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44. Let us not tolerate the thoughts that belittle our sins and that divine that their forgiveness has already taken place. For the Lord, safeguarding us concerning them, said: "Take heed to yourselves from false prophets, who will come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves." For as long as our mind is troubled by sin, we have not yet obtained its forgiveness; for we have not yet produced fruits worthy of repentance. The fruit of repentance is the dispassion of the soul; and dispassion is the erasure of sin. But we do not yet have perfect dispassion, being sometimes troubled by the passions and sometimes not troubled. Therefore we have not perfectly obtained the forgiveness of sins. For we were freed from the ancestral sin through holy baptism, but from sins dared after baptism we are freed through repentance. 45. Let us therefore repent genuinely, so that, being freed from the passions, we may obtain the forgiveness of sins. Let us despise things temporary, so that we do not, by fighting with people on account of them, transgress the commandment of love and fall away from the love of God. "Let us walk in the Spirit, and we shall certainly not fulfill the desire of the flesh." Let us be watchful, let us be sober, let us cast off henceforth the sleep of laziness. Let us be zealous for the holy athletes of the Savior; let us imitate their struggles, forgetting the things behind and stretching forward to the things ahead.

Let us imitate their unceasing course, their fervent zeal, the endurance of their self-control, the sanctification of their chastity, the nobility of their patience, the forbearance of their long-suffering, the compassion of their sympathy, the calmness of their meekness, the warmth of their zeal, the sincerity of their love, the height of their humility, the simplicity of their poverty, their courage, their kindness, their gentleness.

Let us not be slackened by pleasures, nor relaxed in our thoughts, nor defile our conscience; let us pursue peace with all, and sanctification, without which no one will see the Lord. And besides these things, brothers, let us flee the world and the ruler of this world. Let us abandon the flesh and the things of the flesh. Let us run up to the heavens; there let us have our citizenship. Let us imitate the divine Apostle, let us attain to the Author of life, let us enjoy the fountain of life. Let us dance with the angels, let us hymn with the archangels our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

CHAPTERS 200 ON THEOLOGY AND THE INCARNATE DISPENSATION OF THE SON OF GOD: ONE HUNDRED (1) God is one, without beginning, incomprehensible, possessing wholly the entire power of being, and utterly rejecting the notion of when and how he is; as being inaccessible to all, and known by none of existing things through natural impression. (2) God is not for his own sake, as far as we are able to know; nor is he beginning, nor middle, nor end, nor anything at all else of the things naturally contemplated in those after him; for he is undefined and immovable and infinite, as being infinitely beyond all essence and power and activity. (3) Every essence, introducing its own limit into itself, is by nature a beginning of the motion contemplated in it according to power. And every natural motion toward activity, being conceived after the essence, but conceived before the activity, is a middle, as being naturally distinguished in the middle of both; and every activity, naturally circumscribed by the principle according to it, is the end of the essential motion before it according to conception.

(14) 448 (4) God is not essence, in the sense of essence spoken of simply or in some way, so that he would also be a beginning; nor is he power, in the sense of power spoken of simply or in some way, so that he would also be a middle; nor is he activity, in the sense of activity spoken of simply or in some way, so that he would also be the end of the essential motion pre-conceived in accordance with power; but he is an essence-making and super-essential reality; and a power-making and super-powerful foundation; and an active and unending state of every activity; and, to speak concisely, the maker of every essence and power and activity, of beginning and middle and end. (5) Beginning and middle and end are marks of things divided by time; and one who speaks truly might say also of things seen together in an age. For time, having its motion measured, is circumscribed by number; but the age, having the category of "when" co-conceived with its existence, undergoes interval, since it received a beginning of being. But if time and the age are not without beginning, much more the things contained in them.

(16) One and alone by nature, God always is properly so called, encompassing in himself the whole of proper being in every way, as being even superior to proper being itself. But if this is so, none of the things said to be has, in any way at all, proper being as a whole. Therefore nothing at all that is different in essence is contemplated together with him from eternity: not an age, not time, nor any of the things that dwell in these. For proper being and not-proper being never coincide with each other. (17) Every beginning and middle and end does not deny the whole relational category throughout; but God, being altogether beyond every relation, infinitely and inexpressibly superior, is reasonably neither beginning nor middle nor end.

Nor is there anything at all besides those things in which the category of relation can be contemplated according to relation.

(8) All beings are spoken of as being understood, possessing the principles of the knowledge directed toward them as things not demonstrated; but God is named as not being understood, but is believed only to exist from the things that are understood; therefore nothing of the things understood is compared to him in any respect.

(9) The knowledges of beings have their own principles naturally connected for demonstration, by which they naturally submit to circumscription; but God is believed only to exist through the principles in beings, giving to the pious, more firmly than all demonstration, the confession and faith that he truly is. For faith is true knowledge possessing principles that are not demonstrated, as being the subsistence of things that are beyond intellect and reason.

(10) God is the beginning and middle and end of beings, as acting, but not being acted upon like all other things by which he is named by us. For he is beginning as creator; and middle, as provider; and end, as consummation. For from him, it says, and through him, and unto him are all things. (11) No rational soul is by essence more honorable than a rational soul. For God, creating every soul in his own image as good, brings it forth self-moved into being; but each one, according to its disposition, either chooses honor or willingly accepts dishonor through its works.

(12) God is the sun of righteousness, as it is written, shining the rays of his goodness simply upon all; but the soul, either as wax if it is a lover of God, or as clay if it is a lover of matter, is naturally disposed to become according to its inclination. Just as, then, clay by nature is dried by the sun, while wax is naturally softened, so also every soul that is a lover of matter and a lover of the world, being admonished by God and resisting like clay according to its inclination, is hardened, and thrusts itself, like Pharaoh, toward destruction; but every soul that is a lover of God is softened like wax, and receiving the impressions and characters of divine things, becomes a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (13) He who has illumined his intellect with divine thoughts, and accustomed his reason to honor the Creator unceasingly with divine hymns, and sanctified his senses with pure impressions—this man has added to the natural beauty according to the image the deliberate good according to the likeness.

(14) A man keeps his soul spotless for God if he forces his mind to think about God alone and his virtues; and appoints his reason as a correct interpreter and expounder of these same virtues; and teaches his senses to form images of the visible world and all things in it in a pious manner, proclaiming to the soul the greatness of the principles within them. (15) God, who freed us from the bitter slavery of the tyrannical demons, has granted us the humane yoke of piety—humility; through which every diabolical power is subdued, and every good is produced for those who choose it, and is preserved free from treachery. (16) He who believes, fears.

But the one who fears is humbled; and the one who is humbled is made gentle, having received an inactive state of the unnatural movements of anger and desire; and the gentle man keeps the commandments; and the one who keeps the commandments is purified; and the one who is purified is illumined; and the one who is illumined is deemed worthy in the treasury of the mysteries to lie with the Bridegroom Word. (14) Just as a farmer, intending to transplant one of the wild trees to a suitable plot of ground, falls upon an unexpected treasure, so too every humble-minded and unaffected ascetic, and one who is smooth in soul from material roughness, according to the most blessed Jacob, when asked by the Father the manner of his knowledge: "What is this that you found so quickly, child?" answers, saying: "What the Lord God has delivered before me." For when God delivers to us the wise contemplations of his own wisdom without labor, unexpectedly, we should think that we have suddenly found a spiritual treasure. For the spiritual farmer is the approved ascetic, transplanting the contemplation of visible things toward sense, as a wild tree, to the region of intelligible things; and finding a treasure, the manifestation by grace of the wisdom that is in existing things.

(18) Knowledge of divine contemplations, falling suddenly upon the ascetic who did not expect it because of his humility, breaks down the reasoning of the one who seeks this knowledge by effort and toil for the sake of display, and does not find it; and it begets in the foolish man envy against his brother for no reason, and the study of murder, and grief for himself, because he does not have the elation that comes from praises.

(19) Those who seek knowledge with toil and fail, either fail through unbelief, or perhaps because, being about to contend in rivalry without natural aptitude, they are to be lifted up against those who know, as the people of old were against Moses; to whom the law will rightly say, that some, forcing their way, went up into the mountain, and the Amorite who dwelt in that mountain came out and wounded them. For it is necessary that those who, for the sake of display, fashion virtue in outward form should not only go astray (corrupting piety) but also be wounded by their own conscience. (20) Let the one who desires knowledge for the sake of display, and fails, neither envy his neighbor nor be grieved; but let him make his preparation in one of the neighboring things, as has been commanded; in action, first laboring in the body, let him prepare knowledge for the soul.

(21) Those who approach beings rightly with piety, and invent no manner of love of display, will find the all-radiant contemplations of beings coming to meet them beforehand, producing in them the most exact comprehension of themselves; to whom the law says: Enter and inherit great and good cities, and houses full of all good things, which you did not build; and hewn cisterns, which you did not hew; and vineyards and olive groves, which you did not plant. For he who lives not for himself but for God becomes full of all the divine gifts; which for a time do not appear because of the pressing disturbance of the passions. (22) Just as perception is spoken of in two ways: one, according to habit, which is ours even when we are asleep, apprehending nothing of the things that lie before it; from which there is no benefit, if it is not directed toward activity; and the other, according to activity, through which we apprehend sensible things; so also knowledge is twofold: one, scientific, gathering the principles of beings according to habit alone; from which there is no benefit, if it is not extended toward the activity of the commandments; and the other, practical according to activity, bringing the true comprehension of beings itself through experience.

(23) The hypocrite, as long as he seems to escape notice, keeps quiet, hunting the reputation of seeming to be righteous. But when he is found out, he puts forward deadly arguments, thinking to conceal his own shamefulness by reviling others; the Word, likening him to a brood of vipers, as one turning back, commanded him to produce fruits worthy of repentance—that is, to transform the hidden disposition of his heart to match his visible manners. (24) Some say that every creature which is not judged clean by the law of the living things in the air, on the earth, and in the sea is a beast, even if it seems gentle in character; and the Word addresses each of these to men from their own passion.

(25) He who feigns friendship for the harm of his neighbors is a wolf, concealing his own wickedness under a hide. When he finds a bare character—either a word according to Christ spoken or done in simplicity—he snatches and destroys it, pouring out countless reproaches against those whose words or manners he attacks, like a spy against the freedom of the brethren in Christ.

(26) The one who keeps silence for the sake of malice contrives deceit against his neighbor; failing in this, he departs, having added pain to his own passion. But the one who is silent for the sake of benefit has increased friendship, and will depart rejoicing, as one who has received illumination that releases from darkness.

(27) The one who rashly cuts short the hearing of words in an assembly has not escaped notice, being sick with vainglory; captured by it, he throws out countless courses and circuits of propositions, wishing to break the chain of what is being said. (28) The wise man, both teaching and being taught, wishes only the things that profit to be taught and to teach; but the one who seems wise, both questioning and being questioned, puts forward only the more curious matters. (29) Of the good things which anyone has partaken of by the grace of God, he is a debtor to impart them generously to others also. For freely, it says, you received, freely give. For the one who hides the gift under the earth slanders the Lord as harsh, abjuring virtue out of sparing of the flesh. But the one who sells the truth to enemies, later caught as a vainglorious man, cannot bear the shame and hangs himself. (30) Those who still fear the war against the passions, and who dread the incursion of the unseen enemies, must be silent; that is, they must not take up the manner of argument against virtue, but must entrust the care for themselves to God through prayer; to whom it is said in Exodus: The Lord will fight for you, and you shall be silent. But those who already, after the destruction of their persecutors, seek the ways of the virtues for grateful learning, ought to have only the ear of the mind opened; to whom it says, Hear, O Israel.

To the one who longs intensely for divine knowledge because of purification, reverent boldness is fitting; to him it shall be said, "Why do you cry out to me?" Therefore, for the one to whom silence has been commanded because of fear, only flight to God is suitable; for the one who is exhorted to listen, readiness for obedience to the divine commandments is fitting; and for the one who is knowledgeable, it is fitting to cry out unceasingly through supplication, both for the aversion of evils and for thanksgiving for participation in good things.

(31) Never can the soul be stretched out toward the knowledge of God unless God himself, employing condescension, touches it and leads it up to himself. For the human mind would not have had such strength to run back up as to grasp some divine illumination, unless God himself had drawn it up, as it was possible for a human mind to be drawn up, and had illumined it with divine rays. (32) The one who imitates the disciples of the Lord does not refuse, because of the Pharisees, to make a way on the Sabbath through the grainfields and to pluck ears of grain, but after the practical life, having come into impassibility, he gathers up the principles of created things, piously nourished by the divine knowledge of beings. (33) The one who is faithful only according to the Gospel removes the mountain of his wickedness through action, thrusting away from himself, by the unstable motion of things perceived by sense, his former disposition toward them. But the one who is able to be a disciple, receiving from the Word the fragments of the loaves of knowledge in his hands, feeds thousands, showing by action the multiplied power of the Word. And the one who has been strong enough to be an Apostle also heals every disease and sickness, casting out demons.

that is, banishing the activity of the passions; healing the sick, and leading back by hope to a state of piety those who have been deprived of it, and rebuking with the word of judgment those who have been enfeebled by hesitation. For having been commanded to tread upon serpents and scorpions, he destroys the beginning and the end of sin.

(34) The apostle and disciple is certainly also a believer; but the disciple is not certainly also an apostle, though certainly a believer. But the one who is only a believer is neither disciple nor apostle; yet it is possible, through life and contemplation, for the third to be transferred to the rank and worth of the second, and the second to that of the first. (35) All things that are created in time and according to time stand still when they have been perfected, ceasing from their natural growth. But all things that are wrought according to virtue by the knowledge of God, when perfected, are again moved toward growth. For their ends have been established as beginnings of other things. For he who has brought to rest in himself, through the virtues in practice, the substance of corruptible things, has begun other, more divine formations; for God never ceases from good things, of which he had no beginning either. For as it is proper to light to enlighten, so it is proper to God to do good. Therefore, by the law, which narrates the temporal constitution of things in generation and corruption, the Sabbath is honored through idleness; but by the Gospel, which introduces the state of intelligible things, it is made bright through the doing of good works; even if those who have not yet understood that the Sabbath came into being for the sake of man, and not man for the sake of the Sabbath, and that the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath, are indignant.

There is for the Law and the Prophets both a Sabbath and Sabbaths and a Sabbath of Sabbaths, just as there is also a circumcision and a circumcision of circumcision, and a harvest and a harvest of harvest, according to what is said: When you reap your harvest. The first, then, is the completion of practical, natural, and theological philosophy. The second is the release from generation and from the principles that pertain to generation. The third is the offering and enjoyment of the more spiritual principles that pertain to sense and intellect. And this, evidently, happens threefold in each of the things said, so that the one who has knowledge may know the principles according to which Moses, dying, keeps Sabbath outside the holy land; and Joshua the son of Nun, having crossed the Jordan, circumcises; and those who inherit the good land bring to God the offering of the double harvest that is by super-position.

A Sabbath is the dispassion of a rational soul, when through the practical life it has completely cast off the stains of sin. Sabbaths are the freedom of a rational soul, when through the natural contemplation that is in the Spirit it has laid aside even the activity that is according to nature toward sense. A Sabbath of Sabbaths is the spiritual rest of a rational soul, when it has drawn the intellect back from all the more divine principles that are among beings, and has wholly bound it to God alone through a loving ecstasy, and has made it completely motionless in God through the mystical disposition of surrender. Circumcision is the laying aside of the passible disposition of the soul concerning generation.

(41) There is a circumcision of circumcision, which is the complete casting away and removal even of the natural movements of the soul itself pertaining to generation. (42) There is a harvest of the rational soul, the gathering and recognition, with knowledge, of the more spiritual principles of things according to virtue and nature. (43) There is a harvest of harvest, the comprehension of God that stands unknowably around the intellect after the mystical contemplation of intelligible things, inaccessible to all; which the one who worthily honors the Creator from the visible and invisible creatures duly offers. (44) There is also another, more spiritual harvest, said to be God's own; and another more mystical circumcision; and another more hidden Sabbath, in which God, keeping Sabbath from His own works, rests, according to, The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers are few. And, Circumcision of the heart in the spirit. And, God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He ceased from all His works which God began to do. (45) There is a harvest of God, the abiding and establishment wholly of the worthy in Him, which takes place at the consummation of the ages. (46) In the spirit, circumcision of the heart is the complete removal of the natural activities of things perceptible and intelligible, according to sense and intellect, through the presence of the Spirit, which transforms both body and soul wholly and directly toward the more divine.

(47) The Sabbath of God is the complete descent of created things into him, according to which he ceases from the natural activity upon them, while his own most divine activity is ineffably wrought. For God ceases from the natural activity in each of the things that exist, according to which each of them is naturally moved, whenever each, having partaken proportionately of the divine activity, defines its own natural activity around God himself. (48) The zealous must inquire what works of God, of those he began at creation, it is fitting to understand, and again what works are of those he did not begin. For if he ceased from all the works that he began to make, it is clear that he did not cease from those he did not begin to make. Perhaps, then, the works of God that began in time to be are all the things that exist and partake—for example, the various essences of beings. For non-being is older than their being. For there was once a time when the things that exist and partake were not. But the works of God that perhaps did not begin in time to be are the things that exist and are partaken of, of which the things that exist partake by grace—for example, goodness, and whatever is contained in the principle of goodness. And simply all life, and immortality, and simplicity, and immutability, and infinity, and whatever is contemplated essentially around him—these are also works of God, and did not begin in time. For there was never a time when virtue was not, nor any other of the things mentioned, even if the things that partake of them, taken in themselves, began to be in time. For every virtue is without beginning, having no time older than itself, since it has God alone as its eternal begetter of being.

(49) God is infinitely and beyond infinity removed from all beings, from all that partake and all that are partaken of. For whatever possesses the principle of being predicated of it is a work of God; and even if one thing has begun to be in time by generation, while another has been implanted by grace in things that have come to be, like some innate power, it proclaims far and wide the God who is in all things.

(50) All immortal things, and immortality itself; all living things, and life itself; all holy things, and holiness itself; all virtuous things, and virtue itself; all good things, and goodness itself; and all beings, and being itself, are manifestly works of God. But some have begun to be in time—for there was once a time when they were not—while others have not begun to be in time. For there was never a time when virtue and goodness and holiness and immortality were not. And those that have begun in time are, and are called, what they are and are called, by participation in those that have not begun in time. For God is the creator of all life and immortality, of holiness and virtue; for he is removed beyond the essence of all things both conceived and spoken.

(51) The sixth day, according to Scripture, introduces the completion of things that exist by nature; the seventh defines the movement of temporal particularity; the eighth indicates the manner of the state that is above nature and time.

(52) He who keeps only the sixth day according to the law, fleeing the dominion of the passions that by their activity crush the soul, crosses fearlessly through the sea to the desert, keeping sabbath only from the inactivity of the passions. But he who has crossed the Jordan and left behind even that state in which the passions alone are idle, has come to the inheritance of the virtues. (53) He who keeps the sixth day according to the Gospel, having first put to death the first movements of sin, reaches through the virtues the desert of all wickedness, the state of dispassion, keeping sabbath in mind even from the bare fantasy of the passions. But he who has passed over the Jordan is transferred to the region of knowledge, in which the mind, mystically built up as a temple by peace, becomes a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

(54) He who in a divine manner has completed for himself the sixth day together with the fitting works and thoughts, and has himself, together with God, rightly brought to completion his own works, has passed through in understanding the whole substance of things under nature and time, and has been transferred to the mystical contemplation of the ages and of eternal things, keeping sabbath in an unknowing way in his mind—the total abandonment and transcendence of things that exist. And he who has been deemed worthy of the eighth day has risen from the dead—I mean from all things after God, both sensible and intelligible, both words and thoughts—and has lived the blessed life of God, who alone is in truth properly both called and is life; as he himself also became god by deification.

(55) The sixth day is the complete fulfillment of the practical activities according to nature that concern virtue; the seventh is the completion and cessation of all natural thoughts in the theoretical contemplation of the ineffable knowledge; and the eighth is the translation and passage of those who are worthy to deification. And perhaps the Lord, hinting at this seventh and eighth day in a more mystical way, called it the day and hour of consummation, as encompassing all the mysteries and principles. These the heavenly and earthly Powers will in no way be able to know before the experience of suffering, except the blessed Godhead itself who does these things.

(56) The sixth day indicates the principle of the being of things that exist; the seventh signifies the manner of the well-being of things that exist; the eighth suggests the ineffable mystery of the ever well-being of things that exist. (57) Knowing that the sixth day is a symbol of practical activity, let us fulfill in it the whole debt of the works of virtue, so that it may be said also of us, "And God saw all things whatsoever he had made, and behold, they were very good."

(58) He fulfills the debt of the good work praised by God who, through the body, labors lovingly for the soul in the well-ordered variety of the virtues. (59) He who has completed the preparation of the works of righteousness has passed over to the rest of gnostic contemplation, in which, having encompassed the principles of things that exist in a manner befitting God, he rests from the movement of the mind concerning them. (60) He who has partaken of God's hebdomadal rest for our sake, and by participation in his ogdoadic activity for our sake according to deification—that is, the mystical resurrection—he too, having left the linen cloths lying in the tomb and the napkin that was upon his head, which if some Peter and John behold, they believe that the Lord has risen.

(61) The Lord's tomb is perhaps this world, or the heart of each of the faithful. The linen cloths are the principles of things perceived by the senses together with the modes of virtue; the napkin is the simple and unvariegated knowledge of things intelligible together with the theology that is possible, by which the Word was formerly made known, having altogether no room for us apart from these things—the comprehension that is beyond them. (62) Those who bury the Lord honorably will also behold him risen in glory; but to all who are not such as these he is invisible. For he is no longer catchable by those who plot against him, since he no longer has the outward veils through which he seemed, of his own will, to be caught by those who wished it, and endured to suffer for the salvation of all.

(63) The one who buries the Lord honorably is venerable to all who love God; for he rightly rescued him from triumph and reproach, not leaving to the unbelievers a ground for blasphemy—namely, his being nailed to the wood. But those who set seals on the tomb and station soldiers in front are hateful for their undertaking; they even slander the Word who has risen as having been stolen—buying the soldiers with silver, as they did the false disciple for betrayal (I mean the ostentatious mode of virtue), so too for the slander of the risen Savior. The one who has knowledge (gnostikos) knows the emphasis of what is said, not being ignorant of how and in how many ways the Lord is crucified, buried, and raised: as it were putting to death the passionate thoughts that sit in the heart under the influence of demons, and the modes of ethical propriety that are divided amid temptations like garments.

and transcending, as it were seals, the impressions imposed on the soul by sins committed through preconception.

(64) Every lover of money, who hypocritically disguises virtue under the appearance of piety, once he finds the material he desires to procure, renounces the manner of life by which he was formerly thought to be a disciple of the Word.

(65) When you see certain proud men who cannot bear to hear their betters praised, and who contrive to make the truth that is spoken go unproclaimed, barring it with countless temptations and lawless slanders, understand again that the Lord is being crucified and buried by them, and is being guarded by soldiers and seals. Turning these things upon themselves, the Word rises again, appearing the more by being warred against, being sharpened toward impassibility through sufferings. For he is stronger than all things, being and being called the truth.

(66) The mystery of the incarnation of the Word contains the power of all the riddles and types in Scripture, and the knowledge of things visible and things intelligible among created things. And he who has understood the mystery of the cross and burial has understood the principles of the things foretold; and he who has been initiated into the ineffable power of the resurrection has understood the purpose for which God primarily established all things.

(67) All things that appear need a cross, since the habitual state holds back the relation of the things that are actively produced in them according to sense; and all things that are understood need burial, since there is a complete immobility of the things that are actively produced in them according to the mind. For when the natural activity and motion concerning all things is destroyed together with the relation, the word alone, existing for itself, appears as if raised from the dead, possessing all things that come from it according to circumscription, since nothing at all has kinship to it by natural relation. For the salvation of those who are saved is by grace, and not by nature.

(68) Ages, times, and places are among the things relative to something; without these, none of the things co-conceived with them exists. But God is not among things relative to something; for he has nothing at all co-conceived with him. If, then, God himself is the inheritance of those who are worthy, the one deemed worthy of this grace will be beyond all ages and times and places, having God himself as his place, according to what is written: Be to me a God for a protector, and for a strong place, to save me. (69) The end has nothing at all resembling mediacy; since it is not even an end. But mediacy is all things after the beginning that are behind the end. If, then, all ages and times and places, together with all things co-conceived with them, are after God, who is a beginning without beginning, and are far behind his infinite end, they differ in nothing from mediacy; but the end of those who are saved is God, and nothing of mediacy will be contemplated together with those who are saved, having come to the uttermost end.

(70) The whole world, being bounded by its own principles, is called both a place and an age by those who live in it, having by nature the modes of contemplation that are natural to it, which are able to produce in them a partial understanding of the wisdom of God that extends to all things. As long as they use these for understanding, they cannot be without mediation and partial comprehension. But since the partial, when the perfect appears, is done away with, and all mirrors and all riddles pass away when the truth comes face to face, the one who is saved, perfected according to God, will be beyond all worlds and ages and places, by which for a time he was led as a child.

(71) Pilate is a type of the natural law; the multitude of the Jews, of the written law. Therefore the one who has not become, by faith, greater than both laws cannot receive the truth that is beyond nature and reason, but crucifies the Word altogether—either as a Jew, regarding the Gospel as a stumbling block, or as a Greek, as foolishness.

(72) When you see Herod and Pilate becoming friends with each other over the killing of Jesus, then understand the collusion against him: the demon of fornication and the demon of vainglory agreeing with each other to put to death the word of virtue and knowledge. For the vainglorious demon, pretending to spiritual knowledge, hands over to the demon of vainglory. Therefore, it says, Herod, having clothed Jesus in a bright garment, sent him back to Pilate.

(73) It is good not to allow the mind to cling to the flesh and the passions. For, it says, they do not gather figs from thorns—that is, virtue from the passions—nor a grape from a bramble.

that is, from the flesh, the knowledge that gladdens. (74) The ascetic, being tested through endurance of temptations, purified through bodily discipline, and perfected through the study of lofty contemplations, is deemed worthy of divine consolation. For the Lord, says Moses, comes from Sinai—that is, from temptations; and He has appeared to us from Seir—that is, from bodily labors; and He has rested from Mount Paran with ten thousands of Kadesh—that is, from the mountain of faith with ten thousands of holy knowledges. (75) Herod stands for the principle of the fleshly mind; Pilate for sense perception; Caesar for things perceptible; the Jews for the soul's reasonings. When, then, the soul out of ignorance attaches itself to perceptible things, it betrays the Logos to sense perception unto death, ratifying against itself by confession the kingdom of corruptible things. For the Jews say, We have no king but Caesar. (76) Herod stands for the place of the passions' activity; Pilate for the deceived habit regarding them; Caesar for the dark world-ruler; the Jews for the soul. Whenever, then, the soul, having bowed down to the passions, hands over virtue as a captive to the habit of vice, it plainly denies the kingdom of God and betakes itself to the destructive tyranny of the devil.

(67) The subjection of the passions is not sufficient for the soul's spiritual gladness, unless it acquires the virtues through the fulfillment of the commandments. For he says, Do not rejoice that the demons are subject to you—that is, the workings of the passions—but that your names have been written in heaven, translated by the grace of adoption through the virtues to the place of dispassion.

(68) The wealth of the virtues that comes through practice is altogether necessary for the one who has knowledge. For he says, The one who has a purse—that is, spiritual knowledge—let him take likewise a bag—that is, the abundance of the virtues that richly nourishes the soul. But the one who does not have a purse, clearly, and a bag—that is, knowledge and virtue—let him sell his cloak and buy a sword. Let him give up, he says, his own flesh eagerly to the labors of the virtues, and let him wisely take up, for the sake of the peace of God, the war against the passions and the demons—that is, the habit, in the word of God, that discerns the worse from the better. (69) The Lord appears when he is thirty years old, teaching those who see clearly by this number the mysteries concerning himself in a hidden way. For the number thirty, mystically understood, shows the Lord as creator and provider of time, of nature, and of the intelligible things that are above visible nature. Of time, through the seven—for time is hebdomadic; of nature, through the five—for nature is pentadic, since sensation is divided fivefold; of intelligible things, through the eight—for the generation of intelligible things is beyond the measured cycle of time; and provider, through the ten.

Both because of the holy decade of the commandments, which leads men toward the good, and because the Lord mystically began with the initial letter of this name when He became man. For having joined the five, and the seven, and the eight, and the ten, you fill up the number thirty. Therefore, he who knows how to follow the Lord well as his leader will not be ignorant of the reason by which he too will appear as thirty years old, being able to proclaim the Gospel of the kingdom. For when he has blamelessly created, as it were some visible nature, the world of the practice of the virtues, not having altered the cycle that occurs in the soul itself, as it were some time, through things contrary, and through contemplation will faultlessly reap the knowledge of intelligible things, and has been able providentially to implant the same disposition in others as well—then he too, insofar as he has bodily stature, is thirty years old in spirit, manifesting together the activity of his own good things in others.

(80) He who has been slackened by the pleasures of the body is neither active toward virtue nor easily moved toward knowledge. Hence he does not even have a man—that is, a prudent reason—so that when the water is troubled, he might cast him into the pool—that is, into the virtue receptive of knowledge, which heals every disease, unless perhaps through laziness the sick man, putting it off, is anticipated by another who prevents him from receiving the healing. Therefore he lies down with his sickness for thirty-eight years.

For he who does not contemplate the visible creation for the glory of God, and does not piously raise his understanding toward the intelligible nature, reasonably remains sick for the said number of years. For the number thirty, taken naturally, signifies the sensible nature; just as, considered practically, it signifies practical virtue. And the number eight, understood naturally, indicates the intelligible nature of incorporeal beings; just as, contemplated gnostically, it signifies all-wise theology. He who is not moved toward God in these remains paralyzed, until the Word comes and teaches him the short way of healing, saying: Arise, take up your bed, and walk; commanding the mind to rise up from the pleasure-loving disposition that holds it, and to take up the body on the shoulders of the virtues, and to depart to the house—that is, to heaven.

For it is good, by the stronger, to lift the weaker on the shoulders of practice toward virtue, rather than that the stronger be carried by the weaker through luxury toward pleasure-loving disposition.

(230) Until we have passed cleanly in thought beyond our own essence and that of all things after God, we have not yet received the stable habit of virtue. But whenever this dignity has been accomplished in us through love, then we shall know the power of the divine promise. For we must believe that those who are worthy are there in an unchangeable establishment, where the mind, going before through love, has rooted its own power. For he who has not gone out of himself and beyond all things that can in any way be conceived, and has not come to stand in the silence that is beyond conception, cannot be altogether free from change. (231) Every act of intellection has the appearance of plurality, or at least certainly of duality. For it is a relation of certain extremes, a middle joining them to one another—the one that thinks and the one that is thought. But neither of the two is by nature able to preserve simplicity. For the one that thinks is a subject, having the power of thinking necessarily conceived along with it. And the one that is thought is certainly some subject, or in a subject, having the power of being thought conceived along with it, or else having the essence previously underlying it, of which it is the power. For nothing among beings is, in its entirety, a simple essence or intellection in itself, so as to be also an indivisible monad. But God, if we call him essence, does not have the power of being thought naturally conceived along with him, lest he be composite; and if we call him intellection, he does not have a subject essence naturally receptive of the intellection. But God is himself intellection according to essence, and wholly intellection, and only that; and he is himself essence according to intellection, and wholly essence, and only that.

and wholly beyond essence, and wholly beyond thought, because it is also an indivisible and partless and simple monad. Therefore, he who has any thought at all has not yet gone out from the dyad; but he who has altogether abandoned it has come in some measure to be in the monad, having superessentially laid aside the power of thinking. (233) In the many, there is otherness and unlikeness and difference; but in God, who is properly one and only, there is only sameness and simplicity and likeness. It is not safe, then, before one has gone outside the many, to apply oneself to contemplations concerning God; and Moses makes this clear, pitching the tabernacle of his mind outside the camp, and then conversing with God. For to attempt to speak the ineffable with a spoken word is dangerous, because the spoken word is a dyad and more. But to contemplate the existent without voice, with the soul alone, is most powerful, because it stands in the indivisible monad and not in the many. For the high priest, who was commanded with difficulty to enter once a year into the Holy of Holies within the veil, teaches that only that man ought to do so—the man who has passed through the same things and through the holy places, and has come into the Holy of Holies; that is, the man who has passed beyond the whole nature of sensible and intelligible things, and has become pure of every property that belongs to generation—to approach the imaginings concerning God with a mind unclothed and naked.

(84) Moses the Great, having pitched his tent outside the camp—that is, having established his judgment and his mind outside visible things—begins to worship God; and having entered into the darkness, the formless and immaterial place of knowledge, there he remains, being initiated into the most sacred rites. (85) The darkness is the formless and immaterial and incorporeal state, which possesses the archetypal knowledge of beings; in which he who has come within, like another Moses, contemplates things unseen by a mortal nature; through which, having painted in himself the beauty of the divine virtues, like a painting that bears the image of the archetypal beauty in a well-imitated manner, he descends, presenting himself to those who wish to imitate virtue, and in this showing the love of man and freedom from envy of the grace in which he had participated.

(86) Those who pursue the philosophy according to God without stain find the greatest gain from the knowledge that comes from it: no longer to change their judgment along with circumstances, but with steadfast firmness to undertake eagerly all things that are fitting to the principle of virtue.

(87) Having been baptized in Christ through the Spirit into the first incorruption according to the flesh, we await the last incorruption according to him in the Spirit—evidently through the giving of good works and through death according to purpose—having kept the former undefiled; in which no one of those who possess it fears the loss of the good things acquired.

(88) God, willing to send down grace from heaven to those on earth because of his mercy toward us, symbolically constructed the sacred tabernacle and all things in it, being an image and type and imitation of wisdom.

(89) The grace of the New Testament is mystically hidden in the letter of the Old; therefore the Apostle says that the law is spiritual. The law, then, in its letter grows old and ages, being abolished; but in the spirit it is ever renewed, being made effective. For grace is altogether incapable of growing old. (90) The law has the shadow of the Gospel; but the Gospel is the image of the good things to come. For the one restrains the activities of evils; the other sets forth the practices of good things.

(1) We say that the whole Holy Scripture is divided into flesh and spirit, as being a kind of spiritual man. For he who says that the literal sense of Scripture is flesh, but the meaning is spirit—that is, soul—will miss the truth. But clearly wise is he who has let go of the corruptible and has become wholly of the incorruptible.

(2) The Law is the flesh of the spiritual man according to Holy Scripture; the prophets are the senses; and the Gospel is the rational soul, working through the flesh of the Law and through the senses of the prophets, and displaying its own power in its operations.

(3) The Law had a shadow, and the prophets an image, of the divine and spiritual goods in the Gospel. But the Gospel itself has shown us the truth itself present through the writings—the truth foreshadowed by the Law and prefigured by the prophets. (4) He who fulfills the Law through his life and conduct abstains only from the consequences of evil, sacrificing to God the operation of irrational passions; and with this manner he is content for salvation, because of the spiritual infancy within him.

(14.496 (5)) He who is trained by the prophetic word, in addition to casting off the activity of the passions, also sets aside the soul's assents that are formed toward them, lest, while appearing to abstain from evil by the worse part—I mean the flesh—he should unnoticed be abundantly active in it by the better part—I mean the soul. (6) He who genuinely embraces the evangelical life has cut off evil from himself both in beginning and in end, and pursues every virtue in deed and word, offering a sacrifice of praise and confession, freed from every disturbance of the activity of the passions and being free from the battle against them in the mind, and having his soul nourished by hope alone in the good things to come, an insatiable pleasure.

(7) To the more diligent students of the divine Scriptures, the Word according to the Lord appears having two forms: the one common and more popular and visible to not a few, according to which it is said, "We saw him, and he had no form or beauty"; and the more hidden one, attainable by few, by those who have already become as Peter and James and John, the holy apostles, upon whom the Lord was transfigured into a glory that surpasses sense perception, according to which he is "beautiful in beauty beyond the sons of men." Of these two forms, the former is fitting for those being introduced, while the second is analogous to those perfected in knowledge as far as attainable. And the one is an image of the first coming of the Lord, to which must be assigned the literal sense of the Gospel that purifies the practical through sufferings.

This is a prefiguration of the second and glorious coming, at which the Spirit is understood to be present—the coming by which wisdom transforms the spiritual toward deification, from the transformation of the Word within them, as they behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face.

(8) He who steadfastly endures terrible things for the sake of virtue without being shaken has the first coming of the Word active within him, cleansing him from every stain; but he who has transferred his mind through contemplation to the angelic state has the power of the second coming, effecting in him impassibility and incapacity for capture.

(9) Sensation follows the practical man, who sets the virtues aright through toil; but insensibility follows the spiritual man, who has drawn his mind away from the flesh and the world toward God. For the one, striving through the practical life to loose the soul from the bonds of its natural relation to the flesh, has his judgment continually bowing down under toils; but the other, having drawn out the nails of this relation through contemplation, is altogether held fast by nothing, having already become pure of the capacity to suffer and to be held captive by those who wish to seize him. (10) The manna given to Israel in the desert is the Word of God, suited to every spiritual pleasure for those who eat it, and blended to every taste according to the difference of the eaters' desire. For it possesses the quality of every spiritual food. Therefore to those born from above by the Spirit from incorruptible seed, it becomes pure rational milk; but to the weak, it becomes a vegetable, comforting the suffering power of the soul.

But to those whose soul's senses have been trained by habit for the discernment of good and evil, he gives himself as solid food. The Word of God has also other countless powers, not contained here; but one who has analyzed and become worthy to be established over many, or over all, will receive those whole powers, or certain powers of the Word, because he has been faithful in the least here. For every summit of the divine gifts given here, in comparison with those to come, is something very small and moderate.

(14__500 GNOSTIC CHAPTERS, SECOND HUNDRED (1) One God, because one Godhead; a monad without beginning and simple and supersubstantial; and partless and indivisible; the same monad and Trinity; the whole monad the same, and the whole Trinity the same; the whole monad the same in essence, and the whole Trinity the same in hypostases. For Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit are the Godhead, and in Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit is the Godhead. The whole in the whole Father is the same; and the whole Father is in the whole same; and the whole in the whole Son is the same; and the whole Son is in the whole same. And the whole in the whole Holy Spirit is the same; and the whole Holy Spirit is in the whole same. The whole Father, and in the whole Father; and the whole in the whole Father; and the whole whole Father. And the whole whole Son is the same; and the whole in the whole Son is the same; and the whole whole, and in the whole same is the Son. And the whole Holy Spirit is the same, and in the whole Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is whole whole, and whole in the whole same is the Holy Spirit. For the Godhead is not in part in the Father, nor is the Father God in part;)

Neither is the divinity in the Son in part, nor is the Son God in part; nor is the divinity in the Holy Spirit in part, nor is the Holy Spirit God in part. For the divinity is not divisible, nor is God the Father imperfect, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit; but the same whole divinity is perfectly perfect in the perfect Father; and the same whole divinity is perfectly perfect in the perfect Son; and the same whole divinity is perfectly perfect in the perfect Holy Spirit. For the Father is wholly in the whole Son and Spirit perfectly; and the Son is wholly in the whole Father and Spirit perfectly; and the Holy Spirit is wholly in the whole Father and Son perfectly. Therefore there is one God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For there is one and the same substance and power and energy of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, with none of them existing or being conceived apart from the others. (2) Every act of understanding belongs to those who understand and to the things understood; but God is neither among those who understand nor among the things understood, for he is above these. Otherwise he would be circumscribed, needing the relation of being understood, as one who understands; or naturally falling under the one who understands, being understood through relation. It remains, then, not to suppose that God either understands or is understood, but that he is above both understanding and being understood. For understanding and being understood belong by nature to things after him.

(3) Every intellection, just as it altogether has its position in a substance as a quality, so also it has its motion about a qualified substance. For nothing wholly free and simple, subsisting by itself, is able to receive it, because it is free and simple. But God, being altogether simple in both respects—both a substance without that which is in a subject, and an intellection having nothing whatsoever as a subject—is not among those that think and are thought, since he is evidently above substance and intellection. (4) Just as at the center of the straight lines extended from it the position is contemplated as altogether indivisible, so he who has been deemed worthy to be in God will know all the logoi of created things that pre-exist in him, by a certain simple and indivisible knowledge.

(5) Intellection, being formed by the things thought, the one intellection becomes many intellections, being formed according to each species of the things thought. But whenever, having passed beyond the multitude of sensible and intelligible things that form it, it becomes altogether formless, then the Logos who is above intellection appropriates it in a fitting manner, ceasing the things that are naturally able to alter it by the forms of thoughts; which thing he who suffered also himself ceased from his works, just as God from his own.

(6) Whoever has attained here the perfection accessible to human beings bears fruit for God: love, joy, peace, patience; and, with a view to what is to come, incorruption and eternal being and things like these. And perhaps the first belong to the one who has perfected the practical life, while the second belong to the one who through true knowledge has gone out of created things.

(7) Just as sin is the proper work of disobedience, so virtue is the proper work of obedience; and just as transgression of the commandments and division from the one who gave the commandment follow upon disobedience, so the keeping of the commandments and union with the one who gave the commandment follow upon obedience. At any rate, the one who has kept a commandment through obedience has both worked righteousness and preserved undivided union with the one who gave the commandment through love; while the one who has transgressed a commandment through disobedience has both worked sin and divided himself from the union with the one who gave the commandment that is according to love. (8) The one who is gathered together out of the division that comes from transgression is first separated from the passions; then from impassioned thoughts; then from nature and the principles concerning nature; then from intellections and the kinds of knowledge concerning them; and finally, escaping the variety of the principles concerning Providence, he arrives unknowably at the very principle concerning the Monad, according to which the intellect, having contemplated only its own immutability, rejoices with the ineffable joy, as having received the peace of God that surpasses all understanding and continually guards from falling the one deemed worthy of it.

(9) The fear of Gehenna prepares those who are being initiated to flee from vice; but the longing for the recompense of good things grants to those who are advancing zeal for the active practice of the virtues; but the mystery of love, it raises the mind above all things that have come to be, rendering it blind to all things that are after God. For the Lord makes wise only those who have become blind to all things that are after God, showing them the more divine things.

(10) The Word of God, having been likened to a grain of mustard seed, seems to be very small before its cultivation; but when it has been cultivated as it ought, it is shown to be so great that the noble principles of sensible and intelligible creatures rest upon it like birds. For the principles of all things are contained in it, but it itself is contained by none of existing things. Therefore the Lord said that the one who has faith as a grain of mustard seed is able by his word to remove the mountain; that is, to drive away and displace from its foundation the power of the devil against us. (11) The Lord is the grain of mustard seed, sown according to faith in the Spirit in the hearts of those who receive it; the one who has carefully cultivated it through the virtues removes the mountain of earthly-mindedness, driving away by his authority the hard-to-move habit of his own vice; and he causes the principles of the commandments and the ways of life, or also the divine powers, to rest upon himself like birds of heaven. (12) Building up the height of good things upon the Lord as upon a foundation of faith, let us place upon it gold, silver, precious stones;

that is, pure and unadulterated theology, and a transparent and radiant life, and divine thoughts—the pearl-like understandings; but (14__508) not wood, not hay, nor stubble; that is, neither idolatry (that is, the agitation concerning sensible things), nor an irrational life, nor passionate thoughts, deprived as it were of the ears of corn of understanding according to wisdom.

(13) Let the one who aspires to knowledge fix the foundations of his soul immovably beside the Lord, as God says to Moses: But you, stand here with me. And it must be known that even among those who stand beside the Lord there is a difference, if indeed that saying is not read carelessly by those who love learning: There are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come with power. For the Lord does not always appear in glory to all who stand beside him, but to those being initiated he comes in the form of a servant; but to those able to follow him as he goes up to the high mountain of his transfiguration, he appears in the form of God, in which he was, before the

to be the world. It is possible, then, that the Lord does not appear in the same way to all who are with him, but to some in one way and to others in another, evidently varying the vision according to the measure of faith in each. (14) When the word of God becomes manifest and radiant in us, and his face shines like the sun, then his garments also appear white—that is, the words of the holy Scripture of the Gospels, clear and distinct, and having nothing concealed. But Moses and Elijah also come to be with him—that is, the more spiritual meanings of the law and the prophets. (15) Just as the Son of Man comes, as it is written, with his angels in the glory of the Father, so at each advance in virtue the word of God is transformed for those who are worthy, coming with his angels in the glory of the Father. For the more spiritual meanings in the law and the prophets, which Moses and Elijah prefigure through themselves, appearing with the Lord at the Lord's transfiguration, preserve the proportion of the glory in them, revealing for the time being the power that can be contained by those who are worthy. (16) He who has been initiated to some degree into the account concerning the monad has surely also known the accounts concerning providence and judgment, which accompany it. Therefore he also judges, according to the holy Peter, that it is good for those who have been seen that three tabernacles be made with himself—that is, the three states of salvation: I mean that of virtue, and that of knowledge, and that of theology.

For the one needs the courage and self-control that belong to practice, of which the blessed Elijah was the model; the other, the righteousness that belongs to natural contemplation, which the great Moses proclaimed through himself; and the other, the pure perfection that belongs to prudence, which the Lord made clear. And they were called tents because there are other, better and more glorious dwellings than these, which will receive those who are worthy in the age to come.

(17) The man of practice is said to dwell in the flesh as a sojourner, since he cuts off the soul's attachment to the flesh through the virtues and strips away from himself the deceit of material things. The man of knowledge is said to sojourn even in virtue itself, since he still sees the truth in mirrors and riddles. For the self-subsistent forms of good things have not yet been contemplated by him as they are, through the enjoyment of face to face. For every saint journeys in an image of good things, as toward what is to come, crying out: I am a sojourner and a stranger, as all my fathers were. (18) The one who prays must never stand still in the lofty ascent that leads to God. For just as one must understand ascents according to "from strength to strength"—the progress in the practice of the virtues—and "from glory to glory"—the upward return of the spiritual knowledge of contemplation—and the passage from the literal sense of the holy and divine Scripture to the spirit—so also must one do this in the place of prayer: lift the mind above human things, and the thought of the soul to the more divine things.

so that the mind may also be able to follow Jesus, the Son of God, who has passed through the heavens, who is everywhere and passes through all things for our sake in a providential manner, so that we too, following him, may pass through all things that are after him, and may come to be toward him—if indeed we understand him, not according to the smallness of the providential condescension, but according to the greatness of the natural boundlessness. (19) It is always good to be at leisure and to seek God, as we have been commanded. For even if in the present life we who seek are unable to come to the limit of the depth of God, yet perhaps even by reaching a little of his depth, we behold things holier than holy things, and things more spiritual than spiritual things. And the high priest indicates this typologically, passing from the holy things of the court, which are holier than the holy things, into the Holy of Holies, which are holier than the holy things.

(20) Every word of God is neither many-worded nor is it many words; but it is one, composed of various contemplations, each of which is a part of the word. So that the one who speaks on behalf of truth, even if he is able so to speak as to leave nothing lacking in what is sought, has spoken one word of God.

(21) In Christ, who is God and the Word of the Father, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily according to essence; but in us the fullness of deity dwells according to grace, when we gather in ourselves every virtue and wisdom, in no way, so far as is possible for a human being, falling short of the true imitation of the archetype. For it is not unreasonable that, according to the principle of relation, the fullness of deity should dwell in us also, consisting as it does of various spiritual contemplations.

(22) Just as our own word, proceeding by nature from the mind, is the messenger of the hidden movements of the mind, so the Word of God, who knows the Father according to essence, as a Word knows the Mind that begot him—since no created thing can approach him without him—reveals the Father whom he knows, as a Word by nature, inasmuch as he is also called the Messenger of Great Counsel. (23) The great counsel of God and the Father is the silent and unknown mystery of the economy; which the only-begotten Son, having fulfilled it through the incarnation, revealed, becoming the messenger of the great and eternal counsel of God and the Father. And he becomes a messenger of the great counsel of God, who knows the reason of the mystery, and is raised up through all things in deed and word without ceasing, until he reaches him who came down so far to him. (24) If for our sake the Word of God came down economically to the lower parts of the earth, and ascended above all the heavens, he who is by nature wholly immovable, pre-activating in himself, economically, as a man, the things that are to come;

Let the one who cherishes the friendship of knowledge rejoice and contemplate mystically what is the end promised to those who love the Lord. (25) If for this reason the Son of God and Father, God the Word, became Son of Man and a man—namely, that He might make men gods and sons of God—let us believe that we shall be there where Christ Himself now is as the head of the whole body, and where He has become for us a forerunner to the Father, in our own measure. For in the assembly of gods—of those who are saved—God will stand in the midst, distributing the dignities of the blessedness that is there, having no local separation from those who are worthy.

(26) The one who still fulfills the passionate desires of the flesh dwells in the land of the Chaldeans as an idolater and idol-maker. But when, having distinguished matters a little, he receives a perception of the modes that befit nature, leaving the land of the Chaldeans, he comes to Harran of Mesopotamia—I mean the intermediate state between virtue and vice, the one not yet made pure from the error that comes through sense-perception. For this is Harran. And if he also rises above the measured understanding of the good that comes through sense-perception, he will hasten to the good land—that is, to the state free from all evil and ignorance—which the God who does not lie shows and promises to give as a prize of virtue to those who love Him. (27) If the Word of God was crucified for us from weakness, and was raised by the power of God, it is clear that spiritually He always does and suffers this for us, becoming all things to all, that He might save all.

Therefore the divine Apostle rightly judged that among the Corinthians who were weak he knew nothing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. But to the Ephesians, who were perfect, he writes, God raised us up together and seated us together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, saying that, according to the capacity proportionate to each one, the Word of God becomes [all things]. He is crucified, then, for those who are still being introduced to godliness in the practical life, nailing fast their passionate energies by divine fear. And he rises and ascends into the heavens for those who have wholly put off the old man, who is corrupted by the desires of deceit, and have wholly put on the new man, who is created through the Spirit in the image of God, and have become toward the Father of the grace within them: far above all Principality and Authority and Power and Dominion, and every name that is named, whether in this age or in the age to come. For all things after God—both realities and names and dignities—will be subject to the one who is to become in God through grace.

(28) Just as before his manifest and bodily coming, the Word of God dwelt in a spiritual manner among the patriarchs and prophets, prefiguring the mysteries of his coming, so also after this indwelling he comes not only to those who are still infants, nourishing them spiritually and leading them to the stature of perfection according to God, but also to those who are perfect, secretly sketching out for them, as in an image, the features of his future coming. (29) Just as the words of the law and the prophets, being forerunners of the Word's coming in the flesh, led souls by instruction to Christ, so also the glorified Word of God himself, having become flesh, has become the forerunner of his own spiritual coming, instructing souls through his own words for the reception of his manifest divine coming—a coming which he always brings about, transforming the worthy from flesh to spirit through the virtues, and which he will also bring about at the end of the age, manifestly revealing the things that until then were hidden from all.

(30) To the extent that I am imperfect and insubordinate, not obeying God through the working of the commandments, nor becoming perfect in understanding through knowledge, to that extent Christ too is considered imperfect and insubordinate in my regard, on my account. For I diminish him and cut him short, not growing together with him in the Spirit, since I am a body of Christ and members in part.

(31) The sun rises, and the sun sets, says the Scripture. Therefore the Word too is sometimes considered above and sometimes below—evidently according to the worth, whether of the Word himself or of the manner of life, of those who pursue virtue and are moved toward divine knowledge. Blessed is the one who, like Joshua son of Nun, keeps the sun of righteousness undown within himself, the whole measure of the day of this present life not being bounded by the evening of vice and ignorance, so that he may be able lawfully to rout the wicked demons that rise up against him. (32) The Word of God, being exalted in us through practice and contemplation, draws all to himself—sanctifying both our reasonings and words concerning flesh and soul and the nature of beings, and the very members of the body and the senses, in virtue and knowledge, and placing them under his own yoke. Let the beholder of divine things therefore ascend with zeal, following the Word, until he reaches the place where he is. For there he draws, as Ecclesiastes says, and draws to his own place—evidently those who follow him as a great High Priest, and who brings them into the Holy of Holies, where he himself entered as our forerunner on our behalf.

(33) The one who pursues the philosophy that accords with piety and arrays himself against the invisible powers should pray that natural discernment remain with him (possessing a proportionate light), and that the illuminating grace of the Spirit remain as well. For the one guides the flesh toward virtue through action; the other leads the mind into light, to prefer the companionship of wisdom above all things, by which he makes the demolition of the strongholds of vice and of every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. And Jesus the son of Nun makes this clear by asking in prayer that the sun stand still at Gibeon—that is, that the light of the knowledge of God be undimmed for him, kept on the mountain of the contemplation according to the mind; and the moon at the valley—that is, that natural discernment, lying upon the weakness of the flesh, remain unchangeable from virtue.

(34) Gibeon is the lofty mind; the valley is the flesh humbled by death. And the sun is the Word, who enlightens the mind and supplies it with the power of contemplations, and delivers it from all ignorance; and the moon is the law according to nature, which persuades the flesh to be lawfully subjected to the Spirit, so as to receive the yoke of the commandments. The moon is a symbol of nature because of its mutability; but among the saints it remains immutable, through the unchangeable habit of virtue.

(35) It is not outside those who seek that the Lord must be sought; but those who seek must seek him within themselves, because of the faith that is shown in works. For, it says, the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart—that is, the word of faith—since Christ himself is the word that is sought. (36) Let us neither, having contemplated the height of the divine boundlessness, despair of God's love for humanity, as though because of its height it could not reach as far as us; nor, having considered the infinite depth of our fall because of sin, disbelieve that there can be a resurrection of the virtue that has been put to death in us. For both are possible for God: both to descend and to enlighten our mind through knowledge, and to raise up virtue in us again and exalt it together with himself through the works of righteousness. For do not say, it says, in your heart: Who will ascend into heaven?—that is, to bring Christ down; or, Who will descend into the abyss?—that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. Perhaps, according to another interpretation, the abyss is everything that is after God, in which the Word of God wholly becomes present to all things wholly by providence, as life visiting the dead among existing things. For all living things are dead by participation in life. And heaven is the natural hiddenness of God, by which he is incomprehensible to all. But if someone should take it again to mean that heaven is the account of theology and the abyss the mystery of the economy, he will speak not unreasonably, in my judgment. For both are hard to approach for those who attempt to seek by demonstration—or rather, completely impassable when investigated without faith.

(37) In the practical life, the Word, grown thick with the modes of the virtues, becomes flesh; but in the contemplative life, thinned out by spiritual concepts, it becomes as it was in the beginning, God the Word.

(38) He makes the Word flesh who, by examples and by coarser words, on account of the proportionate capacity of his hearers, makes the teaching of the Word ethical; and again he makes the Word spirit who, by lofty contemplations, sets forth the mystical theology.

(39) He who theologizes affirmatively from posited terms makes the Word flesh, having no other way to know God as cause than from things seen and handled; but he who theologizes negatively from abstractions makes the Word spirit, knowing well the supremely unknowable as being God in the beginning and being toward God, from nothing at all of the things that can be known. (40) He who has learned to dig, after the manner of the patriarchs, through practice and contemplation, the wells of virtue and knowledge within himself, will find Christ within, the fountain of life; from which Wisdom urges us to drink, saying: Drink waters

From your vessels, and from your wells of the spring; doing which, we shall find its treasures within us.

(41) Those who live in a beastly manner, directed only to sense-perception, dangerously make the Word flesh for themselves: using the creatures of God for the service of the passions, and not understanding the principle of wisdom that is manifest in all things, so as to know and glorify God from his own works, and to understand whence, and what, and for what, and where we have come to be borne through the things that are seen; but passing through this age in darkness, they grope with both hands only the ignorance concerning God. (42) Those who sit at the mere letter of the Holy Scripture, and by the bodily worship of the law bind the dignity of the soul, blameworthily make the Word flesh for themselves, thinking that God is pleased with the sacrifices of irrational animals; by whom the body is much cared for, with external purifications; but the beauty of the soul has been neglected, being stained with the filth of the passions; for the sake of which the whole power of things seen has been set forth, and every divine principle and law has been delivered. (43) The holy Gospel says that the Lord is set for the fall and rising again of many. Let us therefore consider, lest he is set for a fall of those who contemplate the visible creation only by sense-perception, and of those who follow only the letter of the Holy Scripture, as being unable to pass over to the new spirit of grace because of their folly;

And the resurrection, of those who spiritually both contemplate and hear the creations of God and His words, and who in fitting ways take care of the divine image of the soul alone. (44) That "the Lord is appointed for the fall and resurrection of many in Israel," understood only in a praiseworthy sense, is understood as a fall of the passions and evil thoughts in each of the faithful, and a resurrection of the virtues and of every God-loving thought. (45) He who thinks the Lord is only the Creator of things in generation and corruption misrecognizes Him as a gardener, like Mary Magdalene. Therefore, for the benefit of such a one, the Master flees his touch, since He had not yet been able to ascend to the Father in him, saying, "Do not touch me." For He knows that the one who approaches Him with such a lowlier preconception is harmed. (46) Those who, because of fear of the Jews, sat with the doors shut in the upper room in Galilee—that is, those who, because of fear of the spirits of wickedness, have stood securely in the land of revelations, in the height of divine contemplations, closing their senses like doors—receive the Word of God, who comes to them unknown, appearing to them without the activity of sense perception, granting dispassion through His inspiration, and providing authority over wicked spirits, and showing the symbols of His mysteries.

(47) For those who investigate the word concerning God according to the flesh, the Lord does not ascend to the Father; but for those who seek Him according to the spirit through lofty contemplations, He ascends to the Father. Let us not, then, always keep our hold on things below—on Him who for our sake became below through His love for humanity—but let us become above with Him, toward the Father, leaving behind the earth and the things upon the earth, so that He may not also say to us what was spoken to the Jews who remained uncorrected: "I go where you cannot come." For without the Word it is impossible to come to the Father of the Word. (48) The land of the Chaldeans is the passionate life, in which the idols of sins are fashioned and worshipped. And the midst of the rivers is the manner that wavers between opposites. And the land of promise is the state filled with every good thing. Everyone, then, who, like the old Israel, neglects the condition of this land is dragged down again into slavery to the passions, being deprived of the freedom that was given.

(49) It must be noted that none of the saints is seen to have gone down willingly into Babylonia. For it is neither lawful nor the part of rational understanding for those who love God to choose the worse in preference to the good. But if some of them were carried there with the people by force, we understand by these those who did not do so by preference, but by circumstance, for the sake of the salvation of those who needed guidance, having set aside the higher word of knowledge and taken up the teaching concerning the passions—according to which the great Apostle judged it more profitable to be in the flesh, that is, in moral teaching, for the sake of the disciples, while his whole desire was to depart from moral teaching and to be with Christ, through the supramundane and simple contemplation according to the intellect.

(50) Just as the blessed David, singing with the lyre, gave rest to Saul when he was being choked by the evil spirit, so too every spiritual word, sweetened by gnostic contemplations, gives rest to the mind that is afflicted with seizures, freeing it from the evil conscience that chokes it.

(51) He is ruddy with beauty of eyes, according to the great David, who, by the bright radiance of his life according to God, has the word of knowledge shining together with it—in those in whom both practice and contemplation are established: the one made radiant by the ways of the virtues, the other illumined by divine thoughts.

(52) The kingdom of Saul is an image of the bodily worship of the law, which the Lord abolished, since it perfected nothing. For, he says, the law perfected nothing. But the kingdom of the great David is a prefiguration of the evangelical worship; for it perfectly contains all the wills in the heart of God.

(53) Saul is the natural law, which from the beginning received the lot from the Lord to rule over nature. Since he transgressed the commandment through disobedience, sparing Agag king of Amalek—that is, the body—and slipped down into the passions, he is driven out from the kingdom, so that David may take over Israel—that is, the law of the Spirit, which begets the peace that builds for God the temple of contemplation resplendently.

(54) Samuel is interpreted as obedience to God. Therefore, as long as the Word in us exercises the priesthood according to obedience, even if Saul spares Agag—that is, the earthly-mindedness—nevertheless the priestly Word, being zealous, will kill him, and strikes down and puts to shame the sin-loving mind, as a transgressor of the divine ordinances. (55) Whenever the mind, having become high-minded, ceases to question through the proper inquiry the word of teaching that anointed it against the passions, concerning things to be done and not to be done, it is altogether captured by the passions through ignorance; by which, being separated from God in part, in involuntary circumstances it turns to the demons, making a god of the belly, seeking from there to find consolation from those who oppress it. And let Saul persuade you, who, not taking Samuel as counselor in all things, turns of necessity to idolatry, and endures to consult the ventriloquist as if some god.

(56) He who prays to receive the supersubstantial bread does not altogether receive it as the bread itself is, but as he who receives is able. For the bread of life gives itself to all who ask, as being a lover of humanity, but not in the same way to all; but to those who have done great works of righteousness, more abundantly; to those less than these, less abundantly; to each according as the worth according to the mind is able to receive.

(57) The Lord is sometimes absent and sometimes present. He is absent with respect to the vision of face to face; he is present with respect to the vision in a mirror and in riddles.

(58) To the practical man the Lord is present through the virtues; but when a man makes no account of virtue, he is absent. And again, to the contemplative man he is present through true knowledge of the things that are; but when such a man has slipped in some respect concerning this, he is absent. (59) He is absent from the flesh when one has passed from the practical to the gnostic habit, being caught up as in clouds by higher thoughts into the transparent air of mystical contemplation, according to which he will be able to be with the Lord always. But he is away from the Lord who is not yet able, apart from the activities of sense, with a pure mind to contemplate the thoughts as far as attainable, and who does not contain the simple word concerning the Lord without riddles.

(60) The Word of God is called flesh not only in that he has been made flesh, but in that the God-Word, simply understood in the beginning with God and the Father, and having clear and naked types of the truth concerning all things, does not contain parables and riddles, nor histories needing allegory. But when he comes to dwell among men who are unable to approach naked intelligibles with a naked mind, conversing from things familiar to them, being composed through the variety of histories and riddles and parables and obscure words, he becomes flesh. For at the first approach, our mind does not approach a naked Word, but a Word made flesh—that is, the variety of expressions—a Word in nature, but flesh in appearance.

So that the many seem to see flesh and not the Word, even if in truth it is the Word. For the meaning of the Scripture is not what seems to the many, but something other than what seems. For the Word becomes flesh through each of the recorded words.

(61) The beginning of men's discipleship toward piety is, as it were, to become flesh. For at the first assault of godliness we converse with the letter and not the spirit. But advancing in part by the spirit, scraping away the coarse thickness of the words with finer contemplations, we become in the pure Christ purely, as far as is possible for men, so as to be able to say with the Apostle: Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him so—clearly because of the simple approach of the mind to the Word without the veils upon it, having advanced from knowing the Word as flesh to the glory as of the Only-begotten from his Father.

(62) He who has lived the life in Christ has surpassed both the righteousness of the law and that of nature; which the divine Apostle indicates when he says: For in Christ Jesus there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision. By circumcision he signified the righteousness of the law; by uncircumcision he hinted at the natural equality.

(63) Some are regenerated through water and the Spirit; others receive baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire. And these four—I mean the water, and the spirit, and the fire, and the Holy Spirit—I understand as the one and the same Spirit of God.

For to some the Holy Spirit is water, as washing away the outward defilements of the body; to others only spirit, as effecting the good things that pertain to virtue; to others fire, as purifying the inward stains deep in the soul; and to others, according to the great Daniel, the Holy Spirit, as the provider of wisdom and knowledge. For from the different operations relating to the underlying subject, the one and the same Spirit receives different designations.

(14__538 (64)) The law gave the Sabbath, so that, it says, your beast of burden and your servant may rest. But both of these signify the body through riddles. For the beast of burden of the practical mind is the body, compelled by force to carry burdens in the ways of the virtues through action. And the servant of the contemplative mind is the body, as already reckoned among contemplations, and rationally serving the cognitive commands of the mind. And for both, the Sabbath is the end of the good things wrought in them through action and contemplation, providing to each the rest that is fitting.

(66) The one who pursues virtue together with the knowledge that befits it has the body as a beast of burden, driving it on by reason to the performance of what is due; and a servant, the manner of life that consists in virtuous action—that is, the very manner in which virtue naturally comes to be—as though bought with silver by discerning thoughts. And the Sabbath is the passionless and peaceful state of both soul and body in accordance with virtue, that is, an unchanging disposition.

(67) The Word of God becomes chaff and grass for those who still have the greater part of their care set on the bodily forms of virtue, nourishing the passible part of their soul for the service of the virtues; but for those raised up by contemplation to the true understanding of divine things, it is bread, nourishing the noetic part of their soul toward Godlike perfection. Therefore we find the patriarchs provisioned on the way, both bread for themselves and fodder for their donkeys. And the Levite in Judges says to the old man who gave him hospitality in Gibeah: There are also loaves for us, and chaff for our donkeys; and there is no lack for your servants, of anything at all.

(67) The Word of God is said to be dew, and is so; and water, and a spring, and a river, as it is written—manifestly according to the subjective capacity of those who receive him, being and becoming these things. For to some he is dew, as one who quenches the burning and activity of the passions that press upon them from without around the body. To those who are frozen in the depth by the poison of evil he is water—not only as one who destroys the opposing power through counter-affection, but also as one who imparts life-giving power toward well-being. He is a spring to those who have the disposition of contemplation welling up unceasingly, as a provider of wisdom. He is a river to those who pour forth the pious and right and saving teaching in a river-like flood, abundantly watering men, and cattle, and beasts, and plants; so that even men may be deified, lifted up by the lofty meanings of what is said; and those who have become brutish through the passions, having been made human through the exact demonstration of the ways that accord with virtue, may recover their natural rationality; and those who have become beast-like through evil dispositions and wicked deeds, having been tamed through gentle and gracious exhortation, may return to the gentleness of nature; and those who, like plants, are insensible to good things, having been softened through the passage of the word into their depth, may receive perception for the bearing of fruit, and power that nourishes them—the quality of the word. (68) The Word of God is a way for those who run well and strenuously the stadium of virtue according to the practical life, and who turn aside neither to the right through vainglory nor to the left through inclination toward the passions, as he makes their steps straight according to God.

Asa, king of Judah, did not keep this to the end, and it is said that in his old age his feet were diseased, as though he had grown weak in the course of his life according to God. (69) The Word of God is called a door, as bringing into knowledge those who have nobly completed the whole path of the virtues by the blameless course of action; and as light, showing the many-radiant treasures of wisdom. For he himself is both way and door and key and kingdom: a way, as guide; a key, as opening to the worthy the things of God and being opened; a door, as one who brings in; a kingdom, as being inherited, and becoming in all things by participation.

(70) The Lord is called light, and life, and resurrection, and truth. Light, both as brightness of souls, and as a pursuer of the darkness of ignorance; and as enlightening the mind for the understanding of hidden things; and showing the mysteries that are visible only to the pure. Life, as providing the movement fitting for souls that love the Lord in divine things. Resurrection, as raising the mind from the dead attachment to material things, clean from all corruption and deadness. Truth, as granting to the worthy an unchanging state of good things. (71) The God and Word of God and the Father mystically exists in each of his own commandments; and the God and Father is wholly, inseparably, in his whole Word by nature. Therefore the one who receives a divine commandment and does it receives the Word of God that is in it. And the one who has received the Word through the commandments has through him received together the Father who is in him by nature, and has received together the Spirit who is in him by nature.

For truly, he says, I say to you, whoever receives anyone whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. So then, the one who has received a commandment and has kept it, having received it, possesses the Holy Trinity mystically. (72) He glorifies God in himself—not the one who honors God with words only, but the one who for God's sake endures the sufferings of labors beyond virtue; and he is in turn glorified by God, receiving the glory that is in God, as it were the prize of virtue, the grace of impassibility, by participation. For everyone who glorifies God in himself through the sufferings endured for virtue in the practical life is himself also glorified in God, through the impassible illumination of divine things in contemplation. For the Lord says, as he comes to his passion: Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself; and he will glorify him immediately. So that from this it is clear that the divine gifts follow upon the sufferings endured for virtue.

(73) As long as we see the Word of God in the spoken text of Holy Scripture, variously embodied through riddles, we have not yet seen the Father in a bodiless, simple, unified, and only-begotten Son—intelligibly, as in a bodiless, simple, unified, and only Son—according to the saying, "He who has seen me has seen the Father," and, "I am in the Father, and the Father is in me." Great learning is therefore needed, so that, having first slipped through the veils of the words surrounding the Word, we may thus with a naked mind behold the Word himself standing pure in himself, clearly showing the Father in himself, as far as is attainable by humans. Therefore it is necessary that the one who piously seeks God be held fast by no spoken text, lest he unknowingly take the things around God in place of God—that is, lest, preferring the spoken texts of Scripture to the Word, he dangerously cling to the garments while the Word escapes his mind, seeming to grasp the bodiless Word from the wrappings—like the Egyptian woman, who grasped not Joseph but his garments; and like the ancient peoples, who, remaining only in the fair appearance of things seen, unknowingly served the creature rather than the Creator. (74) The word of Holy Scripture, having stripped away piece by piece, through higher meanings, the composite of the spoken texts that are bodily molded upon it, is shown to the more discerning mind as in a gentle breeze—to the mind that, through the utter cessation of natural activities, has been able to receive perception of the simplicity that reveals the Word in some measure, like the great Elijah, who in the cave of Horeb was deemed worthy of this vision.

For Horeb is interpreted as a renewal, which is the habit of the virtues in the new Spirit of grace. And the cave is the hiddenness of wisdom according to the intellect, in which the one who has entered will mystically perceive knowledge beyond sense-perception, in which God is said to be. Therefore everyone who, like the great Elijah, truly seeks God will not only be in Horeb—that is, as one active in the habit of the virtues—but also in the cave in Horeb—that is, as one contemplative in the hiddenness of wisdom, which is found in the habit of the virtues alone.

(75) When the intellect shakes off the many opinions about existing things that lie upon it, then the clear word of truth appears to it, giving it the precepts of true knowledge, and thrusting away the former preconceptions upon it like the scales of the eyes' powers, according to the divinely inspired and great Apostle Paul. For they are truly scales lying upon the soul's power of sight and preventing the passage toward the pure word of truth—both the suppositions directed only at the literal text of Scripture and the passionate contemplations of visible things according to sense-perception.

The divine Apostle Paul said that he knew the knowledge of the Word in part. But the great evangelist John says that he beheld his glory. For we beheld, he says, his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. And perhaps the holy Paul said that he knew the knowledge of God the Word in part. For from his energies he is known only to a certain extent. For the knowledge of him according to essence and hypostasis alike stands inaccessible to all angels and men, being known by no one in any respect. But the holy John, having been perfectly initiated—as far as is possible among men—into the account of the Word's becoming man, said that he beheld the glory of the Word as flesh; that is, he beheld the account—that is, the purpose—according to which God became man, full of grace and truth. For the Only-begotten is not graced according to what he is as God in essence and consubstantial with God the Father, but according to what he became by nature in the economy—man and consubstantial with us—he has been graced for our sake, who need grace; and from his fullness we always receive grace in proportion to our every advance. So that the one who has kept the account perfect in himself, undefiled, will receive the glory full of grace and truth of God the Word who became flesh for our sake, who for our sake glorified and sanctified himself according to us at his coming. For when, he says, that one is revealed, we shall be like him. Until the soul makes its transition from power to power and from glory to glory;

that is, the greater progress from virtue to virtue, and the higher ascent from knowledge to knowledge, it did not cease to dwell as a stranger, according to what is said: My soul has dwelt as a stranger for many things. For great is the interval, and the multitude of the knowledges that must be passed through by it, until it shall pass through into the place of a wondrous tabernacle, even to the house of God; in a voice of exultation and confession, the sound of one keeping festival; always adding voice to voice, intelligible to intelligible, to the progress of the divine contemplations, together with the exultation, that is joy, of the mind over the things contemplated, and the thanksgiving that corresponds to it. For all those who have received the Spirit of grace keep such festivals, crying out in their hearts: Abba, the Father.

(78) The place of the wondrous tabernacle is also the impassible and harm-free state of the virtues; in which the Word of God, coming to be in it, adorns the soul as a tabernacle with the varied beauties of the virtues. And the house of God is the knowledge composed of many and varied contemplations; in which God, dwelling in the soul, fills it from the bowl of wisdom. And the voice of exultation is the leaping of the soul over the wealth of the virtues. And that of confession is the thanksgiving over the glory of the feasting that is according to wisdom. And the sound is the continual mystical glorification that comes from both, I mean exultation and confession, by their mingling.

(69) Let the one who has nobly wrestled down the passions of the body, and has fought sufficiently against the unclean spirits, and has driven their thoughts out of the region of his own soul—let him pray that a pure heart be given to him, and that a right spirit be renewed in his inward parts; that is, that he be completely emptied of base thoughts and filled with divine concepts through grace, so that he may become a spiritual world of God, bright and great, composed of ethical, natural, and theological contemplations.

(70) The one who has made his heart pure will know the principles not only of things subordinate and after God, but will also, after the passage through all things, behold God himself to some extent; which is the highest end of good things. Having come to this, God deems it worthy to engrave his own letters through the Spirit, as on certain tablets of Moses—to the extent that the heart has advanced through practice and contemplation, according to the commandment that mystically commands: Increase. (71) A pure heart is perhaps said to be that which has no natural movement whatsoever, in any way, toward anything; in which God, coming as upon a tablet well smoothed by its extreme simplicity, inscribes his own laws. (72) A pure heart is that which has presented its memory to God entirely without form and shapeless, and is ready to be imprinted only with his own types, through which he is naturally made manifest.

(14_552 (83)) The mind of Christ, which the saints receive, according to the saying, "But we have the mind of Christ," does not come about by the removal of the noetic power within us, nor as completing our mind, nor as passing essentially by hypostasis into our mind, but as illuminating the power of our mind by its own quality and leading it to the same activity as itself. For I say that one has the mind of Christ who thinks in accordance with him and thinks him in all things.

(84) We are said to be the body of Christ, according to the saying, "But we are the body of Christ, and members in part," not by the removal of our own bodies, becoming his body, nor again by his passing by hypostasis into us or being cut up member by member, but by the likeness of the Lord's flesh, so as to shake off the corruption of sin. For just as Christ was by nature sinless in flesh and soul insofar as he is understood as man, so too we who have believed in him and have put him on through the Spirit can, by our free choice, be in him without sin.

(85) There are in Scripture both temporal ages, and ages that contain the consummation of other ages, according to the saying, "But now once at the consummation of the ages," and what follows. And again there are other ages free of temporal nature, after this present time—the age at the consummation of the ages—according to the saying, "That he might show in the ages to come the surpassing riches," and what follows. We find in Scripture also a multitude of ages, past, present, and future; and that some ages are ages of ages, and an age of an age, and eternal times, and generations joined to ages. And lest we now extend our discourse far beyond the subject, saying what the word intends to make clear by the temporal ages, and what by the eternal times and generations—and again, what the ages of ages are, and what the simple age is, and the age of the age—leaving these things to be examined by those who love learning, let us return to the purpose for which we brought these matters forward.

(86) We know something supra-aeonian according to Scripture; that it exists, it has indicated; but what this is, it has not named, according to the saying, "The Lord reigns for the age, and unto the age and still more." Therefore there is something beyond the ages: the pure and undefiled kingdom of God. For it is not lawful to say that the kingdom of God has begun, or is overtaken by ages or times. This we believe to be the inheritance of those who are saved, and their abode, and their place, just as the true word hands down: as the end of those who are moved by desire toward the final object of longing; in which, when they come to be, they receive rest from every kind of motion whatsoever; so that no time or age of theirs any longer exists that must be passed through, as having arrived after all things at God, who is before all the ages, and whom the nature of ages is not naturally able to overtake. (87) For as long a time as one is in this life, even if he is perfect in his condition here, both in practice and in contemplation, he has knowledge and prophecy in part, and the earnest of the Holy Spirit; but not the fullness itself; he will come at some time, after the passing away of the ages, to the perfect lot, which shows truth itself standing upon itself, face to face, to those who are worthy; so that he no longer has a part from the fullness, but receives the whole fullness of grace itself through participation. For all, says the Apostle (clearly those who are saved), will arrive at a perfect man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; in whom are the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden; when this appears, that which is in part will be done away.

(14__556 (88)) Some ask how the state of those deemed worthy of perfection in the kingdom of God will be: whether by progress and change, or by identity in a fixed state; and how one ought to suppose bodies and souls to be. To this, then, someone might conjecture that, just as in bodily life the principle of nourishment is twofold—one for growth, the other for preservation of those nourished—so it is. Until we reach the perfection of bodily stature, we are nourished for growth; but when the body has ceased its increase in size, it is no longer nourished for growth but for preservation. So too with the soul, the principle of nourishment is twofold. For it is nourished as it progresses in virtues and contemplations, until, passing through all things that exist, it reaches the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. When it has come to be in that measure, it ceases from all progress toward advancement and growth through intermediate things, being nourished directly by that which is beyond understanding—and for this reason perhaps beyond growth—by a form of incorruptible food, for the preservation of the God-like perfection given to it, and for the manifestation of the infinite splendors of that food, according to which, receiving the ever-being-well in the same way dwelling within it, it becomes God by participation in the divine grace, all its activities according to intellect and sense having ceased, and it having brought to rest with itself the natural activities of the body as well, the body being contemplated together with it in the participation in deification analogous to it. So that God alone appears through both soul and body, the natural distinguishing marks having been overcome by the excess of glory. (89)

Some of those who love learning ask in what manner there will be the difference among the eternal abodes and promises: whether according to local subsistence, or according to conception of the distinctive spiritual quality and quantity according to each form. And to some the first seems so, to others the second; but the one who has understood what "The kingdom of God is within you" means, and what "Many mansions with the Father" means, will belong rather to the second.

(15) Some ask what difference the kingdom of the heavens has in relation to the kingdom of God: whether they differ from each other according to subsistence, or according to conception. To these it must be said that they do differ, but not according to subsistence. For both are one according to subsistence, but according to conception. For the kingdom of the heavens is the apprehension of the pure, pre-eternal in God knowledge of beings according to their own principles; but the kingdom of God is the gracious participation in the goods that belong to God naturally. And the one is according to the end of beings, while the other is according to conception after the end of beings.

(1) The saying "The kingdom of heaven has drawn near" is not, as I think, a shortening of time; for "it does not come with observation, nor will they say, 'Behold, here,' or 'Behold, there,'" but it is a matter of the relation, according to disposition, of those who are worthy of it. For "the kingdom of God," he says, "is within you." (2) The kingdom of God and the Father is present in potentiality in all who believe, but in actuality in those who have wholly set aside the entire natural life of soul and body that belongs to disposition, and have acquired only the life of the Spirit, and are able to say, "I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me." (3) Some say that the kingdom of heaven is the conduct of the worthy in the heavens; others, the state of the saved that is like that of the angels; others, the very form of the divine beauty of those who have borne the image of the heavenly one. And, in my opinion, all three opinions about this are in accord with the truth. For to all, in proportion to the righteousness that is in them in quality and quantity, the future grace is given. (4) As long as one, according to the practical philosophy, manfully passes through the divine contests, he holds the Word within himself—the Word who came forth from the Father into the world through the commandments. But when, released from the struggles of action against the passions, and shown forth as a victor over the passions and demons, he passes over to the gnostic philosophy that comes through contemplation, he permits the Word mystically to leave the world again and to journey to the Father.

Therefore the Lord says to the disciples, "You have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father, and have come into the world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father" — calling "the world," perhaps, the toilsome labor of the virtues in practice; and "the Father," the supramundane state according to the mind, free from all material-mindedness; in which state the Word of God comes to be in us, when the battle against the passions and the demons has ceased. (5) He who has been able through practice to put to death the members that are on the earth, and through the Word of the commandments to conquer the world of the passions within himself, will no longer have any affliction, having already left the world and having come to be in Christ, who conquered the world of the passions and is the provider of all peace. For he who has not let go of his attachment to material things will have affliction continually, being changed along with those who by nature change their disposition. But he who has come to be in Christ will in no way perceive any material alteration whatsoever. Therefore the Lord says: "These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have affliction; but take courage, I have conquered the world." That is: In me, the Word of virtue, you have peace, having been delivered from the swirling and turmoil of material passions and things; but in the world, that is, in attachment to material things, you will have affliction, because of their ceaseless alteration. For both have affliction — both the one who practices virtue, because of the pain attached to it, and the one who loves the world, because of the failure to obtain material things; but the one has affliction that is salvific.

But this one is destructive and ruinous. The Lord is the release from both: from the one, by bringing to rest in himself, through contemplation and impassibility, the labors of the virtues; from the other, by removing through repentance the attachment of affinity toward corruptible things. (6) The inscription in the title of the cause of the Savior clearly showed the crucified one to be King and Lord, being of practical, natural, and theological philosophy. For he says that the saying was written in Roman, in Greek, and in Hebrew. I understand by "in Roman" the practical [philosophy], since the kingdom of the Romans, according to Daniel, was appointed to be more manly than all the kingdoms on earth; and it is the property of the practical life, if anything is, to be manly. By "in Greek," the natural contemplation, since the nation of the Greeks more than the rest of men devoted itself to natural philosophy. By "in Hebrew," the theological mystagogy, since this nation from the beginning was manifestly dedicated to God, the fathers. (7) We must be not only slayers of bodily passions, but also destroyers of the passionate thoughts of the soul, according to the holy one who says: "In the mornings I killed all the sinners of the earth, that I might destroy out of the city of the Lord all those who work lawlessness" — that is, the passions of the body, and the lawless thoughts of the soul.

He who has kept the way of the virtues undamaged, without inclination to either side, with pious and right knowledge, will know the presence of God that comes to him through impassibility. For I will sing, and I will understand in the blameless way, when you will come to me. For the psalm declares virtuous action; and understanding, the gnostic knowledge that is upon virtue, according to which he perceives the divine presence, who through vigilance in the virtues awaits his Lord. He who is being introduced into piety ought not to be led to the practice of the commandments by kindness alone, but also by the remembrance of the divine judgments, and to strive more frequently through severity; so that he may not only love the divine things with longing, but also abstain from evil with fear. For I will sing of mercy and judgment to you, O Lord; that he may both sing to God, delighting in longing, and be strengthened for the song, being sharpened by fear.

He who through virtue and knowledge has harmonized the body with the soul has become a cithara of God, and a flute, and a temple. A cithara, as one who has well preserved the harmony of the virtues; a flute, as one who through divine contemplations receives the inspiration of the Spirit; a temple, as one who through purity of mind has become a dwelling-place of the Word.