PG_91A_5

Fire has a heating power, and its state, that is, quality, is the heating capacity. There is, then, an activity according to the state, that is, the quality, when some body is also heated; for behold, the activity of the fire's state is accomplished. The power, then, has the activity from itself; for the activity is of the power itself—the result accomplished from it; for power is understood in terms of acting. The activity, then, is a corruption of power, just as power is of essence, and the same applies to activity: the weak procession contrary to order and symmetry and harmony, according to which, proceeding faultily, power and activity and essence cannot remain as they were; for if, as we said, the weakness will be complete—not, indeed, the partial weakness of the things mentioned—it also destroys the subject in which the power and the activity are, and neither power nor activity, as neither essence, (14_178) nor will corruption itself be left out, since those things about which corruption is have perished. The activity, then, of intelligible and intellectual things, of intellects, is to act according to nature, that is, to be stretched out toward God; and the power of the intellect is to descend into thoughts, concerning which the things said, being moved faultily, fall short of the good. By nature, then, nothing is evil, but an incomplete good—so as not to introduce the complete corruption of corruption.

Then, how are they from God? Against those who say: If the demons came to be from God, how are they evil? There is a solution to the inquiry, if the demons are evil; and he says that they are not evil insofar as they are good according to the derivation of their substance (for they were derived good from the good), but insofar as they grew weak in their natural activity. And they received a good substance. That the substance of the demons is good. As the Oracles say: Note how he understands the phrase, "and the angels who did not keep their own beginning"; for he calls their beginning the derivation into being; for they too were derived for every good work, just as we were. From these, then, are the demons, being made evil in this alone, in the cessation of the habit of good things, and in not rousing the good; so that they are evil by choice, but not by nature; and the good is further proper to beings by nature; great, therefore, is the difference. Of the habit of divine goods: Note "of habit" and "of activity"; for behold, the power he mentioned before, this he now calls habit, as we interpreted in the earlier passages in the great paragraph.

Therefore, if always: That the demons are not entirely without a share of the good. For the always the same: That the always the same is proper to the good. (14_180 But that they are evil: Why the demons are called evil. For them a departure: He calls departure the withdrawal from what is fitting, and imperfection the falling short of the perfect, that is, the lack of perfection. A precipitate imagination: What imagination is, we have said in the first chapter. But these things: Behold, here is another solution to the question that evil is not evil by nature, but by a falling away from the good; for what is in nature always remains the same and is not cast down, just as the good itself, whereas evil is unstable, since it corrupts and alters whatever it encounters, as we said above. Therefore evil is not in nature, as this divine man says concerning the demons; for if it were in nature, it would always remain the same. He has shown, then, that the demons, insofar as they exist and think and live and have a desire for the good, are not evil by nature, but by a perversion of the good, in which they also came to be.

a. Not evil in themselves: Unreasoning anger in itself, and mindless desire in itself, and rash imagination, are not altogether and in every case evil when considered in themselves, but sometimes even the removal of them harms the living being that possesses them, as he says perfectly in the seventh chapter of this discourse. And he has rightly placed the things that are slandered in these relations, since there is also anger with reason, as that against sin and against the enemies of God; and thoughtful desire, as the desire for the better, and, "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you." Thus there is also imagination that is not rash, by which we grasp intelligible things, our mind doing this.

Not the relation: He calls "relation" the mere having in a simple sense, but the things previously mentioned, I mean anger and the things connected with it, are constituent powers of the peculiarity in certain living beings, and in this respect such things are not evil.

b. But where it is not: "According to nature" is understood in common. c. Never these: Behold, here he says clearly that the demons are from angels; for the angelic gifts given to them they do not cast off, that is, the good which they have by nature they do not change, even if they themselves do not wish to see the light in them, having closed their own capacities for good, as the saying about the Israelites: "They closed their eyes, and with their ears they heard heavily, lest they should turn and I should heal them." Note also that the demons are light-like, or rather lights in essence, as are the rest of the angels; thus also in the Gospels: "I saw Satan as lightning.

d. They are called evil: It is not the mere being called so, but what exists by nature that must be sought. And the phrase "insofar as they are not" must be understood thus: they did not come to be by a perversion of the goods given to them by God—both states and activities—which, having set aside, they became evil, in accordance with which they are not, having received their being.

a. And of that which is not: How those who desire that which is not desire evil must be stated thus. God is being, above beings, and truth, then, is being, since truth is God; reasonably, therefore, the opposite of truth is falsehood, being neither existent (for it is wholly outside God) nor an image of truth (for it has nothing good from God). But since it persuades some that it wholly is something, it will be a dark and faint idol of things that are in any way. Therefore it is also in activity an idol, and in activity a falsehood—that is, truly and really a falsehood; whence also in activity it is not-being, and really not-being. Just as, then, in the case of things falsely existing, and this whole falsehood being things that are, the falsehood, when removed, removes the whole substance of the thing, so too the lover of falsehood, like the demons, loves that which is not, and does not stand in that which is—that is, in the truth—as the Truth itself says. The demons, therefore, as Jesus says, "being liars and fathers of falsehood," neither are, and they desire that which is not, whenever they also desire the evil of falsehood. b. § 24. But if to be made evil: Note that to associate with the evil for the purpose of their also being made good is not evil, according to the saying: "I became to the lawless as lawless, that I might gain the lawless.

We said also above in the fifth chapter that there is no total privation of the good in existing things, since then total destruction would have come to be, even of destruction itself, but rather a partial deficiency of the good. Therefore, in this respect the soul does not have the evil totally, but some of it it will have and some it will not have; and the good is essential, while the evil is from outside. But even so someone will say that the impediment of the soul's natural activity proper to it is an evil to the soul. Even if, then, the impediment is from outside, nevertheless the soul, being prevented from seeing as in darkness, will do evil things. To this it must be said that from what has been said the impediment is found to be productive of evil, but not itself evil; for wickedness is not the first evil, but a form of evil, just as virtue is a certain co-worker toward good, not indeed the first good.

c. Evil, as being evil: That is, evil is not some substance, nor is it seen among things that exist according to substance as completing it, as evil is a power and activity; and the whole purpose of the father concerning this is seen to accord with such an exposition of the concept.

But as deficiency: How evil is understood.

4. § 25. But not even in living things: That evil is not in irrational living things either, since they are not evil by nature, nor are their dispositions evil, such as anger, desire, and impulsive imagination.

5. For if you were to remove: That the dispositions of irrational creatures are natural, just as anger is for the lion and for reptiles, and the barking instinct for dogs; whence, as being natural, they are not evil either. 6. § 26. But not even in matter: Nature is a divine art existing as a habit, proceeding into generation, of which divine art the products are plants and animals and fruits and the changes of the elements into one another, being the principle of motion and rest. Just as, then, in the case of wax-modellers and those who pursue the plastic arts, there must be something remaining in them, that is, reason and mind, which through their hands make their own works, so also in the case of the nature of all things, there is something remaining in them, that is, the power, not working through hands, but being the will and thought of God, proceeding as it were like an art into the generation of things that grow; for nature does not need some things remaining and others as it were being moved; for it is matter that is moved into generation, and the one moving it is the

The principle in the whole is unmoved, which is the divine art, which we called nature, being form, yet not [composed] of matter and form; for why would it need matter, hot or cold? For created matter carries this in itself; for it is not necessary that fire approach in order that matter become fire, but rather a principle; which is also no small sign that both in animals and in plants the principles productive according to nature are a principle that remains; and that the principles according to the forms of visible things are offspring of nature, that is, of the unmoved and abiding principle according to it. How then is evil in universal nature, when the principles in created things are natural and in nothing oppose the whole nature, which is from the good? If, then, it has been demonstrated that universal nature is from the good, and that the particular principles in created things do not oppose universal nature, it is evident that evil is not in nature either; and this is contrary to the beautiful; therefore evil is not, nor is it in the whole. But the opposites in things according to species of creation, whether in mixtures or in animals and the rest, are not contrary to nature for themselves, but for others; and in those in which they are borne contrary to nature in a disorderly way, it is a weakness of what is according to nature, yet this is not evil; rather it is a disordering of order.

Of universal nature: He calls the divine nature "universal nature." 7. For if all. All the principles of nature, he says—that is, the causes by which things have come to be and are—exist from the divine nature, which, as has been said, he calls "universal," since from it all things have their being; and he called "whole nature" all things created by God. Nothing, therefore, is in nature that is wholly opposed to all things; for what is contrary to its own nature is, to another, nature; and this is good. So for every nature, not to remain in the things for which it came to be is evil; for this he called a privation of the properties of nature—namely, not to accomplish, for whatever cause, the things for which it was brought forth unto generation. 8. § 27. But neither in a body: Just as beauty is a symmetry of limbs and parts together with good complexion, so ugliness is the asymmetry of these same things. 9. A cause for the soul: Since some of the philosophers say that evils are committed from the irrational part of the soul, which is mingled with matter and body, when the soul inclines toward it, as he set out above, the divine Dionysius most excellently resolves the difficulty from the other incorporeal beings that are wholly unmixed with body, which even without a body do wrong through a deficiency of the good.

To exist alongside: That evil can exist alongside even without a body, as in the case of the demons.

And evil in bodies: What evil is.

§ 28. Or the inability to suffer in itself: It is reasonable to set forth briefly the opinions of those who say that matter is non-being, and in what sense they call it non-being, so that the arguments of the divine Dionysius may also be understood. They call matter non-being for this reason: for they say that the being that is in the intelligible orders came to be from the first being that is below being. Since, then, that one is above being, the being that is from him was called being, a different being from being by way of descent; for the being of which they speak they name the matter of intelligible things, contemplated by reason alone, which they also call form and life, as it were the substrate of intelligible essences; but the matter in sensible things, as lacking all the things that are in intelligible things; for it is neither form nor life. And this came to be, as they say, from the being which they said came to be from the first and super-essential; so that, being other than being, they do not call it being but non-being; for they say that the descent must go even to the last things, and for this reason they say that matter is other than being and than the good, so as not even to be good. They say, then, that it is nothing in actuality, but is deprived of all the things that befall it, such as form and quality; for it does not itself shape itself into form, as it were

of heaven, earth, air, water, animals, stars, nor of any quality, but is ordered into these things from something else. Since, then, it is nothing of the things that exist in itself—they say it is form and quality—and is only potentially these things, that is, able to be brought into form and quality, yet is not actually any of these things, it is reasonably non-being, being in itself not actually; therefore, as formless and as qualityless, and as non-being, and as destitute of all things, it was called evil by them. Resolving these things, the divine Dionysius says: How will matter do evil, which is altogether non-being in actuality? For doing is a matter of activities; but it is not even able to suffer anything, being only in itself; for according to us it is ordered into form and quality from something else; it does not therefore suffer, being in itself. But if you say it is non-being, as being altogether nothing, it will be neither evil nor good; but if it is some being, it is either from God or from itself, or from another principle, both it and God; but if matter is necessary, as completing the world, how is matter evil? For the definition of the necessary is eternal, true, as beneficial, such as virtue is, benefiting. Evil, then, is one thing, and the necessary another.

For evil, insofar as it is evil: Refuting the opinions of those who say that matter is evil, he says: How then is the generation and nourishment of the growth of things from the earth—plants and animals—produced from matter? For these too are from form and matter. How then does evil itself generate and nourish, and not immediately corrupt and be corrupted? For this is a state of evil. But neither, as we said above that some claim, does matter draw souls into wickedness through the irrational part of the soul, being mingled through the body with the irrational part of the soul; for many have mastered this part, as the saints of God have. But since some of the Greeks say that for this reason heaven and the stars do not perish—because they are made from the purer part of matter—while the things adjacent to corruptible bodies, they say, are made from the sediment and coarser matter, it necessarily follows that by a descending order of created things, being last, it came to be such; therefore the lower things also perish and are unstable, unable to be established and to remain firmly in themselves, as heaven and the stars do. If then it has necessarily come to be thus, how is matter evil, having in itself, according to us, necessity? Therefore matter is in no way evil. 29. Privation in potentiality: Privation is not a substance, but comes about in that which has been deprived of the form it naturally has and which is proper to it, as also here; for since privation of form is partially in matter, there will be something of the good in it, insofar as it desires form and order, and receives these as goods. But evil itself neither receives participation in the good, therefore it also is not.

For complete privation also destroys the underlying body itself, so that it can no longer even endure disease; whence he called it powerless. But partial privation, since it has something of the good, is said to have power. But insofar as it is not complete: A brief definition of evil, that it is not according to nature, but according to a partial deficiency of the good. § 30. a. And of the whole cause: He calls the whole the cause of all things. But he has said "partial" in order to abolish the universal; for complete deficiency constitutes non-being. God knows evil: And God sometimes knows the things called evils as goods. But he now calls evils such things as wars, diseases that are corrective, deaths, and the like; for they are considered by us to be evils, but they are powers of a good-producing cause; for through the things said, repentance and knowledge of God and a pretext for piety have come about for the majority; and in the prophets, wickedness is called discipline. Read the twenty-second chapter.

b. In him the causes: The cause of the evil in debauchery is desire moved contrary to reason. But this desire itself is a good-producing power—for rational beings, to be stretched through it toward the truly existing good; for irrational beings, toward the appetite for the things suited to their own preservation.

3. But if evil is eternal: This is a refutation of the Manichaeans and an overthrow of their opinion. For even if the heresy is not yet present, yet the arguments that overturn their error were inspired by way of precaution. Perhaps such things are also directed against certain opinions of those outside the Church.

4. Everything according to nature: That is, the principles of natures are not disordered, but what is defined follows upon what is according to nature; for the interpretive principle of the essence of things is also a boundary, and it declares the what-it-was-to-be, since the what-it-was-to-be is equivalent in force to the what-it-is. Everything, then, that is according to nature is from a defined cause, by which cause the thing that comes to be comes to be. If, then, evil is without a cause—for it has not come to be for some reason—it is reasonably also in indefiniteness; for there is no principle of it that interprets the what-it-was-to-be, of necessity, nor is it according to nature. If, then, it is contrary to nature, it will not have a principle in nature, just as artlessness is not in art either.

5. If by nature: If the soul is not made evil by a partial privation of the good, but by something foreign befalling it from outside its essence, then the privation of the good will belong to its essence, and evil will be essential to it. And how will it be a soul? For it will not be living, since it will not have life; and life is a good. But if it is a soul, it partakes of the good, that is, of life; it will therefore have the good as essential, and not evil; whence it is also called good-like. But by weakness in matters proper to it, it is made evil by not acting according to nature, since it is weak and easily moved toward the passions. And the weakness of the soul is not, as in bodies, thickness or thinness with respect to its essence, but a yielding to material and temporary things; whence it is henceforth moved in a disordered way.

He calls the offspring of this here the things that have been made. Note that the energy of the soul does not possess immutability, since it both comes to be and ceases to be.

But if to the energies: So that the meaning may be, in brief, as follows: the nature of the soul is good, since it was brought forth from the good, and its energies are good; for we see good men performing what is proper to them; but evil steals in through deviation and deficiency of the good. Therefore evil is neither in nature nor essential. § 31. 6. If to the good, evil: Many things are contrary to the one; therefore if many causes are contrary to the one and good cause, then many things are contrary to evil; and if the productive principles and powers of things according to nature, as I said above, are productive, then the productive principles of things contrary to nature are the faulty operations of things according to nature, arising from weakness and incapacity, through which evil also subsists alongside. Sometimes, too, an incongruous mixture of dissimilar things produces evils, when either the hot or the cold, or the dry or the moist, prevails more than the others; whence also diseases often arise. But how could evil be constituted, when all things that have come to be remain as they were made? For these things were brought forth by movement according to the will of God and remain unmoved, standing within their own bounds and bounded in God, whereas the opposite of these, evil itself, is unstable and has no limit nor is it defined, none of which do we see in creation. How then is evil substantial? 7. Principles and powers: That is, one must not reckon these to be necessary to nature according to a principle, or as some essential property.

I think that the mixture of dissimilar things means the movement of natural powers toward things that are not fitting, which is what immoderation brings about, when the movements are not governed by reason so as to remain within the boundaries in which they also came to be. Of all things, even of evils: That the good is the beginning and end of all things, even of evils, since in doing everything we think we are doing something good, and because evil has no substance but a para-substance, existing for the sake of the good and not for its own sake. This we have also said above, that we do not do this looking toward evil, but thinking we are doing something good, even if the outcome shows the opposite. That for the sake of the good: Which he also said in the chapter before this, "because of the good," since we think that what we do is good.

(14 _202 § 32. But in truth it is not right: For desiring the good by nature and capacity in a habitual way, we sometimes do evil in ignorance, which is thought by us to be beautiful but in truth is evil. For what? That, avenging the one who has been wronged, we sometimes kill the one who did the wrong when he does not deserve death. Understand it this way, and you will not go astray.

It is therefore a privation. He has wonderfully shown that evil is without substance, having demonstrated it to be a privation of things in order and nature. But privation is not a self-subsistence, as we said before, but the absence of what is naturally and properly present. Hence he calls even sin—that is, failure and a certain falling away from what is fitting—by the very name of privation, and "aimless," meaning "throwing beside the mark," by a metaphor from archers. For just as those who hit the mark—that is, the target at which they shoot, which is indeed called the skopos—proceed well, so those who shoot outside the mark miss what is fitting.

And sin: Do not understand "sin" as the act that comes to be in us, such as adultery, or injustice, or anything else of that sort, but what he means is this: failing of the good and of the movement or order according to nature, we are carried into the irrational, utterly complete, and insubstantial non-existence that is contrary to nature. Hence he says that evil is in no way anything at all.

Not all things to all: He has divinely preserved the gradations of things in creation. For the intellect, according to which the divine intellects subsist and are in every way immaterial, is higher than the soul. The angel, then, who was moved contrary to the good-like intellect, became a demon; but the soul, insofar as it is intellectual and rational, when it does not act according to reason in relation to the intellect that is below it—the intelligible intellect—does not perform its own proper works; and bodies, which are below the intellectual reason, when found contrary to nature, are not strong toward their own proper ends. § 33. How evils exist at all: If providence is in all things, evil is nowhere by nature.

But also to what comes into being: That God uses even the evils that come into being and are thought to be evils in a manner befitting good, for our correction or benefit or that of others. Or of others or one's own: Against those who say that we ought to be good even unwillingly.

Who say that providence ought: Note how he rebukes those who say: Why then did God not make us so that, even if we wished, we would not sin? For this is nothing other than to say: Why did he not make us senseless and irrational? For to be led to virtue by necessity would show us to be masters neither of our own affairs nor of the intellectual soul. For take away our free will, and we shall be neither an image of God nor a rational and intellectual soul, and in truth nature will be corrupted, not being what it ought to be. But what he says, "of self-moved things," must be understood as said instead of "of free-willed and self-ruling things"; for it is not about things that move themselves, such as living beings, in contrast to immovable things, like houses and mountains, or to things moved by others, like stones and wood. For speaking about virtue he took up self-moved things, whose providence he says is fitting, such as that through the law and the prophets, that through benefactions, as the Apostle also makes clear, addressing the Athenians. Unwilling: He has well refuted the argument of those who say that we ought to be good even unwillingly and by necessity; for this was a corruption of our substance, since free will would have been destroyed.

§ 34. And alteration: Note that even incorporeal and immaterial things are altered, not remaining wholly in the sameness of the good; for the good is the same, as always standing and firm, but what is turned is not the same.

§ 35. But those who sin in knowledge: See how he interprets "Woe to those who sin in knowledge," and "The servant who knows the will of his lord and does not do it shall be beaten with many blows."

Or of knowledge: He means, perhaps, the knowledge that comes from teaching, which forgetfulness can often obscure, which he also says above comes from hearing; but one must consider un-forgotten the knowledge that comes from natural contemplation or illumination without being taught.

But these things indeed to us: Note that there is also another composition of his concerning the just and divine tribunal; and note that this chapter contains twenty-three syllogisms, proving that evil is not a being. ON CHAPTER V § 1. Not the supersubstantial: The ancients named God "one," not as the beginning of number, but because he is excluded from all things and has nothing numbered together with him among things after him, but also because of being incomposite and simple; yet this does not present what the essence of God is; for properly "essence" would not be said of God, for he is supersubstantial. Of thearchic ousiarchy: He calls ousiarchy the beginning and cause of every essence; for the divinity itself is above every essence. And he calls "procession" the divine energy, which produced every essence.

For the divine name of the good: How God is called good. Observe how he says that the good, that is, his own divine name, extends to all things that are and reaches even to things that are not; that the one is above things that are and extends beyond them; that life is above living things, and wisdom extends above intellectual, rational, and perceptible things, so that it is clear that the good, that is, God, is the cause of being and life and wisdom, while being is the cause of life and wisdom for things that are—understand this accordingly (for the rest). And it extends to things that are not: the good extends even to things that are not, as calling them into being, or also according to what was said by the Father himself, that even the non-being is good when it is contemplated in God because of his transcendence of being. And he calls things that are not, material things, as we have often indicated above; or thus, since God is not circumscribed by place, he reasonably says that he is also above things that are not, in order to show his uncircumscribability.

And above living things: It must be noted how, when he speaks about angels and humans, he calls the angels intelligible and our souls intellectual, as we have often set forth above and expounded the meanings of intelligible and intellectual. But now, since he first speaks about God, he reasonably calls the angels intellectual along with us, inasmuch as they too, by understanding God as far as possible, are nourished by understanding, by being turned toward divine wisdom, as also human souls are, and perceptible things, that is, irrational things.

All living things, however, partake of divine wisdom, even in their natural impulses, as the divine Basil also shows in the Hexaemeron, and also the very fact that all things came to be in wisdom, according to what is said: "You made all things in wisdom." And the wisdom is the Son, who is; all things, then, came to be in the Son who is, he says.

§ 2. Manifestive: He calls "manifestive" those things that make manifest, that is, that present. Of that which is above all goodness: Note that we rightly say that he is above all goodness and divinity; understand, then, that the divinities below are those of angels and righteous men.

In secret: As in "He made darkness his hiding place," and again: "in the secret place of the storm."

And of those that have partaken of sense: Since a little before he seemed somehow to speak of the good as a substrate, when he called it the cause of being, and so on in order, lest those who read without understanding find an occasion for blame, he says: The good is not one thing and being another, and again, life another, or wisdom; for the cause of all things is one, and not many, and reasonably one divinity producing all things, the holy and blessed Trinity, and not many creative divinities. And he said this not superfluously, but attacking the wise men among the Greeks and the heretics from Simon, who say that there are world-making gods, who, inasmuch as they are subordinate, produce also the weaker of created things, down even to what they call the substrate of all things, that is, matter.

(14 _212 That one [name] is: He says that the epithet "of the good" is receptive of complete providence, while the others are partial, such as life and wisdom and reason. For all beings were brought into existence by the goodness of God, and they are good, that is, exceedingly beautiful; but not all partake of life or reason or wisdom. Therefore he has set such epithets by way of contrast with the complete one. And he calls "more universal" those that are contemplated in a greater number, such as life; for it extends to plants and animals, both rational and irrational. But wisdom and reason are more partial, for these are seen only in rational beings.

§ 3. And of life, wisdom: Since the statement lies somewhat obscurely, I think what is said hints at some such meaning as this: as if someone were raising a difficulty and saying: Why, when the name of Being itself surpasses the appellation of life, and again the name of life surpasses wisdom, since the order also demands this, as he himself indicated shortly before when he said that the cause which makes being, and makes alive, and gives wisdom—of things that have partaken of being and life and intellect and reason and sense—is Being and Life and Wisdom, do we no longer see this order in existing things? For it would be necessary, according to the degrees stated by you, that beings, more than the living and the sensing and the intelligent and rational, that is, those that have partaken of intellect and reason, draw near to God.

Not in that way any longer, but from the opposite, as it were: heaven and stars and earth and water and air, and, closer in providence to God than these, living things, even if they live a plant-like life, such as plants and the like; and closer than living things are perceptive beings, that is, irrational animals. For irrational animals are more honorable in life than plants and herbs, in that they at least perceive, while plants do not perceive; and among rational beings, the intellects, that is, the supramundane powers, are closer to God than we rational beings, inasmuch as they are more immaterial and intellectual. And yet the opposite ought to have been the case: that beings enjoying greater gifts from God should be above the others, such as heaven, the stars, and the like. Such is the difficulty. So then the divine Dionysius answers from intellect and reason and sense, arranging the preferences in descending order; thus you will find it after one page. And yet it ought to have been [the case with] those of greater gifts: he says that greater gifts are those contemplated in more things, such as being and life; but those who partake only of these are seen not among the first and better, but among the lesser, since the superior beings also possess the properties of the subordinate ones—of being, of living—and in this respect are better, even if they are signified by more particular titles; while the latter do not partake of the properties of the more universal gifts, that is, of wisdom and reason and intellectuality, and in this respect are lesser, as partaking of lesser, that is, fewer, gifts, just as the others, as partaking of more, are both better and closer to God.

And they live above other things: for it is said that the things which are higher and draw nearer to God live more than those below them—for example, the divine minds live above us, inasmuch as they draw nearer to God. Again, we, as rational, are said to live more than the irrational; and again the irrational, as having sensation, live more than plants, since these do not have sensation but only the vegetative life.

§ 4. He who is [the being] of the whole of being. The term "being," when said of God, is above the whole of being taken together; for this is what he calls supersubstantial, instead of [being] above that which exists in generation; for being is substance, since the name is derived from "to be" of substance. God, then, as being also above being (for "to be" indicates being brought into existence by some cause), is understood supersubstantially; therefore he is also said to be the age of the ages brought forth by him. For that which neither was nor will be, but only is—this, having its being as standing, not changing into "will be," nor again having passed from "was" into "is"—this is age. For not only must all things that are be present to the whole and entire, but also nothing of what once was not; for nothing has been added to it that was not before. This disposition and nature, then, might be called and be age; for age is named from "always being." If, then, someone should thus call age a life infinite, because all of it already is and it consumes nothing of itself by having passed, nor again remains—it would not be all, but it would be close to defining what age is. That, then, is infinite which does not fail; and this properly, because it consumes nothing of itself. Thus, then, God is both age and makes ages.

An age, then, is not the underlying subject but that which shines forth from the underlying subject itself. Therefore the things intelligible and invisible are, according to the Apostle, eternal; yet the age itself is not eternal, but that which partakes of the age, that is, of the undivided and infinite life. Just as, then, God is called the maker of the ages in the likeness of ages—that is, of those who partake of the age, of him who always is—and is said to have made the ages, meaning the intelligible things, being himself their age and sustainer, so also the timeless one is called time, inasmuch as he is the cause of times. For what the age is among intelligible things, that time is among sensible things. Just as, therefore, the things seen are images of the invisible and intelligible things, and we call that unshaken and at once wholly present life an age—now infinite and in every way inflexible and established in one—so also time then rests in him who always is, but was made manifest by degrees, when it was necessary that a visible nature should later come forth. The procession, then, of God's goodness toward creating sensible things we call time; for it is not the motion of the intervals divided into parts and hours and nights and days that is time, but it is homonymous with time. For just as we are accustomed to call the measuring and the measured by the same name, so also here; for example, if the thing measured by a cubit, whether ground or wall or anything else, we call a cubit. At any rate, the motions of the stars, according to what is said, "let them be for signs and for seasons and for years," came to be from God for our distinct determination and clear indication. He, then, who also arranged these things, would himself be beyond ages and beyond time, as their cause.

And neither was it: Because neither "was" nor "is" nor "will be" is properly said of God; for God is beyond these. Yet these things are also said of him because he is beyond being in every conception.

Neither was it: He spoke well, "neither was it"; for "was" is indicative of time. But God is also beyond "was," that is, beyond time. You will say, then: And how is it written concerning the Word of God, "In the beginning was the Word"? For behold, here "was" is written. We often say that the Father is the beginning and cause of all things; therefore he says, "In the beginning was the Word," because the Son is in the Father. Well, then, did he say, "In the beginning was the Word"; but "will be" is clear. For this shows that he now is not, but will be at some time, which it is impious and unfitting to say of God.

Or rather, neither is: These things too must be understood in addition to those to which "became" and the things written with it are properly applied; or it must be understood otherwise, as existing beyond every conception and appearance of being. And by saying "the things that are," he shows that they were brought wholly into existence, and by adding "and the very being of things that are," he indicated their permanence.

§ 5. And it is itself by itself: These things must not be thought to be said of the cause of all things, but of those things which have come to subsist from him by creation—both intelligible and intellectual and sensible and the rest. For, as we have said before, God is before being; for he is pre-existing. But being has, as it were, a certain indication of a pre-existing cause. Therefore God is said to be pre-existing, and thereafter he is also said to be being, as the cause of all things; then being, all things are from him. Therefore being, by conception, came to subsist from participation in his pre-being—not as though God were divided into being and pre-being, but his will, which brought the things that are into being, is said to be that which pre-subsists in God; and when this divine will has been foreordained for the creation's coming to be, with good reason, before the other things of which beings partake in God, a certain more ancient principle of being is conceived—God himself. For first he is something, and then he is also life and wisdom. At any rate, the invisible and highest intellects first partook of being, and thus of life and wisdom. For just as in our case a certain first matter subsisted, from which we are, so also in the case of the incorporeal intellects, as it were matter, the very being of each is conceived—the form through life, and that according to which it is made substance unto life and wisdom and likeness. And likeness and identity we have gone through above as well—the powers that lead back to God, according to which they are made like him, being near to him; and the things after these partake of them by degrees, themselves also first partaking of being.

Understand the beginnings of beings to be the first hypostases in creation, called beginnings not because beings come from them as from elements, but because, as has been said, they were created before those after them; for example, among intelligible things the beginning of creation is the thrones, and so on in order, and among sensible things the beginning of creation is heaven and earth; for "in the beginning God made the heaven and the earth"; for these are the first-created of sensible things. Then, in another way, the ideas and paradigms—which are the self-perfect, eternal thoughts of the eternal God, as we said before—are conceived as, so to speak, elements and beginnings and immaterial and incorporeal matter of the things that participate, and of the ideas themselves, such as the incorporeal orders that were produced; for auto-life and auto-wisdom and auto-order and the other paradigms in God are those in which the creations participate, as lines drawn straight toward the circle participate in a point, that is, a center.

Of all things, then, reasonably: God set this name for himself, saying, "I am the one who is"; therefore, before the other things that are said of him, such as life and wisdom and the like, he is reasonably proclaimed. By saying "to be before" and "to be beyond," he indicated the unbegun and wholly incomprehensible nature of God's being, who also by the foreordination of his own ineffable knowledge pre-established the being of all things altogether; for the mind, at the first contact, applies itself to being as a whole, and then thus contemplates their being in whatever way.

Therefore the simple fact of being, not the manner of being, he made clear when he spoke of being itself by itself, just as in what follows he spoke of self-life, self-likeness, and the things together with them, and introduced life as a whole, and living simply, not life of such-and-such a kind; and in the same way in other cases, this "to be" is predicated first of them. And if you wish, [consider] the case of living things: just as in some account, in the case of qualities, the self-qualities as it were come first; then, coming together, they produce, so understand these things too—for example, the whiteness of body itself, coming upon a body, makes it white; so understand what has been said here analogously, that God, that is Life, existing beforehand, gives life to all things that partake of him.

The self-participations: He means the participations of which beings partake, such as being itself, or life, or wisdom, or order, and the rest, which participations are divine gifts, which he also called beginnings of beings.

§ 6. And it is from it and in it: It must be understood thus: the self-transcendent goodness, being intellect and wholly activity, turned toward itself, is in activity, not in potentiality, being formerly folly, then becoming intellect in activity; whence it is also intellect only, pure, having the act of thinking not adventitious, but thinking altogether from itself. For if its essence is one thing, and the things it thinks are other than it, it—that is, its essence—will be thoughtless; but if it has anything, it has it from itself, not from another; and if it thinks from itself and from itself, it is itself the things it thinks. Therefore, being intellect, it truly thinks, thinking beings as being. If, then, thinking itself it thinks beings, it is itself beings; for either it will think them as existing elsewhere, or in itself, as being its own; but it is not possible to think them as existing elsewhere.

For where are they as beings among perceptible things? For perceptible things are not beings, since they are changeable, and come to be, and perish. Therefore he thinks himself in himself. But since God is also the maker of beings, he thinks them in what is not yet, but he himself is the archetype of this whole; and what he thinks, he does not receive types from others, being himself the paradigm of beings; so that neither is he himself in a place, nor are the things in him as in a place, but he holds them as holding himself and being one with them, all things being together and being in him in the indivisible, but distinguished, in the indivisible indivisibly. Therefore his thoughts are the beings, and the beings are the forms. But thoughts must not be understood in this way, that because he thought this, this came to be, or is this; for something thought must precede this thought, so that having thought it he might make it; but he thinks the beings, as thinking himself and being joined to the things that are in him; for his very thought is a coming-to-be for beings. Therefore what is in them, this is the form, and this is the idea; but he himself, being wholly intellect, is wholly knowledge, and the things from him and in him are intellects resembling the theorems of knowledge. And being many knowledges together, they remain unconfused, and they act outwardly according to one, whenever it is necessary.

And the soul has all the powers together in itself, by which it provides for the body, and yet it puts them forth without confusion at the proper time, exercising the natural power concerning the body, by which it nourishes it and increases it and makes it fit for generation; and it exercises the sensitive power concerning veins and arteries and flesh and sinews, by which power we apprehend perceptible things; and the opinative power, by which it judges perceptible things; and the imaginative power, by which it forms images; and the memorative power, by which it remembers; and the appetitive power, by which it desires and moves the living being from place to place; and the imitative, and the irascible, and the concupiscible. For it has these powers, using the body in its irrational part. But after death the mind alone will be active, while these are idle. And those things which in any way belong to being: From the superabundant goodness of God, he says, which is the very being of God himself, comes the existence of beings and their continuance. He says "unitively," that is, according to some simple and comprehensive and unrelated cause of all things; for by no principle or thought or thing does the Divine have relation and communion with beings, but it is wholly and in all respects exalted above them, touching them only by sustaining and providing for them, so to speak. And the examples that follow confirm the account that all things are from God, as the cause of their existence, while he exists other than these things and subsists in himself, being other than these things. And he has all number: for number, when many units are combined, increases into magnitude.

The monad, then, as the cause of numbers, has embraced all numbers in a unified way; so too the center, that is, the point, contains the straight lines drawn to the circle.

And in the center: These are confirmatory illustrations of the argument. Note that he clarifies the things concerning God also from geometry, encompassing him by a center. (14_230 In a unified way, united: He has placed "in a unified way" here in the sense of "simply" and "uniformly"; for not in a different way.

But also in the whole of all things: It is evident that the parts are in the whole; therefore the principles (logoi) of the powers or motions inherent in them, which are naturally contemplated in each individual being, are contemplated in the nature taken as a whole, he says; for example, those of external philosophy brought all things that subsist in themselves and are contemplated in others under one category, calling it substance—all things that we call animate and inanimate; in such a term are encompassed both the peculiarities of each individual substance and the principles (logoi), remaining unconfused; for one is the principle of animate things and another of inanimate things; likewise also of perceptive things, that is, rational and irrational, although they are united according to the principle of substance, that is, of simply being. And he has said "in a unified way" in the soul, signifying that the life-giving power given from the soul to the whole body is one, working in various ways in the members.

§ 7. For he is the beginning of existing things: If a cause is that through which the thing that comes to be comes to be, then reasonably all things pre-existed in the cause of all things, as in an idea and a pattern, just as we said before, at once and in a unified form, and even opposites, as is said to be contemplated in God. But how both in a unified way and as opposites, you will understand thus: the ordered whole has its form divided, as in the world—the stars in one place, and the human being in another; and again fire in one place, and water in another. For being opposites, if they come together, they are destroyed together; but in the thoughts of God all things were at once both existing and without confusion, and not in place; for they are not bodies, nor in a body, but in eternal thoughts, which are patterns; whence God is also the beginning of all things. For every thing that pre-exists the thing that comes to be is a beginning, and besides other things, he is also the order of things as ordered; and order is the working of likeness of all existing things to one another, and the symmetry that comes to be is the cause of the communion of all that exists with one another, but God is also every rest and every motion of existing things. But these must be understood in different ways: in the case of things intelligible and things intellectual, nature, being the beginning of motion and of rest—that is, of stillness, for it is the same—reveals activity; for motion toward divine ministries and teachings of things subordinate is a life-giving activity, and the eternal and unchanging stillness and rest reveals that the intellects perform their own proper activities and are filled with divine things.

In the case of perceptible things, nature, being the beginning of motion and rest—that is, of stillness—indicates motion as the production into being, and rest, that is stillness, as either the cessation or the change of being through corruption. These things are said to be God, since he himself is their cause in a superessential manner. Motion in God is the providential procession in goodness into the things that come from him and through him; and rest is his always being in the same state and possessing his unknowable stillness and untroubled freedom from disturbance without any departure from himself. It should be noted that he called the intelligible powers eternal, as partaking of the age (aiōn); and the Scripture that says this is: "For the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal." And the things that exist in others are, for example, sanctification, immortality, well-being; for these are such in intelligible and intellectual essences, but by way of conception they are said to be in intelligible things and in us, as gods and lords and angels mighty in strength by participation, and men. (14_234 Every boundary and the rest: He says that all things that are by their being are seen to exist in others, and not in themselves; for the essences (for these he called beings) belong to the things that are in themselves, which immortality, wisdom, order, harmony, and the things with them characterize, which are said to exist in others; just as also the things according to

visible in bodies through perception, such as color, shape, magnitude, and the like, which cannot exist apart from bodies. But the Father distinguished these from things that exist by conceptualization; and we say that these are the things grasped by thought, such as a thought, a principle, a perception, and the like, which we know by conceptualization alone, as it were by mental conception, or he also calls intelligible things "by conceptualization," and things that in no way fall under perception. § 8. The intelligible and noetic realities: Note that "intelligible" is understood in relation to us, while "noetic" is understood in relation to God.

And to be: And to be in a God-like manner.

And all other things: That he himself is the cause of all things being, and even before being, since he is also the idea, that is, the paradigm, of being, as is made clear from this; for being itself is not God because of God, but because of God it both is and is called being; therefore being is in God as an idea, yet God is not in being; for he was before being; nevertheless, because he is the cause of all things and is shown to be their producer, he is also outside all things, as the cause of all things, and he is addressed by the distinguishing marks of all things, as having produced all things.

And his is being: "his," as being is from him, and "in him," by being preserved by him; but he is not of being, nor is he contained in being; for he who is beyond being is above being.

(14 _236 And he is not in being: In both cases the cause must be understood as implied, that is, that he has being as a cause, and not that he himself has being as from a prior cause.

According to every conception of beings: The contemplation of beings, which he here called conception, being extensive and varied, meets every application of the mind and finds the notion of the cause, that is, of the creator, coming first to meet it; therefore "to be multiplied" signifies that the same cause is contemplated in the many. And "is" and "will be": These things, which he set aside in what preceded, now adding to God, necessarily interpreting himself, he suggests that they be understood according to the notion of the cause. "It came to be" and "comes to be" and "will come to be" are properly predicated of created things; for some came to be once, such as heaven, angels, the sun, and the like, in the case of which "comes to be" and "will come to be" have no place; but what was said by David, "who makes his angels spirits," must be taken either according to preservation, as it has been said, "My Father works until now," or according to the custom of Scripture, which often advances the temporal meaning by interchange, using the future for the past and vice versa. In these, then, "came to be" is properly used;

And all things in generation and corruption also come to be, and whatever things exist by mutual permeation, such as night, day, summer, and spring, and the like; and only those things will come to be which have not yet come to be at all but are expected, such as the transmutation of the universe and the things that accompany it. As the cause, then, of all these things, God is hymned; for he did not say, "these things are predicated of him," but "he is hymned in the strict sense." But "he was" and the things that accompany it, in every sense, will fit no other than God, because "he was" is contemplated in him as higher than every beginning. And "he is" and "he will be," as having the unchangeable in every respect and the immutable in all things; therefore he is also called supersubstantial. Therefore all things are predicated of him at once. According to the conception of cause, he says that all things are said to be his, or are understood in relation to him. For "to be predicated" means this according to the philosophers. But he himself is none of all the things of which he is the cause, because he is and is beyond being; therefore the negations also make this clear, such as "formless," "without beauty," and the like; but "all-figured" and "all-formed" make clear that he is the cause of every form and figure. In this sense also the following things must be understood,

On the same passage. How is it that, having said above that he neither was, nor is, nor came to be, nor comes to be, nor will come to be, he here says that in his case both "is" and "will be" and "came to be" and "comes to be" and "will come to be" are rightly hymned? Does the holy Dionysius then speak in contradiction to himself? God forbid. For above he called him the maker of every existence, subsistence, essence, nature, and of time; with good reason, then, he placed "was" in his case, and the rest, so that you may understand that God neither began from time, nor in time, nor after time, but that he is higher even than being itself. For "in him," he says, is "being"; but here, since he said that by every conception he is multiplied, he rightly said that in his case are both "was" and "will be" and the rest, so that, if you conceive, as it were, a season or a time, you will find God there, both beyond things that are and things that pre-exist, and the cause and maker of them and of things that are, and being none of them, as we say, that he is none of the things that are, and is in all things. And he is none of all things: To "all-shaped" corresponds "shapeless," because he is beyond incorporeality and beyond immateriality, not shaped toward any of the things that are; and to "all-formed" corresponds "unadorned." He calls him unadorned, as being the one from whom beauty itself has come to be, and himself being beyond beauty. And the uses: "and we saw him, and he had no form or beauty," and the rest. For if the sun according to us: Below, at the end of the following discourse, that is, of the sixth chapter, where the sign indicates that the sun does nothing of itself, but from the cause and principle of all things, which is God.

He demonstrated well the concept of God from the sun; for just as the sun, being one, gives life to all sensible things and nourishes and increases and changes them—that is, makes great things from small, or from a seed the shoot or tree that grows from it—and is in all things seen, while existing from none of them, so also God, being the cause of the sun itself and of all sensible and intelligible and rational things, is from none of the things that exist, and is in all things; for all things partake of him. Therefore also the Scripture names him "Sun of righteousness."

Examples: The examples, which they also call ideas, we have already indicated above, how they are defined—that the idea, or the example, is a self-complete, eternal making of the eternal God, he says; and here the great Dionysius clarifies the Scripture, calling the ideas "predeterminations," alluding to the divine Paul, who in the letter to the Romans says: "Whom he predestined, these he also called"; and elsewhere: "having predestined us in his own will"; for he calls the examples and the ideas will and predetermination. He also brings forward the blessed Clement, bishop of Rome, whom the Apostle mentions, who said, "in the things that exist there are examples more original, such as those of things in relation to something." The saying will be clearer thus: there is an opinion that likens all things to a line, and assigns the upper part of the line to intelligible things, and the lower to sensible things. And of these, to the more original—which are the properly intelligible things—the first and higher part, and to those derived from the intelligible, the part after that.

Then in this way, by a descending scale of the line, the other things; for such an opinion wishes to show that not all things are of the same worth, but that some came to be from one another, for example the subordinate species from the universal principles in creation, which he calls more archetypal universal principles. He says, then, that the holy Clement says that even in created things there are more generic exemplars, that is, ideas of relative things—instead of the subordinate species of relative things having subsisted as a pattern of the things that transcend them, for example material fire in relation to ethereal fire. But the great Dionysius says that these are not ideas in the proper sense, but the thoughts of God; for even if exemplars are spoken of in creation, they are not objects of worship, as Moses says. But where the holy Clement said these things, he did not make clear.

We say that exemplars are: Plato indeed took the ideas and exemplars in a lowly and unworthy manner of God, but the Father used the term while interpreting the concept piously. He called the divine wills both definitive and creative—the one, because by willing alone he establishes and makes all things; the other, also because the things that exist came to be of different kinds and diverse. Note, then, that he calls exemplars the logoi in God that give substance to existing things and pre-subsist in a unified way, that is, predeterminations. § 9. He proceeds, but not through the proper meanings: Rather, the blessed Clement followed some opinion saying that even in the generation of sensible things there are certain original causes, for example that the activities of intelligible things, that is, of incorporeal angels, or those productive of substance, have as original causes the ideas, that is, the thoughts, of God.

Concerning these ideas, which are paradigmatic, the intelligible things exist as original, blessed, and governing energies; but in the case of sensible things, the form is the original, blessed, and creative cause—the said opinion speaks of the form upon matter; for the principle of the nature that comes to be, according to which sensible things were given form, such a form it calls originative. So perhaps blessed Clement has said this. But it is not strictly correct to call these paradigms, that is, originative ideas, or original causes; for these things are not from them, but from the thoughts of God, who alone is worthy of worship. Of procession and goodness: he says procession, meaning that she does not occupy herself solely with the contemplation of herself, but is poured out and goes forth and establishes the things that exist. All things in herself: he says that God rejoices over all things that exist, according to the psalm: "The Lord will rejoice over his works," and in Proverbs: "I was that in which he delighted." And "foreknew" here is used in place of "predetermined" and "preconceived.

Every duplicity: Because some said that the ideas and paradigms are subsistent, he now rebukes them, since they are Greeks, and says: For if the ideas were not simply and in a unified way—being thoughts supremely simplified of the supremely simplified and supremely unified God—God would be composite, consisting of a paradigm and himself, which he called duplicity. And “exulting” agrees with David: “The Lord will rejoice,” and the rest.

Just as also one voice: Note this about the voice, that being incorporeal and one, it is heard alike by many, and is not consumed by the multitude. So also God is participated in equally by all; for this is the “in a unified way.” And according to the analogy of faith, and neither being divided is he consumed.

§ 10. As for the sake of which: Above, in the chapter before this, we spoke, defining perfectly that the final cause is the “for the sake of which” of what comes to be. And the limit of all things: By the limit, infinity is certainly conceived in contrast, and God is the limit of all things; for nothing escapes his providence and dominion; and infinity also, since according to divine Scripture: “and of his understanding there is no number”; and again: “and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” As therefore he is incomprehensible and infinite; for God possesses these things surpassingly and has transcended all things and is the limit of every limit; for in him all things are limited, and he is the infinity of every infinity. And even if matter is also called infinity, as always being reshaped and at one time changing into other forms, yet it has been limited in God, even if it is unstable and undefined, being led by God into the production of forms.

And reasonably is God the limit of such limitlessness, and limitless in the limits of beings, as also having brought matter out of non-being; for the Scripture says: "From him and through him and to him are all things." (14_248 For in one, as often: The limit is opposed to limitlessness by negation and affirmation, as the mortal and the immortal. And well the "as

of opposites"; for these are not properly opposed to one another, as it were by habit or privation, but, as has been said, by negation and affirmation. Present to all things: For being present everywhere, he is present both to each one individually and to all together and alike. And God is said to be standing, by the fact that no change at all is observed in him, and moving, by his sustaining and preserving beings; and these things are beyond all conception; therefore he added the "neither standing," "nor moving." And standing and moving: It seems somehow that what is said is contrary, the "standing" and "moving," and, "neither standing," "nor moving"; for how can the same thing both stand and move, or neither stand nor move? First, one must not understand divine things from sensible things, or take the images from there; but so that we may not seem to be at a loss for a solution, we said in what precedes that standing is generation, and movement is alteration, that is, change. God, then, is the generation of all things; for he always brings these into being; so that God stands; and he moves again, because he transforms and alters all things for the better; for through him we become more beautiful.

Hence also the divine Dionysius says of him shortly before: "the beginning and end of all things that exist"; for the "neither standing" nor "moving" is explained by him as remaining in himself and proceeding to all things; for he imparts his own wholeness to all beings, and he himself is unchangeable and immutable, according to what is said, "But you are the same." Therefore God both proceeds and remains in himself.

Neither in any of existing things: He said "not in any"; for he is in all, and (14 250) because of being in all things without being held; for he calls the supracosmic essences eternal, because they came to be before the nature of time; for time is counted from the making of heaven and earth.

Or of things in time: It has been said also above that "eternal" is properly said not of the age itself, but of what partakes of the age. And understand "something belongs to it" in respect of essence. Note also that some of existing things are eternal, such as angels, and that the eternal is not already also without beginning. And in the next chapter, immediately at the beginning, he has used the word "eternal" also of God.

And the measures of things that exist: the measures of things that exist are the ages of intelligible things and the time of sensible things; for intelligible things, as being measured by the measure of the age, are measured—even if the things measured are called ages by homonymy with the measuring age; for the angels too are called ages. So also in the case of sensible things: for the things measured by time are called times by homonymy, as also the motion of the stars and of the sun, and the lives of men; for being measured by time, they are called times. ON THE CHAPTER ' § 1. And of a cohesive cause: He called it cohesive, as having not only created the life of the things that exist but also holding them together so as to remain. From it also the souls: After the life of the angels he next orders the immortality of our souls, inasmuch as they too are rational; and after the rational souls, he then brings in the life of the sensitive soul and of the nutritive, that is, the vegetative, that is, of irrational animals and of plants, which he also calls the last echo, which we have often explained above. But the lives of irrational animals and of plants are not divine, but of embodied fire and spirit. Concerning these last lives only, then, as has been said, he says that what was spoken by David refers: "You will take away their spirit, and they will fail and return to their dust. You will send forth your spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth"; for the great one accepts these divine oracles as referring to the sensitive soul only and to the vegetative life,

Dionysius: For he does not understand these things concerning the life of intelligible beings or of our life; for God, having created this life substantially unto immortality, would not take away from intelligible beings and from our souls their living; otherwise they would not be essences. But David also speaks of living creatures renewed from the earth, yet not concerning these. And concerning the life of the demons who voluntarily fell away, he adds that this too remains indestructible, God who created them willing this, even if they themselves revolted from God; for "the gifts of God are without repentance," since from the beginning he made them immortal. And he calls the faintest participation of life a last echo, so to speak, one that partakes but little of the life-giving power. When this is taken away: The psalm verse speaks concerning men and the final and common resurrection, which the Father set forth more clearly a little earlier; but here he brought forward the verse while making his argument concerning all things that have any share whatever in living, showing that these are not seen to have life in themselves otherwise than from God. And he has used "taken away" in place of "separated," just as also "turning back" in place of "partaking." And he says that these are weak with respect to partaking of this life, because they do not have life from home and from themselves, but as something acquired from God; for things, insofar as they depend on themselves, are not observed to be in living, but by their reference to God they have this, and in a certain way live again, and as he himself says, become living creatures again.

§ 2. The phrase "as to those compounded": He teaches all the doctrines wonderfully with correctness. For now, handing down the manner of the resurrection, he shows that we are mortal, inasmuch as we are mortal, being from an immortal soul and a mortal body; and he says that the substantial life of the soul is less than the angelic essences, insofar as he names it also an angel-like life, yet not an angelic one, not as being itself angelic, but as resembling it; and he says that we, the rational souls, are [such] partially, but that we who are from soul and body are [such] wholly; and he says that our bodies are made immortal in the resurrection, asserting that the doctrine of the resurrection seems incredible to antiquity, instead of "to the foolish opinion of the Greeks," because it is contrary to nature for matter to be made immortal. And antiquity is said [to mean] foolishness; but even if the matter of the resurrection is beyond nature, as compared with the present life which is conducted through food and excretion and diseases, yet in relation to God it is nothing contrary to nature nor beyond nature, since he is himself the cause of all life.

I say also the bodies that are yoked together: that our bodies partake of immortality is what the divine Word wills, according to the Apostle: "For this mortal must put on immortality."

Beyond nature: He says this because it belongs to God alone by nature to give life. The refutations of Simon: He says that there are refutations of Simon against our doctrine, which says that "our body rises and is made immortal," as though the matter were contrary to nature. But those who have spoken against Simon and refute him on these points are Irenaeus and Origen and Hippolytus and Epiphanius. But the great Dionysius divinely dissolves what is said by Simon, that the resurrection of bodies is contrary to nature; for since nothing is contrary to God, how shall anything be contrary to nature? But for someone to think to furnish proofs from these manifest and perceptible things against the incomprehensible and wholly invisible cause of all things, that is, against God—this is truly contrary to nature; for how shall one overturn things opined and intelligible by what is beyond all sense and thought? By the manifestness of sense: It is not right, he says, because of things grasped by sense to disbelieve the words concerning God, who is the invisible cause of all things. For properly this is what it means to speak of something as contrary to nature—to reject things beyond sense because of the manifestness of perceptible things.

§ 3. Whether rational, or sensitive, or nutritive: Note how he divides the things concerning participated life; for he calls an origin of life, for instance, our soul and also the sensitive [soul]; for these are origins of life for the bodies that are moved to life by them; but the essences of life are the intelligible powers and our souls; for they have their essence as being life, as it were a certain matter and subject and self-form, which is of life; therefore the souls also give life to bodies, as I said. God, then, as cause and perfecter of our life, as sustainer and divider, as having ordered the differences of all life—intelligible, rational, sensitive, augmentative—is the origin of all things; so that, since above he said that the sun also gives life and nourishes all things, do not think that it has this from itself, but from the origin and cause of all things. ON CHAPTER 7 (14 _258 § 1. Above all wisdom: There are some of the untimely philosophers who say, "If you wish to call God above all wisdom and understanding, you make him without wisdom and without understanding." To whom it must be said: Our God is above all things conceived and existing. Whether, then, wisdom, or understanding, or life, or subsistence, or existence, or essence is conceived by us, he is above all these, not as not partaking of them (for this is senseless; for how does the cause of things that come to be not partake of those from himself?), but as having all things proceeded from himself and partaking of his wholeness; for everything participated is older than those from it. Therefore also, being, and properly eternity, and time he is named, as having also made the ages and the times;

Thus, then, one must speak in this way also concerning wisdom and life, that he is also their creator; for if we say that these things are otherwise, God is found to have become wise or understanding later, which is a piece of their audacity, not ours; may it not be! And of the leader, the sun: Note that he calls the apostle Paul his own sun and that of the holy Hierotheus. And note how the father took the saying of the Apostle; for Chrysostom and the rest of the Fathers took it concerning the cross.

And it is customary for the theologians: The stated custom of the theologians to express privations of God in a contrary sense, we would understand thus: for those wishing to present the divine light as far as possible, that it is unapproachable and invisible, to which nothing can approach, neither immaterial nor sensible, they named darkness, as: "He made darkness his hiding place," which the divine Apostle says, "Dwelling in unapproachable light"; for that to which nothing approaches is like darkness that sees nothing by way of transcendence. Again it has been said: "Your knowledge has been made wonderful from me, it has been greatly strengthened, I cannot reach it." Just as therefore the incomprehensible and utterly inconceivable knowledge of God is likened to ignorance that surpasses all knowledge among created things (for the ignorance concerning God of those wise in divine things is not ignorance, but knowledge, knowing in silence that God is unknowable), so then they also call the emptying of God the Word his becoming man, although it is full, or rather super-full, of wisdom and power and salvation.

But they also call the trophy won through the cross the weakness of God, as when, because the evil and invisible powers of the devil were destroyed by death, and instead of death the resurrection of the dead and the kingdom of the heavens were brought in; in this way, then, also the foolishness of God, the understanding of God that surpasses all wisdom and knowledge of men. And one might understand what is said by considering those from the heresies, together with whom also the Greeks, who imagine that by perceptible syllogisms they can demonstrate that the incarnation of God, which was ordered even to death, is impossible. Considering this, the most divine Paul, reeling, cried out: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom of God, how unsearchable are his judgments.” That which surpasses the method of all created wisdom would therefore be equal to the words of foolishness for those not taught by God. For the mystery could not be leveled by words, or by perceptible demonstrations, unless faith came first. Reciprocally in the case of God: reciprocally, that is, in the turning-about of the Word as he suffers; through the negations that signify privations, the transcendence concerning God is made clear, which he has called in another place “the power of transcendent negation.

The apparent absurdity in it: For both the suffering upon the cross, and the statement that God suffered in the flesh, seem both absurd and out of place, which was signifying the true reality. Note how the father understands the Apostle's saying; for Chrysostom and the rest of the Fathers took this concerning the cross. Being rolled up. In other places, being entwined, that is, being turned about, being rolled in. And through these things he shows that one must not compare divine things to human things.

It has indeed the power: And we said above that the mind, wishing to think, descends from itself, going down into its thoughts; for thoughts are lower than the one thinking, as being thought and comprehended, and reasonably a scattering and division of the mind's unity; for the mind is simple and indivisible, but thoughts are manifold and scattered, and as it were forms of the mind; for this reason things intellectual, that is, things that think, are less than things intelligible, instead of things that are thought. And he calls the union of the mind, as he says more clearly in what follows, that through which it is stretched out toward things beyond itself, that is, it approaches the contemplation of God, by standing outside all things perceptible and intelligible, and further also its own movement, and then thus to receive the ray of divine knowledge.

This very thing he clarifies here most especially: how "the foolishness of God" is the super-wise magnitude of the incomprehensibility concerning God. For he says that we, enclosed within the sensible, when we examine—so to speak—the doctrine concerning God's immateriality and supersubstantiality, go astray, measuring those things by the sensible; for example, when expounding the proclamation concerning the Trinity, the only object of worship, and when some hear the theology of the three persons, indivisible and undivided, they are immediately dizzy, fixing their attention on bodies, and on things needing place and intervals, saying, "How is it possible for three persons to be from themselves, and to be undivided?" For they do not know how to be foolish in sensible things, in order that they might be made wise in divine things, and countless other such things, to whom the Lord directs his words: "If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how, if I tell you heavenly things, will you believe?" And the divine Paul says that "the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit; for they are foolishness to him." So then, the foolishness of God in the eyes of men is the spiritual things, which are to be pursued; for he called it foolish wisdom, because no wisdom can assail it; just as also irrational and mindless, as having no reason or interpretive mind, that is, no mind capable of comprehending it.

§ 2. From this, the intelligible powers: Note that in other places too there are intelligible and intellectual powers; and reasonably in them the same are both intelligible and intellectual, just as the orders above: intelligible in that they are understood from things below them, but intellectual in that they are also the highest, and are stretched upward to understand the God who is above all things, as far as is attainable, being nourished from above by intellection, and nourishing those who understand in a lower way. For our souls are only intellectual; for when they understand in a knowing way, as far as is possible, the things that transcend them, they no longer have anything intellectual after these, so that they too might be understood; for the irrational and mindless soul is after us, but the intellections of the divine minds are not in the thoughts that are according to us, into which thoughts our mind descends from things divided, that is, from sensible and discursive reasonings, instead of from the forms and the multitude, that is, gathering the intellections of material things immaterially, contemplating all things in the simple. Intelligible: Understand "intelligible" as in relation to us, but "intellectual" as in relation to God. Or "from divided things": We are in divided things, the senses; for hearing is one thing, and sight another, and the others likewise; and from divided sensible things according to these we receive the knowledge of beings, or in divided things, namely partial thoughts, and from divided things, namely the branches of learning, that is, the things understood; and sometimes also through discursive reasonings, that is, those making the explanation clear and unfolded. But the intellectual natures, having no communion with all such things, are illumined with the knowledge of the truth by a single and simple intellection.

And it is for them: He says that the angels have an intelligible power and activity, coming to be from the supernatural wisdom of God; for from Him the divine angels have, by participation, the power of intelligible activity, according to which they understand themselves and the things that are, and, contemplating the ideas, understand them, which he called the thoughts of God. Therefore they have this intelligible activity as something introduced from a cause, namely God, and they understand the things that are in a manner far transcending the souls, if indeed the souls understand the things that are from the things themselves and apply themselves to the forms, which is to understand more discursively and to encompass all things in a circle. But the angels, according to the Godlike character present in them, understand the multitudes of creation in a unified way, and are not divided into the scattering of the variety of beings, that is, into sensible things, as the rational souls are; but the souls are deemed worthy of that to some degree, in imitation of angels, when, gathering the understanding of many things into one, they have all things at once in themselves distinguished without confusion; and yet the souls have understanding as something introduced from outside, whereas the angels understand from themselves and in themselves, since they are also Godlike. And these things concerning intelligible beings; but concerning how God understands, you have both here and above in the fifth chapter near the end; and what we said about souls, that they understand in an angelic manner, gathering many things into one, they will have most perfectly in the resurrection, when, coming again into their own bodies, they will receive perfect knowledge of the things that are. And the resurrection of the righteous will have these things perfectly, according to what is said: "And so we shall always be with the Lord"; and again:

Now we see as in a mirror and in an enigma, but then face to face,” clearly meaning that we shall be instructed in the knowledge of beings.

And “in detail and in a circle”: It has been said what “in detail” means. In detail, then, and in a circle—that is, not by a single concentrated impulse of the intellect is the human soul veiled in divine knowledge, but receiving the true understanding of beings part by part, inasmuch as it also falls short of the angelic vision of God, it gathers into the one cause the conception of things variously contemplated and is deemed worthy of angelic thoughts.

To obtain, therefore, it desires: The demonic intellect desires, out of irrationality, to be equal to God, but it does not know how it is possible to obtain this, not having suffered ignorance by nature, but voluntarily choosing what is contrary to nature. Note also that the demons, insofar as they have intellect, possess it from the Good; but having become irrational and not wishing to remain what they were, they underwent a fall from wisdom.

(14 _270 By pre-eminence: Concerning the fact that things said of God by way of privation and their opposites are understood in a transcendent sense.

And all the other things from within: Let no one be led from these things into absurd notions, so as to say that God in himself holds the cause of evils in precedence, or that it is inferred from this that he is the cause of them; for the father's discourse is not about these things. For he has already shown that evil neither is nor is among beings, but he speaks about those that are in substance, such as angels and the other creatures, just as he also said before, whose knowledge he does not possess from learning what sort of things they are; for he made this clear when he said, "Not learning the things that are from the things that are," and, "Not applying to each according to an idea," but as their maker he holds in precedence the knowledge of his own works, knowing how he will bring them and for what purposes into generation, whose perversion and deficiency, that is, failure and impotence, introduce evil, making the contrary to nature by the privation of what is according to nature; for to this end he brought forward the example of light; for by its privation darkness subsists alongside, and has as its cause the absence of the nature of light, just as also the states are more originative than the privations, and, as one might say, are causes. Here, then, the father makes his discourse about the things brought by God into generation and the nature of each of these, which he has also said pre-existed in God according to foreknowledge and predestination.

And "essence precedes": That knowledge precedes and has anticipated essence. Just as also "the light": The comparison is infallible; for just as if someone were to suppose that this visible light were intelligent and rational, and then we asked it whether it knows the darkness, and it said that it knows even before the darkness comes to be; and it knows not by some experience (for how would the light see darkness? For if it is light, it will not be darkness), but the light would say it knows insofar as it is light; therefore it also knows that, if it were to contract its own light, no one would see; so also God holds the knowledge of all things within himself by cause, not having acquired this by experience, since in that way God would be found to be posterior to knowledge, or not knowing at some time. And note that darkness is the caused thing, subsisting alongside from a deficiency of light, which is against the Manichaeans.

Of the darkness: That darkness is known not from elsewhere, but from the light. And "not from the things that are": See how he says that God knows the things that are, not from the knowledge of all things, but from his own, just as the light knows the things of darkness, having nothing of darkness in itself. And these things have been said in many ways in the fifth chapter: how God, knowing himself, or rather thinking, thinks and knows the things that are by way of paradigms. Therefore God is not: For the Divine is in no duality, being altogether simple, and beyond all that is simple.

For also the angels: that the angels know the things on earth not by sense, applying themselves to sensible things as we do, but by a power that has transcended, so as to be understood as applying—from various scriptures, as for instance in Tobit, where it is said that the divine Raphael the angel told the son of Tobit to take the gall of the fish that had come up, as removing the white films of the eyes that come from sparrows' droppings; for no one would suspect that he learned the cure by experience. But also the angel in Judges, who struck fire from the rock for Gideon's sacrifice, does not know by sense that fire is combustible, as we do, but by a higher mode proper to him; and so with the rest. But if someone should say, How then will the devil and his angels perceive the eternal fire?—this will be stated in the proper place. But also in Daniel, in the chapter of Belshazzar, the writer knows the letters without having learned them. Note that the knowledge of sensible things is not by sense for the angels; for they do not use the sense organs that we do, but by the power and nature of the intellect. § 3. On these points one must inquire. He investigates how we know God, and says rightly that the nature of God—what it ever is—has never been known to any of those in creation, neither scientifically nor by direct vision; for we apply these to incorporeal things; but God is known from the order of created things; for if, according to the divine Apostle, the beauty of created things [reveals] the creator, that is—

The order of beings is reasonably a knowledge of the one who ordered them, revealing the Maker of things in generation. For the things that exist—that is, the forms and the individual creations, such as the angelic orders and all sensible things—are images and likenesses of the divine ideas, that is, patterns of the things in the mind; which patterns are the eternal thoughts of God, through which and according to which all things were in him, and not being other than him, they came to be produced, as also in the Revelation the most divine John says that one of the most senior angels told him that all things were and have come to be, calling the ideas "were," and the images and likenesses of the ideas, that is, of the patterns, "all things that have come to be." For the intelligible things are images of the things in the mind, and the things that have come below are images of those that have transcended. By abstraction, then, from all these—for God is abstracted from beings, being none of the things created by him, but ineffably surpassing all—God is known in a transcendent way.

From his own nature: Note this necessary and handy point for the defense of piety.

a. And certain images: Here "divine patterns" must be understood as the foreordinations, of which the products of creation are images. The Apostle called these foreordinations "purposes," as when he said in the Epistle to the Ephesians, "according to the purpose of the ages." And in all created things God is of course known, as the craftsman is known in his works. But in every way the essence of all things is separate; and hence, though he is unknown to created works, he is known from this very unknowing, just as he is also known through the scientific understanding and knowledge of created things. These things, then, he takes up again and joins what follows to the same point. b. Since the ideas of living things and of all things according to nature are in God universally, yet the things here are not images and likenesses of the individual things there; for all things here are images of the things there; for the soul too is an image and likeness of the idea.

c. And through knowledge, God: How God is known through opposites, and through affirmations and negations, he shows as he goes through these things in detail. For if even above in the first chapter he said that nothing is capable of representing the essence of God—not thought, not contact, not imagination, not opinion, nor whatever else he said there and here, which we also interpreted in those places—now he says that God is also known through the things there denied, though not his essence; and again that he has nothing of these things for comprehension. As cause of all things, then, he is known from the things that come from him; but as being none of the things that come from him, he remains unknown by all. And how he is also known through unknowing, he says here and it has been said above in the second chapter.

And neither is He comprehended: For through created things we understand, we attain to knowledge, we have that God exists. But who, or of what sort, or how great God Himself is, we neither understand, nor name, nor grasp by intellect or sense. For similar to this is also the saying: God is in all things, and is in none of all things. According to the union beyond intellect: Note that according to the things set out beforehand he took the union of the contemplation of God that is beyond intellect. For this is according to the Oracle: This is also from the Wisdom of Solomon, where wisdom is called the artificer of all things; and from the Proverbs, where it is said from Wisdom: "I was fitting things together beside Him"; and David: "In wisdom You made all things."

But the Word is God: Concerning God the Word, and why He is called Word, what such a name indicates, and here he states one cause according to which He is named Word, because He has in Himself the causes of all things that exist; for the principles of every nature are in Him, as the cause of all creation; for through Him are all things; for the ideas and the patterns are in Him, not other things in another, but eternal thoughts and principles making all things, that is, nature; for nature is also a principle, having a cause and a nature, since the natures of existing things are not without purpose and in vain. He calls Him Word also as one who penetrates all things unhinderedly, and goes through all things, even to the uttermost, as in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "For the word is living and effective," and what follows. This is the Word: That God the Word, the truth that is the same as truly existing, is reasonably also the simple knowledge of existing things.

What knowledge is, he immediately adds, teaching.

For if knowledge is unitive: clarifying the matters concerning true knowledge, the very God the Word, Christ Jesus, about whom the discourse is, and that knowledge is truly unitive of those who have known and of the things known, says: "And I know my own sheep, and I am known by my own; just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father." For just as knowledge, having known that which it wished to know, is united to the thing known, no longer having doubt about it, nor being split by doubt into other thoughts and wavering, and thereby becoming ignorance, because it was not persuaded that it had known—so the faithful, united by knowledge to the known Christ, who is God the Word, and having fixed their faith in Him, possessing the most steadfast and unshaken faith of the things known, that they have known God and have been known by God, have stood aside from the ignorance which we said divides and splits and unsettles into ever-different doubts, as not having known what it ought to know, and have stood firm in certainty, fully assured by faith, that they have known and have been united through this to the thing known. He, then, who is in the darkness of ignorance, according to the Apostle, being shaken by error itself, is carried about by every wind of the craftiness of men, just as those tossed on the sea (for the Apostle says these things too), and thinks that the Gnostics are mad, as Festus also said to Paul when he preached the divine knowledge: "You are mad, Paul.

The one who has knowledge and is truly a Christian, having known Christ in truth and through him acquired the knowledge of God—I mean the unitary knowledge of the truth (and unitary is the simple and incomposite knowledge)—has gone out of the world, not being in the worldly opinion and error of the unbelievers, but he knows himself to be sober and freed from the much-wandering unbelief; therefore also each day they die for the truth, not only risking death each time for the truth, but also always dying to ignorance and living by knowledge and being witnessed as Christians.

Cause of division: Here he called division the unsettledness of opinion and its being split into many parts.

Of the hearth: Of a dwelling, of a habitation.

By the unitary faith of the Christians: He called our faith unitary, as being simple and unerring, having the true knowledge of what truly is. ON CHAPTER 8 § 1. And as power: In what sense God is called power. And the dominion: As in, "The Lord of powers, he is the King of glory"; again: "The Lord of powers is with us, our helper, the God of Jacob.

Separating the powers: "Separating," that is, distinguishing and dividing.

§ 2. "With unswerving power": He said "unswerving," that is, not sinking down from its own summit; for he does not create by inclining into power, but being motionless and inflexible he brings forth existing things from his own strength. Perhaps one should say "unclosable" and, as it were, "not shut in"; therefore he adds also "unbounded"; for it is not shut in, as though it were powerless in something, but the power of God has always been open in the power of doing all things.

"And he strengthens weakness": He calls "weakness" these material and earthly bodies, which he also calls the last echoes, as we have often said above, because they participate dimly and according to their own capacity in the power of God. And concerning our bodies it has been said, "I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me," but one must consider this also in the other animals, as in the case of gnats and flies and the like, how much strength they have in their own stings—animals so weak and despised, strengthened by God who made them; whence also in Joel the divine prophet God says concerning the locust and the caterpillar and the cankerworm, "my great power," and how far the infinite power of God reaches even to these, he says, wonderful and most true images. But you will find the same also in inanimate things, observing in grasses and plants and metals both harmful and beneficial powers; and most of them fragile, and others strong and unyielding, like the diamond. Otherwise.

He calls "power made perfect in weakness" the weakest of living things, which have this as the power of truly being; or one must understand "weakness" as the soulless and in every way motionless nature, which has received its substantial power—that is, the power of existing at all—from God.

§ 3. "And this very thing, if it is lawful": That is, it was not possible for anything to exist at all unless the divine power had substantiated it.

"It has power to be": He understands "power" not only as the strength for subsisting, but he also indicates "power" as the fitness for being in such-and-such a way. And he calls the "diffusion of power" the procession of God's providence and goodness outward upon beings, for them to be and to be brought forth. And he calls the first power that of beings; and these are the intelligible and incorporeal beings, so called as immortal, and with the intelligible ones the intellectual must also be ranked, as those now called psychic and rational; for the reason is an intellect, according to which the soul, by a descending order after the angels, is called intellectual. Then, subordinate to this, the sensitive power, that of animate irrational creatures; then the vital and vegetative power, that of all plants and herbs, according to which vegetative life they bloom; and after all these, the substantial power, that is, that of soulless things, such as minerals and the more earthy, which power is what constitutes them and makes them endure in being, and gives the power of qualities—of hot or cold or the subsequent temperaments—and either to benefit, or to benefit in such-and-such a way.

And the appetitive powers—that is, the capacity of rational beings always to will and desire—God is the one who supplies, and He strengthens for friendship the things that are united, and for communion, that is, the seeds of all things, or rather the elements, which travel in due proportion toward conjunction and are mixed with one another and draw near gently; He brings them, as far as they are able, to the power of generating things similar to the perceptible objects. When, then, this union and mixture of the elements united in friendship, as we said, is turned into difference and separation, the parts being distinguished are separated into the generations of animals and plants and the rest, and this distinction, that is, the separation, receives from God power to be and the production of being for the things that come to be according to species. He called, then, the combinations and distinctions, unions and friendships, and named the species, unconfused and unmixed, "distinction." Note that the angelic powers also have this very impulse from God.

§ 4. And that these things are: The nature of beings seeks to be, not by choice, but by the necessity and usefulness of existence; and this, then, he says—both to be in this way and the power of being sought after—as the being is necessary from the divine and infinitely powerful essence.

§ 5. And "well-orderings": By "well-orderings" he means the positions that are well held, and the fitly arranged orders, the comely creations; but by "angelic monads" he means their simplicities; or he calls "monads" the simplicities of their essences, and their incorporeality and immateriality. And note that he says the stars endure forever. And "unchangeable orders": Understand the heavenly essences as unchangeable, not in the sense of existing eternally (for they themselves, as it is written, are ministering spirits), but understand their unchangeableness with respect to the keeping of the bounds appointed to them by God from the beginning. And "processions of time" he means its length and its forward motion, and "distinction" he means the marking out that comes about through the alternation of seasons, that is, of hours, returning again to the same points; therefore he also called the motion of time "rollings-up"; or he calls "time-processions" the motions of the wandering stars, traversing over a certain number of time the twelve intervals of the so-called houses; and "restorations" he means the returns from some point back to the same point; for example, the sun circles through the twelve houses in a year, passing from the so-called ram to the same ram, the moon in a month, and the remaining five likewise; for by these times are measured.

And the powers of fire: meaning, clearly, of the ether. And he speaks concerning the four elements, and that the earth is founded upon nothing, but the Scripture says, "You founded it upon the waters."

The substantial: Perhaps both all soulless and insensate things are called substantial, clearly so called from the fact of their being.

And the deification: The righteous and the angels are deified, according to "I said: You are gods."

A setting wholly: He calls "setting" the production into being, in place of "that which does not partake of power is not even in creation." § 6. And yet Elymas the magician says: From this the antiquity of this holy man is demonstrated; for what Elymas the magician said, who also opposed the holy Paul in Cyprus, he knows, of whom the Acts of the holy apostles make mention. Nevertheless Arabia has many like Elymas, who say to us who declare that Jesus Christ, the God Logos, suffered in the flesh for us, but not in the divinity, that, "If you do not accept that he suffered in the divinity as he willed, you make God powerless, asserting that he cannot suffer in the divinity if he should will." To whom it must be said, that God did not will this, having a way in which he might suffer, namely to become contrary to nature, so that the divinity might suffer, which is by nature impassible. Observe how he interprets the apostolic saying, "God cannot deny himself.

For the denial of himself: What I said—that Elymas the magician mocked the divine Paul when he said, "God cannot deny himself," and that it is shown to be impossible in Paul's case that God, who is able to do what he wills—that is, to deny himself—the great Dionysius resolves most philosophically. For he says that God is truth, and truth is being, while falsehood, being without substance, is not even being. If, then, God should deny himself, truth having lied becomes non-being. And how could this happen? The "cannot," then, when applied to God, is a sign of ineffable power. For it is like saying that God is able to make himself not be God, but to pass into non-existence, which along with the impossible also contains the blasphemous. How, then, shall it be said, "He who is will be he who is not"? God, then, cannot—that is,

it is impossible for him not to be, or rather inadmissible for him not to be. Therefore also God's "cannot"—that is, God's being impossible—cannot come to be. For just as light, insofar as it is light, cannot become darkness, so also these things are impossible for God because of his unsurpassable truth. Thus, then, God does not know not-knowing by way of privation, as for instance God has not experienced—that is, he does not know what this very not-knowing is, or being ignorant of something. But by way of privation he does not know ignorance; for ignorance is a privation, not a substance, but from outside the essence in relation to which the privation occurs; for it is a deficiency of what ought to be present. Therefore God is deprived of ignorance, and he never knows not-knowing.

For if we do not say that God does not know ignorance by way of privation, then not-knowing is found to belong to his essence, and his ignorance would be essential to him, and God is found to be darkness; for ignorance is darkness. In this lofty sense you will also understand the words, "It is impossible for God to lie," and, "The Son can do nothing of himself unless he sees the Father doing it," which is equivalent to saying: It is impossible that, while the Father wills one thing, the Son should will another. For there is one will of the only worshipful Trinity according to the Godhead; for we are not ignorant that the Son of God, and God, the one of the all-hymned and all-pure Trinity, having become man, took up a human will that is natural and sinless. And "not to be" is not: a negation set against a negation produces an affirmation. He, then, who says that "not to be" is not in God, concludes that he is. Thus, then, he says, "he cannot not be able," and likewise "he does not know not to know," from which it is concluded that he altogether knows and is able. And well did he add here the phrase "by way of privation"; for these things are not said by way of transcendence, but by way of privation—"he cannot" and "he does not know.

§ 7. “Righteousness” is praised: In what sense God is righteousness. The definition of righteousness is: a virtue that distributes to the parts of the soul according to worth or to each its own proper activity; or a mean between excess and deficiency; or a habit that apportions equality; or a habit that aims at the common advantage; or a knowledge of what should be distributed, and what should not, and of neither.

They rail: “Concerning those who speak iniquity against God,” as the psalmist says. Here he spoke aptly, showing their words to be strange; for since they are self-moved, that is, self-determining, and masters of their own impulses, why, they say, have we become self-determining? And why are we not rather hindered from sinning even against our will, not knowing that they wish to be stones moved by another, and, having earthy bodies, why do we not, they say, remain in sameness, that is, unchangeable, being immortal, and using material and temporary things? This is the mark of those who are ignorant of the nature of sensible and intelligible things and are sick with great irrationality; for our body, being material and temporary and changeable, reasonably needed things of like kind—temporary, I mean, and material; but the soul, created immaterial and immortal, reasonably possesses self-determination because of its likeness to the Creator. Not understanding these things in either case, the railers blame divine providence, though they see such great order; for this is what the saying means: “and altogether they assign the things of others to others.

To the self-moved: to the free in will.

§ 8. But someone might say: In reply to those who say, How is God not unjust, who allows the righteous to be harmed by the wicked? (14 298 Otherwise: Here he examines a chapter set before us by another; for he says: Someone might say, and the rest, being resolved piously and in a God-loving manner; for he states for what reason God, being just, allows holy men to be wronged by the unjust and the covetous (for we see many righteous men enduring losses, either in possessions or in affairs, at the hands of the unjust and the covetous), and he makes his defense skillfully. For he says that the holy ought not to cling to earthly and temporary things, since then they are no longer holy; for they ought to prefer the truly lovely and divine things; for those who desire possessions are no longer holy. And the question is resolved; for this is what the divine Paul says, "Why not rather suffer wrong?" saying that they should not be agitated about worldly things. And again, introducing the divine love, in regard to which neither injustice nor covetousness can arise, he says: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress?" and the rest. And he calls "fleshy" those who are passionate and devoted only to earthly things. And "to be outshone" is to appear less approved. By the angelic virtues: That virtue is rightly spoken of also in the case of angels, just as also in the case of God, according to "His virtue covered the heavens," and that it is by divine providence that those who are wronged in material things are accustomed to desire more divine things.

On attachment to material things: Observe how he says that not being attached to material things shows manliness, that is, courage; for those who are enslaved to worldly and bodily passions are reasonably called effeminate. And that divine justice does not wish to charm and destroy us through these things, but accustoms us to contempt for them, according to what is said, "For whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; and he scourges every son whom he receives." What then? Are those who have wealth not loved by God? You will say that, first, wealth is not evil in itself, but attachment to it and its bad use; and secondly, God knows those among us who are weak, and wishing to save them, as an encouragement, he perhaps gives them money and prominence of life, not being ignorant of what they are; for how could he who knows all things before their birth? But so that we may have no defense, according to the Apostle, "Therefore you are without defense, O man"; and again: "We have a great High Priest, who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses." Not to charm: To charm is to deceive through pleasure; it also means simply to delight.

Of the best: of the desirable things.

By unrelenting stance: he means an unyielding resistance to the tickling provocation of earthly things, and not being bent toward material things through temptations.

§ 9. Of the individual activity in all things: he has called "individual activity" the motion proper to each of existing things according to nature; for it is not possible for humans to do the works of angels, or for water to do the works of fire, and vice versa. And as from worse things: do not understand "worse things" here in relation to created works (for there is nothing evil in them), but in relation to sin, which has come to be alongside from our free choice by deprivation of good. For God snatches us away from it when we willingly run to him.

(14_302 And unwavering toward worse things: believe that he says these things about perceptible things that are under creation, that he preserves all things in their own good order; for none of them has been changed, but as they were created, so they have remained; this indicates "unchangeable." And "unwavering toward worse things," either because he has made them subject to choice, or because none of them has departed from its own condition, or been transferred toward inferior things. For heaven and earth have remained, and the things in them likewise. And understand "to banish foreign activity and to keep the peculiarities of each thing unchangeable" in this way, that the elements remain contrary to one another, such as hot and cold, and wet and dry, and each of them abides in its own wholeness, and is not changed into the opposite; for fire never becomes water, nor water

fire. And if they come together according to the Creator's command, each of them remains, preserving its own peculiar property.

And the proportions: By proportions he means the harmonious fitness and commensurability of each nature.

Not without purpose: That is, not outside the purpose of Scripture. Supporting: Upholding.

Of the maimed: Of the disabled, of those who cause maiming and uselessness. And all inequality: He does not say simply that inequality is banished, but in each individual case—that is, that each of created things should not remain equally and alike in the sameness that is according to nature; therefore he also added "according to deprivation," since insofar as beings are indifferent and unequal, inequality is not cast out. Of the equality in each of them: Knowing two ways in which inequality is spoken of, he clarifies both, and says that God is called righteousness in this respect, in that he apportions the equality of all things and banishes the inequality of all things. But by inequality he now means that which arises according to the deprivation of equality—that is, covetousness; for to distribute equally to each according to worth—this holds all things together and preserves them. Having said these things, he also brings forward the other way in which inequality is spoken of. For he knows certain ones who have named the intelligible and incorporeal forms and the first principles of beings—I mean the immortal creation, the henads, that is, the simple essences—equality and sameness, but the sensible things, which are both divisible and in change and difference, and are at different times otherwise disposed, they have called inequality and otherness.

He says, then, that even if one understands this inequality—the differentiation of perceptible things into kinds, through which the generations of animals and plants and the rest come into being—nevertheless God is the guardian and protector even of this inequality, not allowing opposites to be mixed into one and, rushing together through fusion, to come to destruction. For just as he brought all things forth, so he preserves them, and they are as they were made from the beginning. For the inequality: Note that he calls inequality also the difference of wholes in the whole in relation to wholes, and that the justice of God guards such inequality. Note also that there is also a natural inequality. ON CHAPTER 9 § 1. Of these divine names: He speaks most wisely of divine-name statues, leading over from the Greeks to the truth. For they used to make, as it were, certain statues having neither hands nor feet, which they called Herms; and they made them hollow, having doors, like little wall-towers. Inside them, then, they placed statues of the gods whom they worshipped, and outside they enclosed the Herms; the Herms, then, appeared cheap, but inside them they had the adornments of the gods themselves. So then here too you will understand that the names in Scripture concerning the one true God are, when said of God, unworthy—as "the small," and "to sit," and the like—but when the names are unfolded and interpreted worthily of God, they have inside them the statues and the divine types of the glory concerning God. Great, then, is God, hymned in the Oracles.

God is great, he says, not by comparison with another, as an ox is greater than a sheep, or a bean than a millet seed, but because of the incomparability and truly incomprehensible nature of the divine majesty; for this is what "peculiarly" indicated, that is, when he spoke of a peculiarity.

§ 2. So then, God is called great: even if he interprets the designations of the things predicated of God, it is nevertheless necessary to confirm these by Scriptural testimonies. He is called great, then, where it is written, "Great is our Lord, and great is his strength," and as many such things as are in Scripture. But that he is also small is shown in the third book of Kingdoms, where he says to Elijah the prophet: "Behold, a voice of a gentle breeze, and there is the Lord"; for it shows that he is contained by the breeze, which is to say, by gentleness and smallness. And you have "he himself" here, and in the passage, "I am, and I have not changed." And the other, when he appeared to Ezekiel as a man of fire and electrum, and elsewhere: "his eyes as torches," and the rest; as the appearance of bronze and a furnace, which John says in the Apocalypse; and "like," when he says that man creates in his likeness; but "unlike," in Isaiah, when he says, "To whom have you likened me, says the Lord," since he has nothing like. And standing and unmoved, in his saying to Moses concerning the rock, "Here I stand before you are there," and the like. And seated, where Baruch says: "You are seated forever, and we are perishing forever"; and again: "the one seated upon the cherubim." And moving, as when he says: "and he mounted upon the cherubim and flew"; and again:

Come, let us go down and confuse their languages," and, "He bowed the heavens and came down." These matters are now [set forth]; but in the detailed expositions the necessary points will be clarified.

This greatness is also boundless: for God has a perfect limit, and being beyond perfect and beyond boundlessness, as [it is written], "and of his kingdom there shall be no end," but he is also beyond every number; for even if God is called one and "one," yet he is beyond the one. For strictly the "one" indicates a relation to the many numbers that come from it, and seems as it were to be the beginning of a multitude of numbers; nevertheless God has deigned to receive the "one" from those that come from him, since the one is simple and indivisible in itself and incomposite, but even so he is beyond-united, instead of "he is beyond the one"; therefore it is said, "and of his understanding there is no number." § 3. Thus, then, in the case of God, the small: for all beings, both the very great and the exceedingly small, partake of the participation of the small; for nothing of beings has escaped the small, which appears in all things; or because from small it advances to greater (the things in growth, says the father), or because in the greater the small is contemplated, and not in the small the greater according to the greater itself. And piercing through: the more sharp-edged [nature] of God's advance even to incorporeal things is hereby made clear; for the "piercing through even to the division of soul and spirit" is held to be so; this shows that even the incorporeal [nature] of the soul, being uniform, can be divided by God.

Therefore God also knows the thoughts that the mind, when moved and active, thinks, and into such great incorporeality and indivisibility (for what is there between mind and thought?) God enters as a mediator, as it is also said: "You have understood my thoughts from afar." But also between the soul and the spirit—that is, that in which we have our senses fixed, through which the soul also reaches out to sensible things, and by which we have the thinking faculty of our reflections—God passes without hindrance. And this spirit the wise men among the Greeks call a power and, as it were, a second sensitive soul of the soul. This sensitive soul, then, is what extends through the marrow and veins and arteries and bones and the whole body. § 4. Un diminished, unbegotten: Note in how many senses the meaning of "unbegotten" is taken: either that which has not yet come to be but will be begotten, as Sarah said, "It has not yet happened to me," or as the incomplete, like the tower in Chalanē; or [that which is] by someone, as "Paul, an apostle not from men"; or this particular one, as "Justus, one of the twelve"; or that which in no way and by no means exists, like the marvels the Greeks tell of—Scylla and Chimaera and the like. Properly, then, and absolutely, "unbegotten" is applied to God. On the same [word]. Having called God unbegotten, he clears away the equivocal interpretations of the name, and says: See that you do not take the word in the sense of "having been begotten," as though God had that which is above

him, so that from what is before him he becomes this or that, such as a creator, or good, or spirit, or fire, or something of the sort; but do not suppose that he is unbegotten, nor that he is altogether neither in generation nor anything else. How then should one understand "unbegotten"? he says next. He does this against the Arians and Eunomians, who blasphemed God by [dividing him] from begotten and unbegotten.

But as all-begotten? Since, as he says, God is above every unbegotten, he causes himself to be thought and said to be, from this, the source of certain unbegotten things in creation after the Holy Trinity; come, let us make clear what is meant. And for the present it is evident from the outset that the divine Dionysius, especially since the philosophers were then at their height in Ephesus, where also Ionian philosophy had been established, transferred all the things erroneously said by them to the truth. He knew, then, that it was a doctrine of some of them who said that all intelligible and immortal things are both begotten and unbegotten: begotten, as having their subsistence from God as cause through the procession of illumination; unbegotten, insofar as they came forth not in time but eternally, that is, in the ages. For we said above that sensible things have time, while intelligible things have the age, whence they are also called eternal. As, then, having shone forth by procession, they called them unbegotten; again he knew others who said that this visible world also is both begotten and unbegotten: begotten, insofar as it proceeds into this whole, or from one into many, which is ( 14 _314 into the generations of living things and plants according to species and of the others;

or from the many to the one, instead of: when it journeys toward corruption, into the resolution into the elements; and again, calling the same world unbegotten, that is, eternal, insofar as the motions toward generation and the restorations toward corruption never come to a standstill according to them. So the great Dionysios says: however "unbegotten" may be spoken of, whether as I said, or as the Greeks do, do not accept this in the case of God; for other things are called unbegotten in a causal sense, but God is so without cause and absolutely; for what cause is there for God, who transcends all things absolutely?

"Monoeidōs" and "tautoeidōs": He said "monoeidōs" because of the wholly incomparable nature of the divine nature, and "tautoeidōs" because of its unchangeableness and immutability; and "aphorizomenon" (that which is demarcated), from "horizein" (to define), or that which is set apart and separated.

And "to tauton" (the same): The ever same and uniformly disposed is seen in the sole creative cause of all things, from which it has been granted to creatures to remain in sameness, and the ordering of opposites, that is, of things disposed otherwise in relation to one another. So all things, even those not in sameness of nature, are contemplated in God in the same way; for God is the cause of all beings in the same way, that is, similarly. "According to the one and single": To be ever uniformly and unchangeably disposed, which is the same, belongs to God; and he is not bounded by another, nor is there any limit of him, but all things are bounded in him.

And he is always the same God, as being a monad and the truly same, and a boundary of himself, and a boundary of all things, separated from all things and transcendently ascended in a monadic and same-form manner, that is, insofar as he is a monad unmixed with all things and simple, and insofar as he is the same, instead of insofar as he is in the same state; for it makes no difference to say monad or monadic-form, and same or same-form; for it signifies the same thing. God also imparts sameness to the creatures that come from him, whence all things, in accordance with the same things and in the same manner, just as they also came to be, remain in concord and preservation and mutual affection, insofar as they are able to partake of this. Thus he also holds the diversities, that is, the various processions of the created works that come from him, preserved and ordered in himself, yet cleaving to his own sameness and not being altered into diversity, nor into opposition, although he also contains opposites among perceptible things.

§ 5. Since providentially to all: The construction is by hyperbaton, having its completion toward "one must suppose," so that the end is: "one must suppose, since God is providentially present to all," and what follows.

For as if to the soul: Observe how it is possible to conceive of the soul in a bodily way, and how he thinks that the parts of the soul are bodily; for he rightly molds it by his account. By "indivisible": The soul is indivisible not simply, but indivisible in relation to the body; for he calls its powers also its parts, of which the parts of the body are sometimes taken as an image.

By "unfoldings": He calls an unfolding an expansion, that is, a clarification of the meaning hidden in the word, and "to be thoroughly cleansed" means to free what is contemplated in every way from bodily things.

The threefold shapes of bodies: He calls the threefold shapes of bodies that which is extended in three dimensions, as he clarifies immediately; and from this you will rightly understand what was said by the Apostle, "that you may know what is the depth, and what the height," and the rest, which some have taken to refer to the saving cross. Note also what length, and depth, and breadth mean in the case of God.

But now the divine itself: Unity, and sameness, and equality, and likeness, the ancients called the cause of the sympathy and providence and salvation of all things, which they also called one; but otherness and unlikeness they called the creative providence directed toward things divided and mutable and sensible, and toward beings, that is, intelligible things, understanding the names analogously to the things signified, as we have also said above in various ways. Others called sameness and otherness, that is, the same and the other, form and privation; others called them limit and infinity. (That he promises to compose a Symbolic Theology.)

He calls "unitary multiplication" God, who remains in his own simplicity, bringing forth the varied and manifold forms of creation; for he calls "procession" the movement and impulse, as it were, toward creating beings. § 6. "And God is like": In our case it is not possible to speak of "like"; for our body is composed of homogeneous and heterogeneous parts, as Aristotle also shows at the beginning of his treatise On the Generation of Animals. But God, what he is, is wholly alike, since indeed divine Scripture says he is always the same, unchangeably unlike all things, as in "Who among the gods is like you, Lord?"; and again: "To whom have you likened me, says the Lord"; and again: "I have multiplied visions, and I was likened by the hands of the prophets," that is, I myself to myself, as Irenaeus says in his Against Heresies. (14 _320 "By imitation according to capacity": It is possible to understand "imitation" in these matters as applying to the intellectual and rational nature turning toward God, according to "Be perfect, and be merciful, as your Father in heaven"—which things apply to God properly and beyond all limit and reason, but to created things according to each one's capacity, proportionately to its nature. It is also possible to understand "imitation" in these matters as the participation in the things contemplated in God superessentially, which things that have come to be have received for their generation, participating in being and in the rest, which I have gone through in the preceding. But to say "like God according to the divine image" does not abolish the fact that this was said of man, but according to the principle of participation he has adapted the expression also to the rest.

And according to the divine image: How the phrase "according to image and likeness" is to be understood, he says here: that it is not according to species, but according to the turning toward God and having the mind stretched out toward God, the cause of being and of being well, which others understood as free will, since God is not similar to rational beings according to essence; for neither are we similar to our images, whether made of wax or bronze, which are of a different substance from us and similar only in some respect. For things of the same rank, that is, those of the same order and essence, as the cherubim and seraphim and the remaining orders, are made like one another according to the pre-eminent species, which species in the case of intelligible beings is, as it were, a certain underlying immaterial matter—life itself—and the very species which each of the intelligible beings is. But God is not thus in relation to the things that come from him; for the cause is not similar to the things caused. And what I said concerning intelligible beings, understand also concerning our rational souls.

(14 _322 For in the case of things of the same rank: He calls "of the same rank" those of the same nature, from which likeness is reciprocal, as Peter is like Paul according to nature, and conversely Paul is like Peter. But in the case of man and his image the same principle does not hold; for the principle of essence is not the same in both, which he called the pre-eminent species of the similar. And man is said in another way also not to be like his own image, because the image came to be for the likeness of man, and not man for the likeness of it. So then also in the case of the cause and the things that come from it, it is not admissible to reverse the relation.

To reverse is also possible, and the same thing can equally be said by those who handle the opposite account—for example, if the thing in the womb is an animal, then the opposite also holds, if the thing in the womb is not an animal. Thus Clement says at the beginning of the fifth Stromateis, just as here as well. If, then, things of the same rank are alike, then from the opposite also, if things of the same rank are not alike.

On self-likeness: It is the custom of the great Dionysius to say that God, in relation to the things caused by him, is the Self-Existent and the subsister of self-existence, and that he is Self-Likeness and the subsister of self-likeness. He says these things, not claiming that God himself is one life and that another substantial life has been brought forth, as it were some hypostatic thing beside God, of which those who partake of life partake, but as he himself interprets himself in the eleventh chapter: God is called Self-Life and Self-Power and Self-Likeness and the like, as being these originally and divinely and causally; for he is truly the source of these, and he is the subsister of Self-Life and Self-Likeness and such things, as granting this gift by participation to those among beings who first partake of it. For all things partake of such things in a manner proper to themselves: the first and highest of the intelligible creations in a principial way, and those after them in a descending way. And we said that likeness is also the unity of all things, according to which all things partake of what is in the same state and according to the same things unto concord, through participation in the first cause. He said "possible," for the imitation is not perfect nor universal.

§ 7. What is lacking: "failing."

§ 8. And what about the divine standing? He accepts "standing" and "sitting" as the same thing; for he does not mean standing in the sense of becoming upright after being bent over in sitting, but he called the unshakable and unchanging stability of God a firm standing; just as also "sitting" means being in the unnameable kingdom, and having rest continually and incomprehensibly. And indeed in Scripture he is spoken of as rising from sitting, as in "Arise, O Lord, prevent them"; and again as passing from standing to sitting, in "for you shall mount upon your horses," and "your horsemanship is salvation"; and again: "he mounted upon the cherubim and flew," and especially "you sat upon a throne, you who judge righteousness," and "God sits upon his holy throne." But these things are not in a fleshly way, but in a God-befitting way. § 9. And "going forth upon all": God is said to go forth and move upon all, as in Jeremiah: "I am a God near at hand, and not far off"; and again: "he who is over all and through all," and especially: "if I ascend into heaven, you are there," and the rest. And in the divine appearances: "bow your heavens and come down," and "God has gone up with a shout.

(14, 326) Not by local motion or alteration: Teaching us to understand the things said about God in a pious manner, he says: When you hear that God is moved, never think of the motion that is understood in the case of created things, and especially of sensible things. For material things are moved by local motion; and local motion is a change of place as a whole, and especially the kind that cannot stand still by itself whenever it wishes. And motion is that which is by alteration; and alteration is when, while the underlying subject remains and is sensible, it changes in its own affections that are contrary, or even between contraries and not; for example, the body is healthy, and again it is sick; the same is true of bronze, sometimes round, sometimes angular, that is, reshaped into angles. But when the whole changes, with no sensible thing remaining as the same underlying subject, but, for example, all earth becomes blood, and water becomes air, or all air becomes water, or as Moses' rod became a snake, or the water became blood—this is both turning and generation and corruption, the former things having been changed. But there is also motion by hetero-alteration into the dissimilar, and from color to color. Again, there is a certain local motion, the removal from place to place, which motion comes about either by a straight course, or by circular revolution, as the wheel is moved, and according to some, also the heaven; or by the mixed motion from straight and circular, as the helical course, such as that of snakes. There is also intellectual motion, according to which the mind, when active, or even the divine minds, think the things that are. There is also psychic motion, according to which it is moved to thoughts, and to moving the senses.

There is also another natural motion, that which moves things toward growth and nourishment of what is suitable. God, then, is not moved according to any one of these, but the motion of the unmoved and ever-unchanging one is said to be his will for things that exist to come to be, and the procession of his providence toward all things. (14, 328) Not from both: He calls it transitional motion, which he also names spiral; and "without relation," that is, absolute and simple. But also the motions of God: Having forbidden bodily motions in the case of God, he clarifies how one ought to think of motion in God in a manner befitting God, interpreting the senses throughout the whole as motions in an upward-leading sense.

And the straight: How the circular and the straight and the spiral motion are understood in the case of God—read the fourth chapter, a few leaves after the beginning of the chapter, and you will learn how such things are understood in the case of angels and souls and bodies.

The middle and the extremes. The things that surpass always contain the things that fall below. He calls "extremes," then, the highest powers, which draw near to God, and "middles" those after them, which are set above all sensible things. The highest, then, contain the middle, and the middle contain the sensible things; for this reason Scripture also spoke of orders of angels in the heavens. God, however, contains all things, as the circle contains all things within it, and turns them to himself as to their cause. Note also what "the same" and "righteousness" and "the equal" mean in the case of God.

§ 10. A similar encompassing: There is a similar encompassing through one another also in the case of the elements; for their equal blending, and the fact that the generations of the world in their compounds do not overbalance, produces this; for if any one of the elements should abound, what comes to be is destroyed.

And according to every intelligible equality: It should be known that intelligible is that which does not fall under sense-perception, nor is it that which has the noetic faculty in itself, as do the powers of the soul and of the senses; but noetic is that which has simple and absolute acts of understanding, as do the angels; and rational is that which receives the knowledge of beings through reason and contemplation, as does the human mind; and sensible is that which falls under sense-perception, as do the parts of creation, which are divided into essential and natural, that is, both those which exist immovably and altogether without sensation, and those which have motion of any kind; for they define nature as a principle of motion and rest. And voluntary equality is that which is according to choice; I am not unaware, however, that both improperly and in the case of the human soul it is called noetic and rational.

A power productive of all equality: There is an equality in natures that is given by God, the Maker of all things; and there is a voluntary equality, which those who pursue what is just and the equal-sharing of life accomplish willingly and by choice. This equality too, then, has been established by God. For God, in a simple and undivided manner, holds before all equal-sharing and justice in His eternal thoughts, as in ideas and patterns—or, to speak more properly, contains them. ON CHAPTER 10 § 1. As Almighty and as Ancient: God appeared to Daniel as hoary, having His head white as wool, inasmuch as He was also called "Ancient of Days"; but He was younger than the hoary old man, when He appeared to Abraham as a man with the angels, and as a young man, which is also what he saw and set down here: as an elder, since all things are from God and after Him, and therefore younger than He; and as new, since He is ever in full bloom and steadfast blessedness, unaging. But if you also mention the combination of both—that is, the aged and the new at once—as indicating that from the beginning He pervades all things and, going forth, continues forever to the end, which end is younger than the beginning, he says that this too will have its reason. Then he also brings forward the opinion of the divine Hierotheus; for I undertake to say that he was a fitting hierophant of this, inasmuch as he calls him his own teacher.

§ 2. Both hoary and young: How is it that the Lord is sometimes written as hoary and sometimes as young, as in the passage "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" — for the "today" is certainly younger than the "yesterday."

Since the monad: Since arithmetic has brought the multitude that contains division among numbers to a limit, positing the monad as the beginning of all number, and the dyad as the beginning of even numbers, and so on for the numbers that advance in magnitude by the addition of monads — since the multitude, that is, creation, is from God, and number pertains to the multitude, it is reasonably called younger in respect of number; for the multitude, which is also counted, was brought forth after God in an ineffable manner and from God. But the monad is, as I said, more archetypal than this younger number of creation, being also the cause of numbers and having a certain relation to the many things that come from it. Therefore God, as being the cause of these things and holding the role of the monad, is called younger according to the contemplation just described. And there are those who called bodies a number. § 3. And absolutely unbegotten: Above, in the fifth chapter, we discussed at length concerning the age and time, but now we must clarify the matters under inquiry; for not only does Scripture, he says, call God eternal, in saying "God, the eternal, who made the ends of the earth" — for it calls God absolutely unbegotten, since he is also without cause in this respect — but it also calls eternal the things that partake of incorruption and are unchangeable in respect of the substance itself, whether angels or the higher heaven, as in the passage "He established them forever and forever and ever," and the passage:

the things not seen are eternal." He says they remain unchanging as they came to be; and he calls "eternal gates" either the heavens or the angels stationed at them, as gatekeepers; and he calls the ancient things eternal, as also the passage "I remembered eternal years"; and he calls our own time an age, as the passage "until the consummation of the age," and the passage "that he might deliver us from the present evil age," and conversely he calls the age a time, as the passage "I will raise him up on the last day"; for the things in the resurrection are an age, but not a day; and again: "in which the God of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers"; and he calls time an age, as the passage "the days of the age," and "A Moabite and an Ammonite shall not enter into the house of the Lord until the tenth generation, forever"; for he calls the ten generations an age. Otherwise. It is not necessary, he says, that wherever Scripture says "eternal" we should understand it of the Divine (for this is that which is in every way and absolutely, that is, in every sense, unbegotten and everlasting), but that angels too are signified by such a term, as having the property of remaining in sameness.

To share in the age: That this father too receives an "age," according to Gregory the Theologian, as the declaration of continuous existence, that is, of always being. And a temporal age is glorified: a temporal age is the phrase in the Psalms: "he labored into the age and will live to the end." But an eternal time is the phrase in the Apostle, such as "before eternal times," and "in times eternal having been kept silent"; and in Moses: "it shall be for you a possession into the age." Note that the age to come is incorruptible and always in the same state.

Or rather we know them: Clearly the saints themselves. Note that he calls intelligible things "beings," with which he also numbers the age, while sensible things he calls "genesis," of which he indicates time also consists. You have these perfectly in the fifth chapter. Not simply coeternal with God: Most wisely he secures the hearer for piety, saying that the things called eternal must not be supposed to be in this respect also coeternal with God who is before the ages. For already above we said that "eternal" is said properly not of the age itself, but of what partakes of the age; therefore the intelligible things, which are also beings, as having become immortal, and eternal as remaining without end by the will of God, one must call them, since they were also produced by God and did not exist before; and most properly, he safely transfers the venerable doctrines of the Greek philosophers to piety. He says, then, that the incorporeal powers created by God are beings and eternal, yet not coeternal with God, as the Greeks babble, saying, "God at once, all things at once.

These things that come into being, he says, are the earthly bodies, which they also call generation and corruption, since they are of the substance of matter, and all things below the moon are denser. And there are things in between—that is, between eternal things and things that have come into being, or between denser and earthly bodies, of things that come into being and pass away frequently into generation and corruption. These intermediate things are themselves also bodies, yet they partake of an age and in some way of time. The intermediate things are heaven and all the stars; for these too are bodies, even if more finely divided, and the purest part of matter, as the Apostle says: "heavenly bodies and earthly bodies"; then, clarifying what kind they are, he adds: "one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars." The higher heaven, then, and the earth came into being in the ages; for before the light was created, which was also called day, they were made, as Moses says. In temporal intervals came the firmament and the stars—though they are bodies and within time, for they are both tangible and visible, yet they will be eternal, partaking themselves also of the age, as our bodies too are transformed into incorruption. As the Apostle also makes clear, saying, "the form of this world is passing away," not the world. Therefore it is also said in the Psalms concerning these intermediate bodies: "He established them for an age, and for an age of ages; he set a decree, and it shall not pass away." Note, then, that the stars and the sun and the moon and the heaven are bodies more finely divided, and by God's will they have become immortal, as our bodies also become after the resurrection.

Otherwise. He called angels and souls "middle" between things that are and things that come into being, sharing in part in the age (aion) through being incorruptible and immortal, and in part in time through being seen in generation.

Therefore he calls these things both temporal and eternal; for he said beforehand that the things that remain are made clear by the age, that is, (14 340) as many things as are also said about God, while the things in generation are made clear by time. Even if people hear "eternal" and "temporal," one must not take these simply in that way, but, he says, according to the modes recognized by them, that is, those that are clearly believed. ON CHAPTER 11 § 1. "Ruler of the synagogue" — peace: Note that he called God "ruler of the synagogue," and understand the "divisible multitude" as the perceptible. On the whole unity: Some took the "whole unity" to be the simple and indivisible cause of beings, to which all things have turned back, as subsisting in it; others took it to be the harmony of the universe, compounded from elements of different natures. Therefore he also named the innate opposition of the qualities in them a "civil war"—hot against cold, moist against dry, and likewise the others—which have been united into the completion of one world.

Since it exists for a uniform dwelling: Do not think, as the godless Manichaeans do, that matter, warring against itself, brought forth these demons, but that by nature the moist is hostile to the dry, and the cold to the hot; for God joins even things that are so disposed into friendship and the cohesion of the whole. Understand the intestine conflict, then, as innate. At any rate, the elder powers: He calls the elder powers not simply the order of the seraphim, but those that have the precedence for gathering, that is, joining, the subordinate powers to the divine illuminations; for they themselves receive the first theophany; and that indivisibly, that is, not in part for some, but all at once for the whole. To be poured out toward the infinite: He now refutes the great errors of the Greek philosophers and leads them toward piety; for since many among them were at variance, some saying that all things come to be from opposition and war through strife and battle, others that all things are created from friendship and concord alone, and not caring for God as is fitting, he, transferring their coinages to correctness, sets God over the whole as both maker and gatherer, understanding the intestine war of the whole to be the natural disharmony of incorporeal and immaterial and intelligible things toward bodies and material and sensible things; for these are unlike and discordant to their essences; "for the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.

Not only this, but some also say that all perceptible things, that is, bodies, are infinite and perish into infinity, and that the mixture of all things—which he calls infinity—turning into difference and separation and parts, is distinguished and separated into generations, and from this the distance increasing all the more, and not only purifying the mixed things of things unsuited by nature and alien, but already being carried to cutting and crushing of things suited by nature, and leading the compounds into all dissimilarity and difference, all things are dissolved and perish except the simple, that is, the elements, and they call this war—the not allowing the wholes to be united. The great Dionysius, being a lover of the truth, says that God looses such a natural war, as I said (for he calls this natural, the intestine war, just as he calls the kindred the same in kind), instead of the intestine war, granting peace and harmony and concord to the whole, and holding all things together in himself and reconciling them, as the Apostle says, and he will reconcile the heavenly things to the earthly things, through which he unites the powers appointed to each individual and administering in a ministerial way, by the love of those subject to them, and turns all things to himself, piloting and holding all things together.

Which the sacred Justus calls aphthēxia. Note concerning Justus, and that he names the peace of God aphthēxia and immobility. And the Acts of the holy apostles make mention of this holy Justus, saying that he was also called Joseph. Rather, then, he both wrote something and also used unwritten teachings. And this, then, is set forth as evidence of the antiquity of the holy Dionysius, and that he flourished together with the apostles themselves and the apostolic men. Note that those divine men also used philosophical terms, naming the peace of God aphthēxia and immobility.

It abandons its own union: Here he calls union the simple and unified, that is, the indivisible.

Remaining wholly within: That is, passing over and abandoning its own hiddenness.

Its intelligible and spoken: He means intelligible and spoken participations, as many as we are permitted to understand through what has been said in Scripture.

§ 2. According to their unconfused union: That he also calls union that which comes into composition, even if it be dissimilar; and what he means, which he earlier called internecine war. Nevertheless pure: Even if the elements, he says, have an indivisible mixture and intertwining with one another, nevertheless their qualities do not destroy their extremeness—for example, the hot, the dry, and the rest in the blending of things of different kinds—the extremeness observed in the whole.