, and the union being known without confusion in the singular mode of the things that come to be.

For what and which nature will there be, where and how, that has come to be bereft of constitutive power? For that which in general has not even one power neither is, nor is anything, nor is there any positing of it at all, says this great teacher. But if there is no account of these things, it must be piously confessed that the natures of Christ, of which he himself was the hypostasis, and his natural activities, of which he himself was the true union, are according to both natures—since he acts in a manner proper to himself, singularly, that is, in a unified way, and through all things inseparably, together with divine power, he manifests the activity of his own flesh. For how will the same one be God by nature and again man by nature, not having without deficiency what is by nature in both respects? And what and who will he be known to be, if he is not believed by the things he naturally worked to be that which he is, not changing? And how will he be believed in each one of the things from which, in which, and which he is, remaining unmoved and without activity?

He was therefore made substance beyond substance, creating a beginning of generation and another of begetting for nature, conceived by the sowing of his own flesh, and born, becoming a seal of virginity to her who gave birth, and showing upon her the contradiction of things unmixed to be true together. For the same woman is both virgin and mother, innovating nature by the conjunction of opposites, if indeed virginity and begetting are opposites, whose coming-together no one would conceive of by nature. Therefore the Virgin is truly God-bearer, having conceived and given birth beyond nature, in the manner of sowing, to the supersubstantial Word; since the mother who gives birth is properly the mother of him who was sown and conceived. And beyond man she performed the things of man, showing the human activity united to the divine power by the utmost union without change; since nature also, united to nature without confusion, has interpenetrated through the whole, having nothing entirely absolute, nor separated from the divinity united to it by hypostasis. For truly beyond us the supersubstantial Word, being made substance of our substance, joined to the affirmation of nature also the negation of its natural properties by way of transcendence, and became man, having the manner of being beyond nature joined to that of

to be by the principle of nature, so that he might also give assurance to nature by the newness of his modes of life, since it does not admit alteration according to the principle, and might show the super-transcendent power likewise being made known even in the generation of opposites. Indeed, by the authority of his will he made the passions of nature his own works, but not as we do, as the results of natural necessity—the reverse of how it is with us—he passed through what is by nature passible in our case, being movable by the authority of his will, showing in himself what is naturally in our case movable by the will.

Explaining this in what follows, the Teacher says: "Why should one go through the many other things that there are? Through which the one who sees divinely will know beyond understanding even the things affirmed in the philanthropy of Jesus, having the power of a transcendent negation." For the super-essential Word, having taken up all the things of nature together with nature in an ineffable conception, had nothing human affirmed by a natural principle which was not also divine, denied in a manner beyond nature. Of these things the knowledge was beyond understanding as being indemonstrable, having as its only apprehension the faith of those who reverently worship the mystery of Christ in a knowing way. Giving, as it were, a summary account of this, he says: "For, to speak concisely, neither was he a man," because by nature he was free from the necessity according to nature, not being subject to the law of generation that is in our case. "Not as though he were not a man," because in his whole essence he was truly a man, by nature enduring the natural things that are in our case, "but as being from men"; since he was consubstantial with us, being by nature what we are, a man, "beyond men," by the newness of his modes of life, which we are not, circumscribing nature.

And having become truly a human being beyond what is human, he held the modes beyond nature and the principles according to nature joined to one another without corruption, whose conjunction was impossible; he himself, to whom nothing is impossible, having become a true union, energizing as neither of the two of which he was a hypostasis in separation from the other, but rather being assured through each of the other—since he truly was both, as God he was the mover of his own humanity, and as man he was the revealer of his own divinity. Having the capacity to suffer in a divine manner, so to speak (for it was voluntary, since he was not a mere man), and to work wonders in a human manner (for it was through flesh, since he was not God naked). So that the sufferings were wonderful, being renewed by the divine power according to nature of the one who suffers, and the wonders were passible, being completed by the passible power according to nature of the flesh of the one who works them. Knowing this, the teacher says: "And henceforth he did not do the divine things as God," because not only in a divine manner separated from the flesh—for he is not only super-essential—nor the human things as man, because not only fleshly separated from the divinity—for he is not only man—"but God having become man, he lived out for us a certain new 'theandric' activity.

For having truly become a human being by the assumption of a rational soul-endowed flesh, he who is pre-eminently a lover of humanity, having possessed the divine activity ineffably united through the coalescence of the flesh made man, fulfilled the economy on our behalf in a theandric manner, that is, doing both divine and human things divinely at once and humanly, or to speak more clearly, having lived as citizen with a divine and at the same time human activity.

Therefore, the wise man, having made the affirmation of the union by the negation of the division of divine and human things from one another, did not ignore the natural difference of the united things; for the union, having thrust away the division, did not damage the difference. But if the mode of the union has the principle of the difference preserved, then the voice of the saint is a periphrasis, by a fitting appellation of the twofold declaring the twofold activity of the nature of Christ; since by nature and quality in no way has the essential principle of the united things been diminished by the union. But

not as if someone, by the negation of the extremes, were making an affirmation of some middle. For there is no middle in Christ, affirmed by the negation of the extremes. "A new one," as being characteristic of a common mystery, whose principle is the ineffable mode of the coalescence. For who has known how God is made flesh, and remains God? How, remaining true God, he is true man? Showing himself truly to be both by natural existence, and through each the other, and being turned aside by neither. These things faith alone contains, honoring the Word in silence, whose nature no principle of beings has been implanted.

Theandric” [I call it], not as simple, nor as some composite thing, whether belonging to bare deity alone according to nature, or to mere humanity alone, or as pertaining to a composite nature formed from certain extremes as a middle term, but as most properly belonging to God made man, that is, to him who became perfectly human. Nor again [do I call it] one, as if “of the new [creation]” could not be understood otherwise, as some have supposed, or “of the one [energy] that is capable”; for “newness” is a matter of quality, not of quantity—since in that case it would necessarily introduce into itself a nature of such a kind; if indeed the definition of every nature is the principle of its essential activity, which one would never call double, vaunting himself with the fables of goat-stags. And how, this being granted, will he who is by nature such as to have one activity, and that natural, accomplish by the same [activity] both the wonders and the sufferings, which differ from one another by the principle of nature, without a privation of the habit supervening upon the cessation? For none of existing things is by nature capable of doing opposites by one and the same activity, being held together by the definition and principle of nature. Therefore it is not lawful to speak simply of one natural activity of the divinity and the flesh in Christ, if indeed divinity and flesh are not the same in natural quality—and [then] also in nature—and the Trinity will become a quaternity. For neither according to nature, nor according to power, nor according to activity, has he become the same, he says, as the flesh. For in none of the respects in which the Son is the same as the Father and the Spirit by reason of the one essence has he become the same as the flesh by reason of the union, even though he has made it life-giving by the union with himself, [the flesh] having that which is by nature mortal.

Since it will be shown to be of a changeable nature, and having altered the substance of the flesh into what it was not, and having made the union the same as the nature.

For let us understand the theandric energy as it was given; which, having lived it out for us, not for himself, he renewed nature by things beyond nature. For conduct is a life carried out according to the law of nature. But the Lord, being double in nature, reasonably appeared to have a life corresponding, according to both divine and human law, compacted together without confusion in the same respect; and this itself new, not only as strange and paradoxical to those on earth, and thus recognized by the nature of beings, but also as a mark of the new energy of the one who lived in a new way. Which perhaps the one who devised the fitting name for this mystery called "theandric," in order to show the mode of the exchange according to the ineffable union, by which the things naturally belonging to each part of Christ have been made to belong to the other by interchange, without change or confusion of either part in relation to the other according to the principle of nature. For just as the cutting property of the red-hot sword has become burning, and the burning property cutting (for the fire was united as it were to the iron), so also the burning property of the fire to the cutting property of the iron, and the iron has become burning by its union with the fire, and the fire cutting by its union with the iron; yet neither has suffered change toward the other by the exchange according to the union, but each has remained, even in the property of the composite according to the union, unfallen from its own proper nature.

Thus also in the mystery of the divine incarnation, divinity and humanity were united in hypostasis, neither nature's natural energy departing because of the union, nor yet possessing it without relation after the union, and the composite and co-hypostatic [energy] being distinguished. For with the whole active power of his own divinity

the incarnated Word, having the whole passive power of his own humanity conjoined by union (indissolubly, being God, he worked the miracles humanly, accomplished through flesh naturally passible, and being man, he went through the passions of nature divinely, performed by divine authority; but rather both theandrically, as being God and man together, by the one restoring us to ourselves, having appeared as what we have become, and by the other giving us to himself, having become what he fore-showed, and through both confirming the truth of those from which, in which, and what he was, as the only true and faithful one, and wishing to be confessed by us as what he is. Having him, sanctified in word and life, imitate his formed long-suffering, and receiving the present writing, show yourselves to me humane judges of what is contained in it, conquering by compassion the slips of your child, who awaits this alone as the recompense of obedience, and become for me mediators of reconciliation with him, making the peace that surpasses all understanding, of which he himself is the prince, the Savior, by practical habit freeing from the disturbance of the passions those who fear him, and Father of the age to come, begetting by the Spirit through love and knowledge those who have filled the world above.

To him be glory, majesty, and power, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, unto the ages. Amen.

To John, Archbishop of Cyzicus, Maximus, greeting in the Lord.

PREFACE

Those who are more eager lovers of the good and more diligent students of the knowledge concerning them are praised, and perhaps rightly, by all for their love of learning, because by approaching the better things and the teachers of better things, and by receiving without shame through questioning the knowledge of things unknown and understanding, they free themselves from ignorance and inexperience and the reproach that comes from them. But what discourse could praise you worthily? Or what man will be found capable of grasping the greatness of your virtue even in thought? For you are approved shepherds of rational sheep, and knowing how to lead them up and down to the fold above by the voices of the spiritual pipe, as men who have already obtained the possession of the mystical knowledge of divine things that is unattainable by others; by which, having been entrusted worthily with the helm of the Church of Christ, you steer it skillfully like a ship, together with the cargo of faith and the comeliness of the life according to God, toward the harbor of the divine will, with nothing harmed by the temptations of the sea of life. Concerning the things known to you, of which God has appointed you also as interpreters, you do not consider it unworthy to question not only the wiser—if indeed any among you is altogether superior in knowledge—but also those who are worth nothing and utterly inexperienced in every discipline, in the faith of finding something, as you are accustomed, even among the obscure, notable.

Therefore I too, having received your honored letter commanding me to send you in written form the account, concerning each of the questions you raised in the discourses of Saint Gregory the Theologian—questions about which we labored when we were together—which was delivered at that time to the one who committed it to writing, I rightly marveled at your virtue and extolled the all-radiant and lofty character of your Christ-befitting poverty in accordance with it—or rather, I extolled the Lord who is glorified in every way both through you and in you, who both made you and clearly reveals the power granted to you to become worthy of him, adorned with his own attributes through the works themselves and the truth—[reaching] even to me, the small and worthless one, unlearned and utterly stripped of all virtue and knowledge. Seeing myself humbled concerning this, I forced myself to accept your command according to my ability, making no account of being thought rash by the many for your sake. But do you also, as is your custom, grant your earnest prayers to me who await the beloved and desirable reward of obedience, so that Christ God, the ready help of those who fear him, may come to me as an ally for the word—or rather, as the Word, may he supply the whole word of speech in a pious manner. I ask you, when you read, not to seek from me an ornate style, since I do not have words that round off the hearing, nor do I know how to make things resounding with elaborate cuts.

For being unversed in such studies and inexperienced in the practice of them, I consider it a welcome and desirable thing if I should succeed in hitting upon the thought of this holy and great teacher, even in common phrasing and only to some extent—let alone to lay claim to a many-lined exposition. For this man, the Theologian, as you know, being brief in speech and rich in thought, compels anyone who wishes to unfold his meaning—even if he be the most rhetorical and most philosophical—to go through many words, and especially me, an unlettered man. But if your God-loving zeal, as is its custom, should stir you to convey what is written with conciseness and at the same time with fluency, or even to correct the whole sense toward what is higher, you will receive a complete reward: the prayers of the God-bearing man to the Master of all things, inasmuch as you did not allow his divine and transcendent thoughts to be dragged along by unattainable and earth-bound assaults. And in accordance with your letter, having made the inquiry concerning each chapter, I have set it down in writing, entreating you to be kind and humane judges of what is said.

A (1). "...BY THOSE DRAGGING DOWN OR HOLDING FAST..."

From the discourse On the Love of the Poor, on the passage, "I spare him as a fellow-worker, and I have no way to escape the uprising, or how I may not fall away from God, weighed down by the fetters that drag down or hold fast to the ground."

That "being held fast" is not the same as "being dragged down" was understood by this blessed man—do not suppose otherwise, most approved sir, if indeed you have earnestly desired to grasp anything worthy of his greatness of mind; since otherwise he will appear superfluous in his words and as having a mind that does not attend to the word, if he is not supposed to have set the fitting meaning upon nearly every syllable and to have determined in every way to guide his followers toward what is noblest and most useful. But this is not so—how could it be? Rather, he joins word to wise mind, and sets a loftier mind upon a lofty word, so that the lofty may be proclaimed to the lofty, and the magnitude of the truth, hitherto inaccessible to the many or even to all, may be shown forth to some extent through both. But so that the riddle of what is said may become clear to us all, let us examine the blessed man's very words as they stand. "I spare him," he says, "as a fellow-worker, and I have no way to escape the uprising, or how I may not fall away from God, weighed down by the fetters that drag down or hold fast to the ground." In saying this he is not speaking to himself entirely, but through himself to the common nature of humanity, knowing that everyone who longs for salvation devotes himself entirely either to action or to contemplation. For without virtue and knowledge no one has ever been able to attain salvation. If, then, he says, of those who through contemplation sit at God's side and of the...

I have come to be one of those who delight in the beauty of blessedness, having peace and sanctification altogether, inasmuch as I have stretched myself out to God in an undivided identity of purpose, by reckoning aright the irrational powers of the soul and leading them by reason to the mind and making them its own—I mean anger and desire—transforming the one into love and the other into joy, since it is proper to joy to leap in a God-befitting way and to exult, after the manner of John who leaped in the womb, the great forerunner and herald of the truth, or of David the king at the resting of the ark of Israel.

For in a womb (even if the word is harsh as being untrodden by the many, yet it is true) both we and God the Word, the Maker and Lord of all, are—in the present state of life: he dimly, as in a womb, and scarcely shining through this sensible world, and that to those who are according to John in the Spirit; and we men, as from the womb of material circumstance, though in some measure discerning the reason hidden in created things. And this is so if we are those who boast in the graces of John. For compared with the ineffable glory and brightness of the age to come and the peculiarity of the life according to him, the present life differs nothing from a womb shrouded in darkness, in which, for our sake who have become infants in mind, God the Word, being perfect and beyond perfect, became an infant, as is his love for mankind.

If, then, as has been said, I am such a one, and have reached the divine summit attainable by humans in this present life, but then neglect the God-like state, voluntarily inclining myself to the affection of the body, I am dragged down, weighed down by fetters—that is, by cares—and I fall away from God, in that I have assigned the care and pursuit of the kingdom of heaven alone to what it was not lawful to assign it to—I mean the earthly life—and have endured rather to be carried along with the senses than to carry my mind toward God. And if I am still one of those armed in the practical life to wage war against the passions, not yet having cleanly escaped the snares of the enemies who wish to capture me through them, and I cling to the body without discernment, I have plainly been held fast by it, in that I have preferred attachment to it over separation from it through virtue. So then, the contemplative man, now becoming free of attachment in his state, is dragged down by the body, neglecting the divine visions. And the practical man, who fights against the body, is held fast, yielding in the struggle against it, and choosing, instead of laboring for virtue—which is the freedom of the soul—to be a slave of the passions.

B (2). "...that we are a portion of God, and have flowed down from above..." From the same discourse, on the passage, "What is this wisdom concerning me, and what is this great mystery? Or does he wish that we, being a portion of God and having flowed down from above, so that we might not, being exalted and lifted up on account of our worth, despise the Creator, should always look to him in the struggle and battle against the body, and that the weakness joined to us should be a discipline of our worth?" Some, encountering these words, since they expect, as it seems, no reward for their labor on account of the inquiry after the truth, flee to what is easy and already has many starting points from the Greek doctrines, asserting that both the unity of rational beings that once existed according to their opinion, in which, being connatural with God, we have our only dwelling in him, and further the motion that came to be, from which the rational beings, scattered in various ways, prepared God to see the genesis of this bodily world, in order to bind them to bodies as a punishment for their prior sins—they think the teacher hints at these things through these words. But they have failed to understand that they are supposing impossible things and

They conjecture at things impossible to resolve, as the true account will demonstrate in due course with probability.

For if the divine is immovable, as being the fulfillment of all things, and everything that has received being from non-being is also movable, as being carried in every case toward some cause, and nothing that is moved has yet come to rest, since the power of motion according to desire has not yet come to rest in the final object of longing (for nothing else is naturally able to bring to rest what is carried along by nature, except that object when it is shown), then nothing that is moved has come to rest, since it has not yet attained the final object of longing; for neither has that object yet appeared to stop the motion of those carried around it. But if they claim that this once came to be by command, and that rational beings, shaken from their establishment and rest in the final and only object of longing, received dispersion, then—so as not to seem to be quibbling—what is the proof? They will reasonably suppose that rational beings will necessarily have the same transitions upon the same things to infinity. For there is no account that will prevent them from always being able to despise, through experience, that which they have once been able to despise. But what could be more pitiable than that rational beings are carried along in this way and have not, nor hope for, any unchangeable foundation of stability in the good? But if they say that they are able but do not wish, because of the experience of the opposite that has occurred, then in this way too the good will necessarily be cherished by them not for its own sake, as good, but because of its opposite, as not being desirable by nature or in its own right. For everything that is good and desirable not for its own sake and is attractive of all motion is not properly good.

And for this reason it is not reasonably retentive of the impulse of those who take pleasure in it, but those who cherish this mindset would henceforth even acknowledge gratitude to evil, as having been taught what is fitting through it and having learned anew how fixedness in the good is to be maintained, and they would necessarily call it a genesis, if indeed they have decided to be consistent with themselves, and more useful than nature itself, as being in their view instructive of what is advantageous, and generative of the possession more precious than all things—I mean love—according to which all things that come to be from God are by nature gathered to God stably and without deviation. And again, the genesis of things that have come to be from God, both intelligible and sensible, is conceived beforehand of movement. For it is not possible for movement to exist before genesis. For movement belongs to things that have come to be—that of intelligibles being intelligible, and that of sensibles being sensible. For nothing whatsoever of things that have come to be is in its own principle wholly immovable, not even of the inanimate and sensible things, as seemed good to the more careful observers of beings. For they said that all things are moved, either in a straight line, or in a circle, or in a spiral. For all movement is encompassed by the simple and the composite mode. If, then, genesis is conceived beforehand of the things whose movement it is, movement is evidently contemplated of the things whose genesis it is, as being after it in the order of conception. And this movement they call natural power, hastening toward the end proper to it, or passion—that is, movement arising from one thing toward another, having as its end impassibility—or active energy, having as its end self-completion.

None of created things is its own end, since it is not self-caused; for that would be ungenerated and without beginning and unmoved, as having no relation to anything by which it might somehow be moved. For it falls outside the nature of beings, as existing for the sake of nothing, if indeed the definition concerning it is true, even if the one stating it is a stranger. An end is that for the sake of which all things exist, but itself for the sake of nothing. Nor is it self-perfect, since it is also without activity, as being full, and likewise having its being from nowhere. For the self-perfect is in some way also uncaused. Nor is it impassible, since it is also alone and infinite and uncircumscribed. For the impassible is not naturally disposed to suffer at all, by the fact that it neither desires another nor is moved toward anything else by appetite. Therefore none of created things, being moved, has stood, as not yet having attained the first and only cause, from which the being of existing things is derived, or having come within the final object of desire, so that the dispersion of rational beings, having in consequence brought in for itself the generation of bodies from a previously existing unity, might be thought so. And Moses and David and Paul the saints bear witness, and the Lord of these, Christ: the one, recording that the forefather did not taste of the tree of life, and saying elsewhere, For you have not yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord our God gives you. And another, crying out, I shall be filled when your glory appears to me; and, My soul thirsted for the strong living God, when shall I come and appear before the face of God. And another, writing to the Philippians, If somehow I may attain to the resurrection of the dead, not that I have already obtained it or have been made perfect, but I press on, if perhaps I may lay hold, for which I was also laid hold of by Jesus Christ.

To the Hebrews: “For the one who entered into his rest, he himself also rested from his works, as from his own,” God. And again in the same Epistle, affirming that no one has received the promises. And: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” Therefore, nothing of created things has ever in any way established its natural power when moved toward the end that corresponds to it, nor has it ceased from activity by resting in the end that corresponds to it, nor has it reaped the fruit of the experience that comes through motion—I mean impassibility and immobility. For it belongs to God alone to be the end, and the perfect, and the impassible, as being unmoved and full and impassible; but it belongs to created things to be moved toward the end without beginning, and to cease activity at an end that is without limit, and to undergo experience, but not to be or to become in essence the unqualified; for everything created and made is clearly not without relation. But the word “experience” must be heard in a well-disposed sense; for what is meant here is not the experience of power in the sense of change or corruption, but that which naturally coexists with beings. For all things that have come to be undergo some motion, since they are not self-moved or self-powered. If, then, rational beings are created and are certainly moved, since from the beginning they are moved naturally because they exist toward an end, and by choice because they exist well. For the end of the motion of things that are moved is the very being well in the eternal, just as the beginning is the very being which God is, who is both the giver of being and the bestower of being well, as beginning and end; for from him comes both our being moved simply, as from a beginning, and our being moved in what way toward him as an end.

If the intellectual [part] is moved intellectually in a manner analogous to itself, it also certainly thinks; and if it thinks, it certainly also loves what has been thought; and if it loves, it certainly also undergoes ecstasy toward it as toward a beloved; and if it undergoes this, it is clearly also pressed onward; and if it is pressed onward, it certainly also intensifies the vehemence of its movement; and if it intensifies the movement vehemently, it does not stand still until it becomes whole in the whole beloved and is encompassed by the whole, willingly receiving, whole according to its saving choice, the limitation, so that it may be wholly qualified by the whole one who limits it, so that the limited one no longer wishes at all to be able to know that very whole of itself, but [only] from the one who limits it—as air wholly illumined by light, and iron by fire, wholly made fiery through and through by the whole, or whatever else of this sort there is. From these things we grasp by conjecture, by likeness only, the future participation in goodness for those worthy of it—not the one that has come to be and been corrupted—since it is beyond all these things that are hoped for, being, as it is written, beyond sight and hearing and thought. And this is perhaps the subjection which the divine Apostle says the Son subjects to the Father—those who willingly accept being subjected; after which the last enemy, death, is abolished, since what is in our power, that is, the self-determining faculty, through which, making its entrance against us, it confirmed the power of corruption over us, has willingly yielded wholly to God and, [God] reigning well, [has accepted] to be reigned over, by the inactivity of willing anything contrary to what God wills—as the Savior says, forming our [words] in himself to the Father:

Except not as I will, but as you will. And after him, the inspired Paul, as if having denied himself and no longer knowing how to have a life of his own—for I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

And let not what is said trouble you. For I do not say that an abolition of free will has occurred, but rather a firmly established and unchangeable position according to nature, that is, a disposition of choice, so that we may desire to receive from that source our being and our being moved, as the image having come to the archetype, and like a seal well fitted in its impression to the archetype, and no longer having or being able to be borne elsewhere, or to speak more clearly and truly, not even being able to will it, since the divine energy has taken hold, or rather it has become God by deification, and rejoices more in the ecstasy beyond the things that naturally belong to it and are understood of it, because of the grace of the Spirit that has prevailed over it, and has shown it to have God alone as the one acting, so that there is one and only one energy through all things, of God and of those worthy of God, or rather of God alone, as he has wholly, in a manner befitting goodness, pervaded those who are worthy. For it is entirely necessary that the authoritative movement of desire toward anything else cease, when the final object of desire and participation has appeared, and is contained in a manner beyond containment, proportionally to the power of the participants, so to speak; toward which every pursuit and thought of the exalted hastens, "and at which every desire stands still, and beyond which it is in no way carried; for it neither has [anything beyond], and toward which every motion of the earnest tends, and having come to which there is rest from all contemplation," says this blessed teacher.

For neither is anything shown to exist outside of God, nor does anything appear to be set in opposition to God, so that the desire for something might incline toward it and be enticed, since all things, both intelligible and sensible, have been encompassed by him in his ineffable manifestation and presence, just as even in the day the lights of the stars are themselves covered over, and it is not even known that they exist, insofar as they are known by sense perception.

But in the case of God, this is so much more, inasmuch as the interval and difference between the uncreated and created things is infinite. For then, as I think, even when we have learned the substantial existence of beings—both what and how and in what they are—we shall not be moved by knowledge toward any object of desire, since the knowledge of each thing and of each of the things after God has been brought to an end for us, and only the infinite and divine and incomprehensible reality is present to us, enjoyed in proportion to our capacity, and partaken of. And this is what is so greatly philosophized by this God-bearing teacher: that we shall one day know as much as we have been known, when, as he says, we join this Godlike and divine mind and reason of ours to its own proper object, and the image ascends to the archetype, of which it now has the desire. Concerning, then, the fact that the much-talked-of unity does not exist, and how, by way of indication from the scriptural thoughts and reasonings now attainable by us, the state of things to come will be—let these things be said. But concerning how we, being a portion of God, have flowed away from God while God leads the way, I shall make the account from this point.

For who, knowing by reason and wisdom that the things that are were brought by God from non-being into being, would intelligently bring the contemplative faculty of the soul to the infinite diversity and variety of the natures of existing things, and with the examining reason would distinguish in conception the principle according to which they were created, being distinguished together with the indivisible difference of created things, because of their unconfused distinctness both toward one another and toward themselves? And again, would unite the many into one—the God and Word of God and Father, consubstantial and enhypostatic, who through himself unconfusedly exists as the reference of all things to himself, as the beginning and cause of all things, in whom all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers—all things have been created from him and through him and unto him.

For having the principles of created things before the ages (subsisting by good will), he established according to them both the visible and the invisible creation from non-being, making and continuing to make all things by reason and wisdom at the proper time, both the universal and the particular.

For we believe that a principle (logos) of the creation of angels presides, a principle of each of the essences and powers that fill the upper world, a principle of human beings, a principle of all things that have received being from God—not to speak of each individual thing—that this same principle is ineffable and incomprehensible by reason of its own infinite transcendence, and beyond all creation and beyond the difference and distinction that exists and is conceived in relation to it; and that this same principle is shown forth and multiplied in all things that come from it, in a manner befitting goodness, according to the proportion of each, and that all things are summed up in it, according to which they have both being and permanence, and from which things that have come to be, as they have come to be, and for which they have come to be, both remaining and moving, partake of God. For all things partake of God, in proportion to God, because they have come to be from God—whether according to intellect, or reason, or sense, or living motion, or substantial and habitual aptitude—as seems right to the great and divinely inspired Dionysius the Areopagite. Each, then, of the intellectual and rational beings, both angels and human beings, by that very principle according to which it was created—the principle that exists in God and is directed toward God—is both called and is a portion of God, because of its principle that pre-exists in God, as has been said.

Indeed, if it is moved according to it, it will be in God, in whom the principle of its being pre-exists as beginning and cause; and even if it should wish to grasp nothing else before its own beginning through longing, it does not flow away from God, but rather by its ascent toward him it becomes God and is called a portion of God by partaking fittingly of God, since it has wisely and rationally, according to nature, through fitting motion grasped its own beginning and cause, having no other place anywhere thereafter to be moved after its own beginning and its ascent and restoration to the principle according to which it was created, nor any other way to be moved, since the motion toward the divine goal has as its end, clearly, the divine goal itself. As the holy Basil also shows, in his interpretation of the holy prophet Isaiah, saying thus: "True sabbaths are the rest laid up for the people of God, which, because they are true, God endures and reaches even to those sabbaths of rest, at which the world has been crucified, having clearly departed from worldly things and arrived at its own place of spiritual rest, in which what has come to be will no longer be moved from its own place, since quietness and tranquility exist concerning that state. Therefore the place of all who are deemed worthy of such blessedness is God, according to what is written: 'Be to me a God for protection and a strong place to save me.'" In him certainly the principles of all things have been fixed, according to which he is said to know all things before their generation, as though they were in him and with him, in very truth, all things.

And even if all things, both those that are and those that will be, were not brought into being at the same time with their own principles, nor by being known by God, but each is created at the fitting time according to the wisdom of the Creator, in a manner befitting their own principles, and receives its existence in actuality. Since he is always Creator in actuality, while they are in potentiality but not yet in actuality; for neither is it possible for the infinite and the finite to be at the same time, nor will any account appear that can show the essence and the super-essential to be able to be at the same time, and to bring the measureless to the same as the measured, and the unrelated to the related, and that which has no form of predication upon it to that which is constituted through all these things. For all created things, both in essence and in generation, are wholly affirmed by their own principles and those things that are around them, being encompassed by the external principles. Therefore, the supreme and apophatic theology of the Word being excluded—according to which neither is it spoken, nor conceived, nor is there any whole of things known together with another, as being super-essential, nor is it in any way participated in by anything in any respect—the one Word is many principles, and the many are one: on the one hand, according to the good-fitting, creative and sustaining procession of the One into beings, the one is many; on the other hand, according to the turning and guiding return and providence of the many to the One, as having pre-embraced the principles as an all-ruling beginning or center of the straight lines from it, and as gathering all things together, the many are one. We are therefore a portion of God and are called so, because the principles of our being pre-exist in God.

We are said to have flowed down from above again because we have not moved according to the principle by which we came to be, the principle that pre-existed in God. And in another way it is easy for one who has been taught to apply himself piously to the principles of beings to set out the account concerning this.

For if the one Word of God is not disputed to be the substance of the virtue in each person—for the substance of all the virtues is our Lord Jesus Christ himself, as it is written: "Who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption," having these things said of him absolutely, that is, as being wisdom itself and righteousness and holiness, and not as in our case with further qualification, such as a wise man or a righteous man—then clearly every man who partakes of virtue in a fixed habit unquestionably partakes of God, the substance of the virtues, inasmuch as he has genuinely cultivated by choice the natural seed of the good and shown the end to be the same as the beginning, and the beginning as the end—or rather, the same thing being both beginning and end—as one who proves to be an unadulterated advocate of God, since it is believed that the aim in every matter is its beginning and end: the one he has received from there, along with existence, as the good by nature that is participated in, and the other he has accomplished with zeal through his own judgment and choice, the praiseworthy course that leads unerringly to it, according to which he becomes God, receiving from God the very being of God, having added to the good that is by nature according to the image the likeness through the virtues by choice, through the innate ascent and kinship toward his own beginning. And so the apostolic saying is fulfilled also in him, which says:

For in him we live and move and are. For one comes to be in God through attentiveness, not corrupting the principle of being that pre-existed in God, and one is moved in God according to the principle of well-being that pre-existed in God, being energized through the virtues, and one lives in God according to the principle of eternal being that pre-existed in God. Henceforth, already in the most passionless state, being the same as himself and unmoved, and in the age to come, according to the deification that will be given, lovingly cherishing and embracing the said principles that pre-existed in God—or rather God himself, in whom the principles of good things are fixed—he is a portion of God: as existing, through the principle of his being that is in God; as good, through the principle of his eternal being that is in God; and as God, through the principle of his eternal being that is in God, since he has honored these principles and acted according to them, and through them has wholly placed himself in God alone, and has wholly impressed and formed God in himself alone, so that he himself is and is called God by grace, and God is and is called man on his account by condescension, and the power of the disposition given in return for this is shown—the disposition that deifies man to God because of his love for God, and humanizes God to man because of his love for humanity, and makes, in the beautiful exchange, God a man through the deification of man, and man a God through the humanization of God. For the Word of God and God always wills, and in all things, that the mystery of his embodiment be enacted.

But whoever, having abandoned his own principle, being a portion of God, is carried irrationally toward non-being because of the principle of virtue that is in him, according to the cause that has been assigned—such a one is reasonably said to have flowed down from above, not having been moved toward his own principle and cause, according to which and for which and through which he came to be; and he is in unstable revolution and terrible disorder of soul and body, having brought about his own failure of the unerring and unchanging cause by his voluntary inclination toward the worse. In his case, "flowed down" would be said in the proper sense, because, since the power to make the foundations of the soul unwaveringly toward God lay with him, he voluntarily exchanged the worse for the better and for what is.

These principles, which I have mentioned, the holy Dionysius the Areopagite teaches us are called by Scripture "predestinations" and "divine wills." Likewise, those around Pantaenus, who became the teacher of the great Clement of the Stromateis, say that "divine wills" is a name dear to Scripture. Hence, when they were asked by some of those who pride themselves on secular education how Christians believe God knows beings—those questioners having supposed that he knows intelligible things intelligibly and sensible things sensibly—they answered that he knows beings neither sensibly sensible things nor intelligibly intelligible things. For it is not possible for him who is above beings to apprehend beings according to beings; but, they say, he knows beings as his own wills, adding also the reasonableness of the statement.

For if he made all things by will, and no account will contradict this, and it is always both pious and just to say that God knows his own will, and he made each of the things that have come to be by willing it, then God knows the things that exist as his own wills, since he also made the things that exist by willing them. Starting from this, I for my part think that these words were spoken in Scripture in accordance with these principles—the words "I have known you above all others," addressed to Moses, and concerning certain people, "The Lord knew those who are his," and again to certain people, "I do not know you"—since, evidently, the deliberate motion of each person, either in accordance with the will and principle of God or contrary to the will and principle of God, has prepared him to hear the divine voice.

These things and things like them, I think, this God-bearing man understood when he said, "when we join this God-like and divine thing, our mind and reason, to what is proper to it, and the image ascends to the archetype, for which it now has its desire"; and at the same time and equally through these brief words he teaches that what was once something among existing things has reached its measure, instructing in a didactic manner those who think so, and indicating the principle of how we are a portion of God, and hinting at the future particularity of the blessed portion, and urging toward its unshaken and immovable and nowhere shifting enjoyment those who are purified in this by hope and are hastening toward it.

For he knew—if, as it were, by a single, direct approach we should steer straight, in accordance with reason and nature, the impressions belonging to the essence and the principle we possess—then we too, without any inquiry whatsoever (inquiry being the one thing in which it is possible to trip and stumble), shall know all things in a Godlike manner, so far as attainable, no longer clinging to them through ignorance of the movement concerning them, having drawn near as a whole to the great Mind and Word and Spirit—our own mind and word and spirit—or rather, as whole beings to the whole God, as to the archetypal image. As he also sets it out in the discourse On Hail, speaking thus: "Natural contemplation. And the ineffable light shall succeed them, and the light of the holy and royal contemplation of the Trinity shining more clearly and more purely, and the whole mingling with the whole mind—which I for my part set down as the kingdom of heaven alone"—when it rejoices and exults in pleasure, so that, having dared to join my own things to his, all rational creation, of angels and of men, as many as have not, through inattention, received from the Creator any of the divine principles naturally fitted to them in their movement toward the end—

They corrupted themselves, but rather preserved themselves whole and unswerving in soundness of mind, as instruments of the divine nature, knowing both what they are and what they shall become—those whom God, wholly embracing them wholly, in the manner of a soul to a body, will make sound and useful members of the body for the Master, and He handles them according to what seems good to Him, and fills them with His own glory and blessedness, giving life and granting the eternal and ineffable life, utterly free from every mark of the constitutive property of the present life that is constituted through corruption—a life which neither the air we breathe nor the channels of blood flowing from the liver constitute, but God wholly partaken of by whole beings, becoming in the manner of a soul toward the body, and through the soul's mediation toward the body, as He Himself knows, so that the soul may receive immutability and the body immortality, and the whole man may be deified, being divinely wrought by the grace of the God who became man—remaining wholly man in soul and body by nature, and becoming wholly God in soul and body by grace and by the divine brightness of the blessed glory that wholly befits Him, beyond which nothing more bright or more exalted can be conceived.

For what is more lovely to those who are worthy than deification, through which God, united to those who have become gods, makes the whole his own through goodness? Therefore they rightly named such a state pleasure and passion and joy: pleasure, as being the end of natural activities (for thus they define pleasure); passion, as an ecstatic power, leading the one acted upon toward the one acting, according to the exemplary cause given of air toward light and of fire toward iron, and persuading naturally and truly that there is no other sum of beings besides this, to which impassibility rightly follows; and joy, as having nothing opposed, neither past nor future. For they say that joy knows no past grief, nor admits the satiety that comes from fear in what is expected, as pleasure does. Hence both the divinely inspired Scriptures and our Fathers, who from them were made wise in the divine mysteries, everywhere ratified joy as a designation indicative of the truth to come. If, then, as in a brief survey—to speak in my own small way—it has been shown naturally, Scripturally, and patristically that nothing of created things, once moved, has ever stood still, nor has attained its allotted end according to the divine purpose, and besides these, that it is impossible for the foundation of those deemed worthy of stability in God to be turned aside—

For how is it possible that, if we grant the aforementioned a little assistance from reasonings for confirmation, those who have once come to exist in God in a substantial way would admit the insolent satiety according to desire, since every satiety, according to its own principle and limit, is of a nature to extinguish desire, and is constituted in two ways? For either desire, circumscribing its subjects as small, is extinguished, or, deeming them worthless as shameful and ugly, it loathes them—from which things satiety naturally arises. But God, being by nature infinite and honorable, naturally intensifies rather than diminishes the desire of those who enjoy him through participation toward the boundless.

But if this is true, as indeed it is, then the so-called unity of rational beings was not such that, having received satiety, it was divided from its permanence in God, and by its own dispersion introduced the genesis of this world—lest we make the good circumscribed and dishonorable, as though bounded by some satiety and becoming a cause of faction for those whose desire it has not been able to keep motionless. And henceforth some vainly proclaim this, as it seems to me, fashioning things that are not, and—what is heavier than this—falsely accusing this blessed father of thinking such things, on whose account they claim that not only were their souls from a prior form of life into

to think that bodies come to punishment for previous evils, but also that others deceive in this way and reasonably attempt it through the trustworthiness of persons, acting neither well nor piously—but leaving those to be as they are, we who are pious will consider the mind of the teacher, in addition to what has been said, in another way as well.

I do not think that here he wishes to set forth the cause of human generation, but of the misery that came upon it. For having lamented the wretchedness of our body by saying, "O the union and the estrangement! What I fear, I embrace, and what I love, I dread," and what follows, and as if perplexed with himself about the cause of the evils in which we are entangled and of the most wise providence concerning it, by saying, "What is the wisdom concerning me, and what is this great mystery?" he adds the solution, making it clear as follows: "The will of the portion that we are of God and that flowed down from above, so that we, being exalted and lifted up because of our worth, might not despise the Creator, [is] that in the struggle and battle with the body we always look to him, and that the weakness yoked together with us be a discipline of our worth.

As if he were saying: since man came to be from soul and body by the goodness of God, for the sake of which the rational and intellectual soul given to him—existing, as it does, according to the image of the one who made it—was to be deified by grasping God cognitively through desire and whole-hearted love with all its strength, and by receiving the likeness; and through the scientific providence directed toward what is subordinate, and through the commandment that bids us love our neighbor as ourselves, it was to hold fast to the body with understanding, and to reckon it through virtues and make it akin to God as a fellow servant, itself mediating so that the Maker dwells in it, and making itself for the body an indissoluble bond of the immortality given to it—so that what God is to the soul, the soul might become to the body, and the one Creator of all things might be demonstrated, traversing all things by means of humanity in due proportion, and the many things that are separated from one another by nature might come into one, converging upon the one nature of man, and God himself might become all things in all things, taking up all things and giving them subsistence in himself, so that nothing of existing things any longer possesses motion, or is without a share in his presence—by which we are and are called gods and children and body and members and portion of God and the like, through the reference of the divine purpose to its end.

Since, then, this is so and man came to be for this purpose, but in our forefather, who was free with respect to authority, he used his power for the worse, transferring his desire from what was permitted to what was forbidden (for he was self-determining, and, deceived, he preferred both to cleave to the Lord and become one spirit and to cleave to the harlot and become one body, and willingly alienated himself from the divine and blessed goal of being God by grace, choosing by his own decision to become dust), God, who orders our salvation wisely and at the same time philanthropically and in a manner befitting his goodness, fittingly attached the punishment that follows upon the irrational motion of the intellectual power within us, chastising with death, according to the reasonable account, that very thing about which we broke the power of love owed to God alone in mind, so that, no longer loving nothing, and having learned through suffering, we might be taught to refer this power back again to what truly is. This he makes clearer as he proceeds, saying: But to me, even for this reason, it seems that none of the good things here is trustworthy for men, nor long-lasting, but, if anything else, this too has been well contrived by the craftsman Reason and by the Wisdom that surpasses all mind—that we are played with in things seen, which change now in one way and now in another

And they change and are borne up and down and are turned about, and before being grasped they depart and flee, so that, having observed the instability and irregularity in these things, we might shift our mooring toward what is to come. For what would we have done if our well-being had stood firm, when even though it does not remain we are so bound to it, and the pleasure and deceit concerning it has enslaved us, so that we are able to think nothing better or higher than the things present—and this, though we have been made in the image of God and hear and believe that there is a higher good that draws us to itself? And again, in his discourse to those who are citizens, saying, "So that we may know that we are nothing in relation to the true and first wisdom, but may always incline toward it alone, and seek to be illumined by the rays from there, whether through the irregularity of things seen and turned about, as it leads us on to the things that stand and remain." Therefore, as I think, the teacher does not here, as has been said, make a declaration of the cause of the generation of humanity, but of the misery that was introduced into our life at generation because of the transgression, as is clear to those who study his divine writings more earnestly and carefully. For the cause of this—whence, and through what, and upon what, and for the sake of what—he sets before us through these words, declaring through it the salvation that is wisely administered for us by God.

But he, hinting at the power of that mystery for the sake of which it came to be, employs another mode of words, making manifest his whole pious purpose concerning this, as is shown in the Oration on the Nativity, where he says:

"Mind, then, and sense, having thus been distinguished from one another, stood within their own bounds and bore within themselves the greatness of the Creator Word, silently praising and proclaiming aloud the mighty work; but there was not yet a blending of both, nor any mixture of opposites, the token of a greater wisdom and of the lavishness concerning natures, nor was the whole wealth of goodness yet known. This, then, the Artisan Word, wishing to display, and [to make] one living being from both—I mean from the invisible and the visible nature—creates man, taking the body from matter already pre-existing, and from himself implanting life (which the word knows to be the rational soul and the image of God), and sets him upon the earth as a kind of second world, great in small, another angel, a mixed worshipper," and so on. And in the Oration on the Lights: "Since these things are so, or this; but it was necessary that worship should not be confined to those above only, but that there should be some worshippers below also, that all things might be filled with the glory of God, since it is also God's; and for this reason man is created, honored by the hand of God and by His image." I think that these things suffice, even if they happen to be small, for one who is not altogether contentious in disposition, and who judges only the fighting to be reputable, to demonstrate the whole mind of the teacher concerning the things said.

But if he still disputes concerning how the teacher called us a portion of God, the account concerning this has already been given in many ways above.

But so that he may become more credible by relying on the words of the Spirit, the holy and blessed apostle Paul, who received the wisdom hidden in God before the ages, and who illuminated the whole lightless life of men, and drove away the darkness of ignorance from their souls, will suffice, discoursing on this to the Ephesians as follows: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what is the wealth of the glory of his inheritance among the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who

believe, according to the working of the might of his strength, which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead, and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come, and he put all things under his feet, and gave him as head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all things in all. And after other things again:

And he himself gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be infants, tossed about and carried around by every wind of teaching, by the trickery of men, by cunning, by scheming that leads to error, but speaking the truth in love, let us grow in all things into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, being joined together and held together through every joint of its supply, according to the working of each individual member, makes the growth of the body for its own building up in love.

I think that no one who has resolved to live piously needs any further testimony for the manifestation of the truth truly believed among Christians, since we have clearly learned through it that we are members and body and fullness of Christ God, who fills all things in all things, being gathered up into him according to the purpose hidden before the ages in God the Father, through his Son and Lord Jesus Christ our God. For the mystery that was hidden from the ages and from the generations, but now has been made manifest through the true and perfect incarnation of the Son and God, who united our nature to himself in hypostasis without division and without confusion, and through his holy flesh taken from us and ours, rationally and intelligently ensouled, joined us to himself as it were through a firstfruits, and deemed us to be one and the same with himself according to his humanity, just as we were predestined before the ages to be in him members of his body, fitting and joining us to himself in the Spirit as a soul is to a body, and leading us to the measure of the spiritual stature of his own fullness, he showed that we too have come to be in this, and that the all-good purpose of God concerning us before the ages, having in no way received innovation according to its own principle, has come to fulfillment through another, that is, a more novel manner introduced besides.

For it was necessary that, when God had made us like himself (by our having, through participation, accurate marks of his goodness, and when he had purposed that we exist in him before the ages, and had given us a way leading to this all-blessed end through the good use of our natural powers), but man had voluntarily thrust aside this way by the misuse of his natural powers—it was necessary, I say, that man not become estranged and far from God, and that another way be introduced in place of the first, more paradoxical and more befitting God, insofar as what is above nature is higher than what is according to nature. And this, as we all believe, is the mystery of God's most mystical visitation to men. For if, says the divine Apostle, the first covenant had remained blameless, a place would not have been sought for a second. For it is evident to all that the mystery that came to be in Christ at the end of the age is unquestionably the proof and fulfillment of the mystery that was set aside in the forefather at the beginning of the age.

Was the teacher's use of the word "portion" then said usefully, in the ways that have been set out, and would every person noble both in soul and in manner receive the word spoken in this way, generating in himself no cheating of reasonings, knowing that in such matters "portion" is the same as "member"? For if the member is a part of the body, and the member is the same as the portion, then the member will be the same as the portion. And if the portion is the same as the member, and the gathering and composition of members makes an organic body, and an organic body united to a rational soul shows a perfect human being, then the one who says that the soul, or the body, or a member of it, is a part of a human being will not miss the truth. And if the body is the instrument of the rational soul as of a human being—the whole soul passing through the whole body gives it life and motion, being simple in nature and incorporeal, not being cut up together with it or enclosed together with it, but being present whole to the whole and to each of its members, according as each is naturally able to receive it, in proportion to the receptive capacity for its activity that naturally underlies it, and tightening together the members that receive it in different ways, in proportion to the preservation of their being one body—then let him be led on to the great and ineffable mystery of the blessed hope of Christians, having taken no ignoble likenesses from the small things that are ours to the great things that are beyond us, whoever still possesses his mind averse and easily shaken concerning these things.

And abandoning the unreasonable opinion about souls existing before bodies, he will believe with us in the Lord, who says concerning those raised to the resurrection that they cannot die, evidently because of his clearer manifestation and participation of the final object of desire. And again, Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Which, if it had ever come into being beforehand, was impossible, as has been shown beforehand, for it to receive any kind of death by way of change.

And let him not step outside natural reasonings, idly decreeing the opinion about the soul that does not exist. For if body and soul are parts of a human being, as has been set out beforehand, and parts necessarily receive reference to something relative (for a whole is certainly predicated of them), and things thus called relative are altogether and entirely simultaneous in generation, as parts completing a whole species by their union, divided from one another only by conceptual thought for the discernment of what each is in essence, then soul and body, as parts of a human being, cannot possibly exist before or after one another in time, since the account of what is thus called relative would be dissolved. And again: For if the soul exists as a species in itself before the body, or the body before the soul, and each of these completes another species by the composition of soul with body, or of body with soul, either they do this by being acted upon entirely, or by being naturally disposed. And if by being acted upon, they have been acted upon to the point of departing from what they were, and are destroyed; but if by being naturally disposed, it will evidently always do this because of the natural disposition, and the soul will never cease from transmigrating into bodies, nor the body from being ensouled anew.

But it is not, as I think, the fulfillment of the whole in respect of form that comes from the passion or from the natural power of the parts in their coming together of the one with the other, but from the generation that is upon them at once in respect of the whole form. It is not possible, then, for any form whatsoever to change from form to form without corruption.

But if they say that after death and the dissolution of the body the soul exists and subsists, and that it was possible for it to exist and subsist even before the body, their argument does not proceed, it seems to me, in a well-considered manner. For the principle of generation and the principle of being are not the same. The one is of being at some time and somewhere and in relation to something, while the other is declarative of being and of being something and somehow. But if this is so, the soul always exists after it has come to be, because of its essence, yet it is not set free because of its generation, but exists with the relation of sometime and somewhere and in relation to something. For it is not simply called soul after the death of the body—the soul—but the soul of a man, and the soul of some particular man. For even after the body it has, as its form, the whole human nature predicated in respect of relation as of a part. Likewise also the body, mortal by nature, yet not set free because of its generation. For it is not simply called body after the separation of the soul—the body—but the body of a man, and the body of some particular man, even if it is corrupted and is naturally resolved into the elements of which it consists. For even so it has, as its form, the whole human nature predicated in respect of relation as of a part.

In both, therefore, the relation—I mean of soul and body—as also of the parts of the whole human form, being conceived without abstraction, establishes both their simultaneous generation and demonstrates their essential difference from one another, in no way whatsoever harming the essential principles implanted in them. It is not possible, then, at all to find or to speak of a body or a soul as unrelated. For with the one, the being of something of the other is introduced at the same time; so that if the one pre-exists the other, it must be understood as belonging to something. For the relation is immovable.

And these things concerning these matters. And if the account has not fallen short of the truth, thanks be to God, who through your prayers guided us to understand rightly. But if anywhere something of the truth has been omitted, you would know the exactness of the account, as being inspired by God with the knowledge of such things.

3. "...That matter of itself bears the disorder as in a stream." From the same discourse, on the passage, "Until matter of itself also bears the disorder as in a stream.

I think that the present aim of the discourse is connected with the thought of the preceding chapter. For after having gone through very many points against the lovers of matter and the lovers of the body, he adds these things, so that from this one who piously investigates the aim of the saint may thus arrive at the following. Since man came to be adorned by God with the beauty of incorruption and immortality, but, preferring the shame of the material nature about him to the noetic beauty, he had made himself wholly forgetful of the soul's excellent dignity, or rather of God who had beautified the soul in a godlike manner, he reaped a fruit worthy of his disposition by the divine vote that wisely administers our salvation—not only the corruption and death of the body, and its motion and aptitude easily falling into every passion, but also the instability and unevenness of the material substance outside and about him, and its readiness and ease toward alteration, whether then God, because of the transgression, having mixed it together with our body, and having given to it also, just as to the body, the tendency toward suffering and being corrupted and wholly dissolved (as the wrapping of dead bodies makes clear, he having implanted power, according to what is written, that "even the creation itself was subjected to corruption, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope"), or whether from the beginning he created it thus according to foreknowledge because of the foreknown transgression; so that by suffering and being ill-treated through it, he might come to a perception of himself and of his own dignity, and gladly accept also its own stripping away toward the body.

For the all-wise Provider of our life often naturally allows things to follow their own impulses for our correction, sometimes, through the confusion and disturbance that arises concerning them and from them among those who handle them madly, leading back to what is by nature lovable our love of present things, which until then was irrational. For since there are three universal modes by which they say our passions are healed instructively, in each mode the disorder of matter is wisely and orderly, according to the reason that is above us and better, being steered toward the good-fitting outcome known to God, and a healing is set for the grievous burden of the passions. For either, being required to pay the penalty for sins committed beforehand—of which perhaps we retain not even a trace in memory because of ignorance, and perhaps even if we remember them we do not endure to render the correction that is due, balanced against the offenses, either unwilling or unable because of the ingrained habit of evil or because of weakness—we are purged; or we cast off evil that is present and distributed, and are taught beforehand to check the evil that is to come; or one man is set before other men as a wonderful example of the best endurance and pious courage, if he is distinguished in understanding and virtue, and is able by his own unshaken grappling with terrors to make manifest the truth that until then was hidden.

He therefore advises those who are able to think of nothing beyond the present life, who do not trust in the health of the body, and who are not elated over those deprived of these things by the course of affairs carried along with the current, that while the present life stands and they wear this corruption, about which are turning and alteration, since it is unclear what will befall them from the irregularity and disturbance of the body and of external things. For this, I think, is what he means by "As long as matter also carries its disorder of itself," instead of "As long as this whole is under corruption and alteration, and we wear the body of humiliation, and perhaps are subject to manifold evils from it because of innate weakness" — let us not be elated against one another because of the inequality among us, but rather with prudent reasoning let us smooth out the unevenness of our equally honored nature, filling up the deficiencies of others with our own excesses. Therefore perhaps the present inequality was permitted to be lived out, so that the power of the reason within us might be shown, preferring virtue above all things. For the same turning and alteration of the body and of external things belongs to all men, both carrying and being carried, and possessing only this as stable and firm: the unstable and the carried.

D (4). "...For it has nothing higher, nor will it ever have." From the same author's discourse on Saint Athanasius, on the passage, "For it has nothing higher, nor will it ever have."

It seems to me that by these words this God-minded teacher releases the one being taught from every comparative and distinguishing and otherwise so-called relation. For such a form of speech is absolute, as those skilled in these matters say, and it can mean the same as "to be incomparably above all things," as having the power of superlative negation.

E (5). "...through reason and contemplation..."

From the same discourse, on the passage, "To whomever, then, it was granted, having passed through matter and this fleshly thing—whether one should call it a cloud or a covering—by reason and contemplation, to be joined to God and to be mingled with the purest light, as far as human nature can attain, blessed is this one because of his ascent from here and his deification there, which genuine philosophizing grants, and which being above the material dyad grants because of the unity understood in the Trinity." I for my part do not think that the teacher's account concerning the virtue of the saints, which has been set forth, is deficient, even if some, as you have written, think so, because of the

I think he very clearly suggests this: that the philosophy according to God of those who have pursued it is to be spoken of as consisting in reason and contemplation alone, apart from practice; but that their true judgment and activity concerning things that exist is divided by practice—which philosophy I myself, daring to define it, call the only truly most complete philosophy. For he declares that it is set right by reason and contemplation, since practice is altogether joined to reason, and the judgment upon it is contained in contemplation—seeing that it belongs to reason to order the movement of the body, checking as with a kind of bridle, by right reasoning, the impulse of those who know toward what is out of place; and it belongs to contemplation to choose and to vote for what has been well conceived and wisely judged, as it were an all-shining light (through true knowledge showing the truth itself). By both of these every philosophic virtue is especially both produced and preserved, and by them it is manifested through the body—not the whole of it.

For it is not contained by the body, being an impress of divine power, but certain shadows of it are, and this not for its own sake, but so that those who are naked of the grace that is according to it may come to imitate the God-like conduct of men who love God, in order that by participation in the good they too, having put off the shame of wickedness, may become of the portion of those worthy of God; or so that those who need some assistance may obtain it from those who are able, in order that, having accepted the disposition of the virtuous that is hidden in the depth of the soul, revealed through the body in accordance with practice, they may themselves hymn the providence of God, which becomes all things to all and is present to all through all things.

For if no one were in need of being treated well, or were obliged to be formed by a model for virtue, each person would certainly suffice for himself, luxuriating in the graces of the virtues according to the soul. And apart from the manifest demonstration of these through the body, it is not unreasonable to say this.

Therefore, the one who has piously understood through contemplation how beings are, and who through rational deliberation has determined the account concerning them in a well-aimed and correct manner, and who keeps his judgment for himself—or rather keeps himself unwavering in judgment—has gathered all virtue together at once, being moved toward nothing else after the truth he has come to know, and has passed through all things with zeal, making no account at all of any of the things that are and are called of the flesh and the world, having already in his disposition the practice contained ineffably in reason, since all the best powers of the intellective faculty within our control carry with them impassibly the reasons according to which every virtue and knowledge exists and subsists, as being powers of a rational soul, not needing a body at all for their existence, but not refusing to use it at the proper time for their manifestation, for the reasons stated. For they say that it belongs to the intellective faculty specifically: the thoughts of intelligible things, the virtues, the sciences, the reasons of the arts, the faculty of choice, the deliberative faculty; and generally: judgments, assents, avoidances, impulses; and that some belong to contemplation according to the intellect alone, while others belong to the scientific power according to reason.

If the saints preserved their own life guarded by these things, then this blessed man, comprehensively through reason and contemplation, introduced all the principles according to virtue and knowledge that are gathered together in the saints, through which, attending to the understanding of God in contemplation with knowledge, they wisely and rationally through the virtues stamped the divine form upon themselves—he certainly thought it was not necessary to name the practice that comes through the body, knowing that it is not productive of virtue but manifestive of it, and a servant only of the divine thoughts and reasonings. And so that what is said may become clear also in another way, those among us who have pursued with precision the principles of the rational [soul] say that one part is contemplative and the other practical; and the contemplative is the part according to the intellect, as things exist, while the practical is the deliberative part, which defines right reason for practical matters. And they call the contemplative part intellect, and the practical part reason; and the one wisdom, and the other prudence. If this is true, then the teacher named practice from its cause, as is fitting, and not from its matter, calling it a habit that has nothing opposed to it. For the contemplative man is among true things rationally and knowingly, not polemically and agonistically, and apart from them he cannot bear to see anything else because of the pleasure he has in them.

If it is also necessary to make this clearer in another way, again those who have exercised the principles of perfection according to virtue say that those who have not yet become pure of their association with matter according to relation are occupied with practical matters, their judgment concerning beings being still mixed, and they are changeable, not yet having put off their relation to changeable things; but those who through consummate excellence draw near to God according to relation, and who harvest the blessed fruit through the contemplation of him, having turned to themselves alone and to God by genuinely breaking the bonds of material relation, have become wholly estranged from practical matters and from matter, and have been made akin to contemplation and to God. Therefore, they say, they also remain unchangeable, no longer having their relation to matter, according to which the one who is mastered by matter according to relation is naturally bound of necessity to be changed along with matter when it is changed contrary to nature; and the teacher says that the one who wishes to be freed from material attachment needs the greatest power for the putting off of it: "To whom, then, it was granted, by having separated matter and this fleshly thing—whether one should call it a cloud or a covering—through reason and contemplation, to be united with God," and the rest. (6). How the flesh is a cloud and a covering. How the flesh is a cloud and a covering.

Why does the teacher say that the flesh is a cloud and a covering? Because he knows that every human mind, when it wanders and swerves from its natural motion, makes its motion about passion and sensation and things perceptible, having nowhere else to move, since it has failed of the motion that naturally carries it toward God; and he divided the flesh into passion and sensation, for both of these belong to the ensouled flesh, and he indicated them by the cloud and the covering. For the cloud is the fleshly passion that darkens the ruling part of the soul, and the covering is the deception that comes through sensation, which fixes the soul upon the appearances of perceptible things and walls it off from the passage to intelligible things; through these, receiving forgetfulness of natural goods, it turns its whole activity toward perceptible things, inventing improper rages and desires and pleasures through the things mentioned. Z (7). HOW PLEASURE COMES TO BE. How pleasure comes to be.

For every pleasure of forbidden things is naturally brought to be in every case from passion, through the medium of sensation, toward some perceptible thing. For pleasure is nothing other than a form of sensation shaped in the sensitive faculty by some perceptible thing, or a mode of sensitive activity constituted according to irrational desire. For desire added to sensation falls into pleasure, bringing a form upon it, and sensation moved according to desire produces pleasure when it has received the perceptible object. The saints, then, knowing that the soul, when it moves contrary to nature toward matter through the medium of the flesh, puts on the earthly form, [know that] rather through the medium of the soul, when it moves according to nature toward God, the flesh also

They intended to appropriate it fittingly to God, adorning it, as far as possible, through the practice of virtues for the divine impressions.

H (8). How and how many motions of the soul there are.

For they had three universal motions of the soul gathered into one, being illumined by grace: the motion according to the intellect, the motion according to reason, the motion according to sense; and indeed the simple and uninterpretable motion, according to which, moving unknowably around God, it knows him in no way from any of existing things because of his transcendence; and the motion that is definitive by cause of the unknown, according to which, moving naturally, it applies itself through activity to all the natural principles within it that are formative of the one known only by cause; and the composite motion, according to which, touching external things, it gathers back to itself the principles of visible things as from certain symbols. Through these, in a manner befitting their great nature, in accordance with the true and unerring mode of natural motion, they passed through the present age of the course; leading up the sense, through reason, to the intellect, possessing only the spiritual principles of sensible things; uniting reason to the intellect in a unified way, according to one simple and undivided wisdom, possessing the principles of existing things; and bringing to God the intellect, purely released from all motion around existing things and at rest even from its own natural activity, according to which, wholly gathered to God, they were deemed worthy to be wholly mingled with the whole God through the Spirit, bearing the whole image of the heavenly as far as is possible for humans, and drawing so much of the divine impression, if it is permitted to say this, as, being drawn, they were themselves united to God.

For they say that God and man are paradigms of one another, and that God is humanized to man through love for humanity to the same extent that man, having been able by love to deify himself, has deified himself to God; and that man is rapt by God in intellect toward the knowable to the same extent that man has made manifest by the virtues the God who is invisible by nature. By this philosophy, then, which is constituted by reason and contemplation—through which the noble nature of the body is necessarily ennobled—the saints, having been wounded without error toward the longing for God through the natural impressions of divine things residing in them, came worthily to God, having passed through body and world in an athletic contest, beholding these things as contained in one another—the one by nature, the other by sense—and the one falling under the other by the reciprocal qualitative property of the one toward the other, and none of these being free in its own proper principle from circumscription; and considering it shameful to be corrupted by things mortal and circumscribed and to allow the immortal and ever-moving part of the soul to be circumscribed, they bound themselves indissolubly to God alone, the immortal and beyond all infinity, in no way yielding to the charms of the world and the flesh—which is the fulfillment of every virtue and knowledge, and, I think, also the end.

But even if the saints have at some time been moved concerning the visions of beings, they are not moved in order to contemplate and know those very things themselves in the primary sense, in a material way, as we do, but in order that they may hymn in many ways the God who is through all things and in all things, both being and appearing, and may gather for themselves a great power of wonder and a subject for glorification. For having received from God a soul possessing intellect and reason and sense—both the intelligible sense and this sensible one as well, just as they have the spoken word in addition to the inner word, and the passive intellect in addition to the intelligible one (which they also call the imagination of the living creature, by which the other living creatures too recognize both one another and us and the places through which they have passed, and around which the wise in such matters say that sense-perception is constituted, being its organ receptive of the things that have appeared to it)—they thought it necessary to offer the activities of these to God who gave them, rightly, not to themselves, but to the God who gave them, through whom and from whom are all things.

For, having been educated from the precise understanding of beings concerning the three universal modes—as is attainable by humans—according to which God has made all things (for he established us in being, ordaining that we be, be well, and be forever), and [seeing] that the two are extremes and are held by God alone as cause, while the other is middle and depends on our own judgment and movement, and through itself grants to the extremes that they be called properly, and without which present the designation is useless to them, since they do not have the well-being conjoined—[they understood] that the truth in the extremes could not otherwise be added to them and preserved, which the well-being naturally produces when it is mingled with the extremes through the middle, except by the unceasing motion toward God. And thenceforth, having stretched the contemplative faculty of the soul together with the natural principle, and having heard the Word himself crying out clearly that it is in a certain way necessary not to use natural energies in reverse, because of the corruption that necessarily attends natural powers from the mode of misuse, they were taught to be borne evenly, according to the fitting principle of nature, toward the cause of nature, so that from where they have being simply, they might also receive the addition of truly being at some time. For what, they said, reckoning perhaps to themselves, will be the gain to those who are not their own cause of being, when moved toward themselves or toward anything else besides God, since in the principle of being they will be able to procure nothing for themselves from themselves or from anything else besides God?

For this reason, they taught that the mind should contemplate God alone and His virtues, and should reach out unknowably toward the ineffable glory of His blessedness; that the reason should become the interpreter and hymnist of what has been understood, and should rightly discourse on the modes that unite us to these things; and that the senses, ennobled according to reason, imagining the various powers and energies in the universe, should proclaim to the soul, as far as attainable, the reasons in beings. And through mind and reason, as though steering a ship, they wisely guided the soul, and traced their course through this wet and unstable element, borne now one way and now another. (9) CONTEMPLATION OF THE PASSAGE THROUGH THE SEA BY MOSES. Contemplation of the passage through the sea by Moses. Thus perhaps that great Moses also, by the stroke of the almighty Word—of which the rod was perhaps a symbol—having divided, in the manner of the sea, the deceit of things perceptible, or, to speak more properly, having cut it away, provided to the people hastening toward the divine promises a firm and unshaken land, showing that the nature subject to sense is, by right reason, visible and easily circumscribed and passable and easily traversed by a life adorned with virtues, and that no danger from the surge of the waters parted on either side, by which it had until then been covered, brings upon those who thus cross it.

If indeed, in the anagogical sense, the dividing of the waters of the intelligible sea is the separation of the vices opposed to the virtues—by deficiency and excess—from their mutual continuity, which reason is naturally capable of effecting when it has laid hold of them in hearts, and it in no way permits them to be joined to one another for those who press eagerly forward toward God.

I (10). CONTEMPLATION OF MOSES' ASCENT TO THE MOUNTAIN. Contemplation of Moses' ascent to the mountain.

Thus again, following God who calls, having surpassed all things here below, he entered into the darkness where God was—that is, into the formless and invisible and incorporeal abode, with a mind free from every relation to anything whatsoever besides God. Having come to be in it, as far as human nature could be deemed worthy, he receives as a prize worthy of that blessed ascent the knowledge that circumscribes the genesis of time and nature, and having made God Himself the type and pattern of the virtues, he descends from the mountain, having imprinted himself upon Him as upon a writing that naturally preserves the imitation of the archetype, showing forth upon his face the grace of the glory in which he had participated, and freely giving and setting himself forth to other men as a type of a God-like type; and he makes this clear by doing so, expounding to the people the things he saw and heard, and handing down to those after him, as a kind of God-given inheritance, the mysteries of God. XI (11). CONTEMPLATION OF JESUS' LEADERSHIP...

The contemplation of the leadership of Jesus, and of the crossing of the Jordan, and of the second circumcision performed by him with stone knives. Thus Jesus, the successor of Moses—to pass over the many things recorded about him because of their number—after taking over the people who had previously been educated in the wilderness in many ways toward piety, after the death of Moses on the mountain, and after purifying them with a strange form of circumcision by stone knives, and after leading all the people across the dried-up Jordan through the leading of the divine ark without their getting wet, was prefiguring the Savior Logos who is typologically signified through him: that after the death of the letter of the legal ordinances he receives the leadership of the true Israel—the one that is in the height of the meanings and that sees God—and circumcises every defilement of soul and body with the sharpest word of faith in him, and sets free from every reproach of the things that provoke to sin, and leads across the flowing nature of time and of things that are moved to the condition of incorporeal things, having the knowledge that points to the divine mysteries suspended on the shoulders of the virtues.

The contemplation of Jericho and of the seven circuits, and of the ark and the trumpets and of the anathema.

Thus again, by seven circuits and as many trumpets with a mystic shout, having shaken the city of Jericho—which seemed hard to capture or even impossible to capture—he mystically showed the same Word of God to be conqueror of the world and consummator of the age, by mind and reason, that is, by knowledge and virtue. Of these things the ark and the trumpets were a type, showing to those who follow him that the sensible age is easily captured and easily overthrown, and that nothing in it is suitable for the enjoyment of the lovers of divine goods, since it is bound up with death and corruption and is the cause of divine indignation. And Achar the son of Charmi makes this clear—that is, the turbulent and matter-loving thought that would settle some sensible thing within itself—having carried away that most pitiable death by divine decree, which the word works, suffocating in the depth of an evil conscience the one who was thus worthy to be punished.

13. The contemplation of Tyre.

The contemplation of Tyre and of its king, and of its capture. Thus again, as it is written, In that time, having taken Asshur and killed its king with the sword, and utterly destroyed every breathing thing in it—which had formerly ruled over all the lands—he was taught of what mysteries the words had been set forth as a type: that our true Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the overthrower of the evil powers and the bestower of the inheritance upon those worthy of grace, at the time of his incarnation, by the cross took captive sin and its king the devil (for sin once reigned as queen over all), and killed him by the word of his power, and utterly destroyed every breathing thing in it (that is, the passions within us, and the shameful and evil thoughts that arise from them), so that sin should no longer have any motion or life whatsoever, in the manner of a breathing thing, among those who live in the things of Christ and according to Christ.

14. The contemplation of "The heavens declare the glory of God." Thus David, later in time than those men but in spirit equal to them—so that I may pass over the Judges, who had many mysteries in their life—hearing the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament announcing the work of his hands (a wondrous thing, that to which the Creator did not give a soul), received with the ears of his mind words concerning theology from things without soul, and was taught, as far as is attainable by men, the ways of providence and judgment from their outcome, though he could not attain to the reasons by which, in their several parts, the ordering of the whole is varied.

15. The contemplation of "My father and my mother have forsaken me." Thus again: "My father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord took me up," declaring, I think, in a hidden way, that for those who desire incorruptible things there is a necessary departure and flight from the law of nature concerning the generation and corruption of the flesh, according to which we are all both born and constituted because of transgression, and from the mother that nurses us, namely sense; by which the visible world is forsaken and forsakes, while the Lord is taken up, and adopting the worthy by the spiritual law of sonship, and being adopted as father by the worthy, through virtue and knowledge, he gives himself wholly to them wholly, in likeness, as one who is good.

Or perhaps by "father" and "mother" he hints at the written law and the bodily worship according to it, by whose withdrawal the light of the spiritual law naturally rises in the hearts of those who are worthy, and grants freedom from slavery according to the flesh.

16. Contemplation on the vision of Elijah in the cave at Horeb.

Thus Elijah, the one perceived in mind, after that fire, after the earthquake, after the great and strong wind that breaks up mountains—which I take to be zeal and discernment and the eager faith that comes with full assurance (for discernment, like an earthquake, shaking the settled habit that has been thickened by wickedness and driving it out of vice by virtue, displaces it; while zeal, kindling like fire, persuades those who possess it to discipline the impious by the boiling of the Spirit; and faith, in the manner of a violent wind, for the sake of the glory of God driving toward the demolition of strongholds through the display of miracles, makes the truly faithful man a provider of the water of knowledge and the fire that deifies—healing by the one the famine that comes through ignorance, and by the other propitiating God for those who sacrifice through kinship, and killing the teachers of wickedness, both thoughts and demons of wordly wisdom, it frees those mastered by the slavery of the passions)—after all these things, perceiving the voice of a thin breeze in which God was present (a divine and undisturbed and peaceful and wholly immaterial and simple state, free of every form and shape, which cannot be spoken or shown), he was mystically taught.

Struck with awe at its glory and wounded by its beauty, he desired rather to be with it than to be a zealot for it—that is, rather than to fight for the truth, to become wholly with the truth, and to see or know nothing opposed to it, judging it far more precious to know that God alone is wholly through all things in all things. While still in the flesh, he is kept in the presence of that beauty, having crossed through matter on the divine chariot of the virtues, as a preliminary stripping away of the pure mind's passage to intelligible things, and of the flesh's cloud that darkens the ruling faculty of the soul through its own passions, so that he too might become a partaker of the ineffable good things he desired, as far as is attainable for one still in the flesh that is under corruption, and so that for us too there might perhaps be a sure assurance of the promises. For this is what God also suggested to him, crying out without speech through the things thus mystically enacted, that it is more profitable than any other good to be with God alone through peace.

17. CONTEMPLATION ON ELISHA, HIS OWN DISCIPLE. Contemplation on Elisha, his own disciple.

Thus Elisha, his disciple and heir of the Spirit, no longer having his senses held fast by material phantasies through their operation—since they had already been thoroughly penetrated by the graces of the Spirit according to the mind—himself saw the divine powers opposed to the evil ones that were around him through another operation of the eyes, and he granted to the disciple the seeing, [showing] that the power was stronger than the weakness—I mean that of the flesh, around which the spirits of wickedness beset the discerning mind—[and that] the soul had more, around which the ranks of angels encamp (as it were, standing around a royal image), and he was being taught and he was teaching. 18. CONTEMPLATION ON ANNA AND SAMUEL. Contemplation on Anna and Samuel.

Thus also the blessed Anna, mother of the great Samuel, being barren and childless, having asked from God the fruit of the womb, and having fervently promised to give back and return the gift to the God who gives and grants it, through her constant attendance in the temple, she was secretly teaching that every soul must be barren of fleshly pleasures, in order that, through God, it might receive the seeds of the virtues, so that the seeing

...she who has grasped in a knowing way the things that lie before, so far as the mind can comprehend, and has borne the Word of God made obedient, may be able to offer—through her reverent devotion in contemplation—as a great and precious debt, judging that she has nothing of her own, so as to show that God alone is both the giver and the receiver; as the Law says somewhere: My gifts, my offerings, my first-fruits, you shall keep to offer to me, as from him and to him is every good both beginning and ending. For the Word of God has appeared to those in whom he comes, to set aside the motions of the flesh and to check the soul's inclination toward them, and to fill them with all true discernment. 19. CONTEMPLATION ON THE ONE WHO SHUTS UP THE UNCLEAN HOUSE. Contemplation on the one who shuts up the unclean house. For when I hear that the priest, according to the legal ordinance, enters into a house unclean in any manner whatsoever, and shuts it up, and sets forth the means of purification to the owners, I understand that the high-priestly Word is signified through him—entering like the purest light into the soul, and uncovering the polluted counsels and thoughts together with the guilty deeds, and wisely suggesting the ways of conversion and purification. Which, I think, she who received the great prophet Elijah signified more clearly when she said: Man of God, you have come in to me to remind me of my iniquities.

K (20). Contemplation on Saint Elijah, and on the widow of Zarephath. Contemplation on Saint Elijah, and on the widow of Zarephath. For every soul that is widowed of good things and destitute of virtue and of the knowledge of God, whenever it receives the divine and discerning Word, coming into remembrance of its own sins, is taught in some way to feed with the breads of the virtues the Word who nourishes it, and to give drink with the doctrines of truth to the fountain of life, and to prefer the care of its own nature unto itself, through which the pitcher—the flesh—will supply the practical brevity in the virtues, and the jar—the mind—will continually pour forth the contemplation of knowledge that preserves the light, and the innate reason, like the widow's son there, having put off the former passionate life, will be deemed worthy to become a partaker of the divine and true life given by the Word. KA (21). Contemplation on the Transfiguration of the Lord. Contemplation on the transfiguration of the Lord.

Thus also some of Christ's disciples, in addition to what has been said, to whom it was granted by the practice of virtue to go up and be lifted up with him to the mountain of his manifestation, having beheld him transfigured, and being struck with amazement at the inaccessible light of his face and the splendor of his garments, and having recognized him as become more venerable through the honor of Moses and Elijah who were present on either side, passed over from the flesh to the spirit before laying aside the life through the flesh, by the change of the sensory activities which the Spirit worked in them, removing the veils of the passions from the noetic power within them, through which, being purified, they are instructed in the spiritual principles of the mysteries shown to them by the senses of soul and body. The all-blessed radiance of his face, shining forth with rays of light, as surpassing every activity of the eyes, they were mystically taught to be a symbol of his divinity which is beyond mind and sense and essence and knowledge, being led by the hand from the fact that he had no form nor beauty, and from knowing that the Word had become flesh, to the one beautiful in beauty beyond the sons of men, and to the understanding that he was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God, and being led up in a knowing way to the glory, as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth, through the theological negation which utterly proclaims him incomprehensible to all things.

That the whitened garments of the words of Holy Scripture carry a symbol, meaning that at that time they became bright and clear and manifest to them, and were understood without any riddling enigma and symbolic shadow, and that they plainly indicated the Word that is in them and covered by them, when they drove along the smooth and straight knowledge of God and were set free from attachment to the world and the flesh; or [that they carry a symbol] of creation itself, by the removal of the foul supposition that seemed for a while to appear in it to those who were deceived and bound to sense alone, through the wise variegation of the different kinds that fill it, revealing, in the manner of a garment, the worth of the one who wears it—the power of the creative Word. For both meanings will fit what is said about the Word, since both are reasonably veiled from us by obscurity, so that we may not dare to approach the uncontainable things unworthily: the literal text of Holy Scripture, as the Word, and creation, as Creator and Maker and Artisan. Hence I say that one who wishes to walk straight toward God without blame necessarily needs both: the scriptural knowledge in the Spirit and the natural contemplation of beings according to the Spirit; so that the two laws, the natural and the written, being of equal honor and teaching the same things to one another, and neither having more or less than the other, can show—as is fitting—that he has become a perfect lover of wisdom, longing for perfection.

22. Contemplation of both the natural and the written law, and of their mutual convergence into one another through interchange.

I understand that the one who is directed as far as possible in an orderly way by reason, through the innate visions within him, is like a book containing the harmonious woven fabric of the whole: having as its letters and syllables the things that come first to us, immediate and partial, and bodies thickened by the conjunction of many qualities; and as its words, the things more universal than these, both farther off and more subtle, from which the Word who wisely inscribed it and is ineffably engraved upon them is completed when read, granting the notion that he simply is, not that he is ever of any particular kind, and leading through the pious collection of various impressions to a single likeness of the truth, proportionally allowing himself to be seen through visible things as their Creator; and that the one who is set right by learning, through the things wisely suggested to him, is like another world composed of heaven and earth and the things in between—I mean ethical, natural, and theological philosophy—(declaring the ineffable power of the one who suggested it, and showing that they are the same as each other through interchange: the written law corresponding to the natural law in power, and the natural law in turn to the written law in habit, and that they both reveal and conceal the same principle—the one by its wording and appearance, the other by its meaning and what is hidden.

For just as, when we call the words of Holy Scripture garments and understand the meanings as the flesh of the Word, we cover with the one and uncover with the other, so too with created things: when we call the forms and shapes that are set forth to be seen garments, and understand the reasons according to which these things were created as flesh, in the same way we cover with the one and uncover with the other. For the Creator and Lawgiver of the whole, the Word, being by nature invisible, is hidden while appearing, and is revealed while being hidden, being believed by the wise not to be by nature something slight.

May it be ours to reveal this hidden One through negation, and to pass beyond every power of shapes and riddles that images the truth, and rather to be raised up ineffably from the letter and from things that appear to the Word himself, according to the power of the Spirit, than to hide this One who appears by our positing—lest we too, becoming murderers of the Word, serve the creation in a Hellenic way rather than the Creator, believing that nothing is higher than things seen and nothing more magnificent than things perceptible; or lest, seeing only as far as the letter, we make much of the body alone in a Jewish way, deifying the belly and reckoning shame to be glory, and carry off the same lot as the God-killers—since we do not discern the One who for our sake came to us through a body, and was thickened by syllables and letters because of sense perception, bending the whole power of the intellect within us toward itself. For the divine Apostle says, The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

For the letter alone, when cherished for its own sake, is accustomed to kill the meaning within it for those who cherish it, just as the beauty of created things, when not viewed for the glory of the Creator, naturally deprives those who contemplate it of the piety that accords with reason. And again the Gospel says, If those days had not been shortened—that is, of wickedness—no flesh would have been saved, that is, every pious conception concerning God. For the days of wickedness are shortened, when the erring judgment of sense that produces them is circumscribed by reason, and the piety that accords with reason is left behind. For the law of the flesh differs in nothing from the Antichrist, always wrestling against the Spirit and opposing His divine law, as long as the present life is dear and lovely to those defeated by it, and the Word has not yet appeared and abolished it by the word of His power, separating the mortal from the immortal, and putting outside the troubling slavery of freedom, and proving the truth itself by itself pure of falsehood, and dividing the material and temporal from the divine and eternal things, toward which the mind, led astray by its affinity through sense, is naturally inclined to lean and to be put to death by irrational affection. Toward this mind especially and in the first place the God-befitting descent of the Word comes, raising it from the death of ignorance, and checking it from its passionate disposition toward material things, and leading its desire back to what is by nature lovely.

Therefore I think it is necessary for us, being rational, to care for the body that is far better than garments—that is, the divine and lofty meanings—both of Holy Scripture and of the spectacles in creation, and to hasten through reason toward the Word (just as the Word himself says, "Is not the soul more than food, and the body than clothing?"), lest at some time we be convicted, having grasped none of these things, not having laid hold of the Word who subsists and sustains all things—like that Egyptian woman, who, seizing only the garments of Joseph, completely missed converse with her beloved.

For in this way both the garments of the Word—I mean the words of Scripture—and the visible created things, shining and glorious through the transformation of the doctrines concerning him and resplendent with the divine Word through lofty contemplation, we too, having gone up to the mountain of the divine Transfiguration, will behold, in no way being struck back and prevented from the blessed touch of the Word, like Mary Magdalene, who supposed the Lord Jesus to be a gardener, and [who clung] only to things subject to generation and corruption

...thinking that the Creator is in no way beyond sense-perception, but we shall both see and worship the one who has risen from the dead for our sake, the doors being shut, when the activity that operates in us through sense-perception has been wholly extinguished, and we shall know the Word himself, who is God, being all in all, and who through his goodness has made all things his own—the intelligible things a body, and the sensible things a garment. Concerning these things it seems not unreasonable that what was said applies: "All things shall grow old like a garment," because of the corruption of the visible things that prevails over the mind, and "like a cloak you will roll them up, and they shall be changed," because of the grace of incorruption that is awaited.

23. A Brief Explanation of the Five Modes of Natural Contemplation. In addition to these things, we shall also know the principles—namely the last and those attainable by us—of which creation has been set forth as teacher, and the five modes of contemplation connected with them (by which the saints, dividing creation, gathered with piety the mystical principles concerning it, apportioning it into substance, motion, difference, mixture, and position. Of these they said that three are primarily directed toward the knowledge of God and have been set forth as guides for the hand—the mode according to substance, the mode according to motion, the mode according to difference—through which God becomes known to men as they gather from existing things the impressions concerning him as Creator and Provider and Judge;

But there are two pedagogical means toward virtue and toward intimacy with God—the one by blending and the one by position—by which man, being formed, becomes God, having suffered to be God from the things that exist, beholding, as it were, in his mind the whole expression of God's goodness, and being formed in himself, according to reason, into this most pure expression. For what the pure mind is naturally able to see, they say, through pious knowledge, this it is also able to suffer, becoming that very thing by habit through virtue. For example, the essence is a teacher of theology, through which, seeking the cause of existing things, we are taught through the things themselves that it exists, not attempting to know what this is in essence, since not even is there a projection of this in existing things for expression, through which we might look up, even in some measure, as through an effect to the cause; and the movement of providence over existing things is expressive, through which, contemplating the unvarying identity according to essence of each thing according to species and its equally unerring guidance, we understand the one who holds together and preserves all things, clearly distinguished from one another, in an ineffable unity, according to the principles by which each thing subsists; and the difference of judgment is indicative, according to which we are taught that God is a wise distributor, from the natural power of the essence in each existing thing, proportioned to the subject, of the principles of individual things. And I mean the providence of the mind, not the convertive and, as it were, economic providence of the things provided for—the leading back from things from which one should not to things to which one should—but the cohesive providence of the whole, and the one that preserves the whole according to the principles by which the whole primarily subsists.